GSA Blog

GSA’s New & Improved Vendor Support Center Provides a Searchable, One-Stop-Shop for Contractors

GSA recently launched a newly updated Vendor Support Center (VSC), a one-stop-shop for key resources for prospective and current Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contractors. This will improve the overall experience for contractors and supports the third priority of the President's Management Agenda by making key information about doing business with GSA easier to find and understand.

"Our goals for this website overhaul were three-fold. One, we wanted to modernize the bedrock technology and make security enhancements, which aligns the new VSC with other websites we've updated like GSA Advantage!. Second, we prioritized improving the user experience. And third, we needed to make business process improvements so the website is easier to maintain," said eBuy's Senior Program Analyst Rich Carlson.

In order to make informed changes and gather feedback from industry partners during the VSC revamp process, GSA published a Request for Information (RFI) in November 2020. Respondents cited three key areas needing improvement: site navigation, help desk availability, and plain language.

"We used the RFI responses, emails sent to the help desk, and site analytics to determine which major updates to make. Now, users will experience a beautiful design, clear navigation structure, easier access to the help desk from the home page, and current content that's organized and easy to understand," Carlson explained. "There is a tremendous amount of valuable content on the VSC. The problem on the old site was that it was really hard to find."

The VSC is now searchable and content is now much easier to find. Even more, the search function is dynamic, which means that typing a word or phrase into the search box brings up all content on the site featuring that word or phrase. The search results are organized by navigation section so users know where it lives for future use.

The VSC redesign also makes it easier to get help right from the home page. Users can now easily find help desk information, plus three types of locators for their individual Procurement Contracting Officer (PCO), Administrative Contracting Officer (ACO), and Industrial Operations Analyst (IOA).

Site navigation is organized by the contractor journey: "I Want a Contract," "Managing my Contract," and "Contract Sales." There's also a new page, "MAS Project Center," housing resources for all MAS special projects, such as Consolidation.

"The MAS Project Center was an important addition for us to make so contractors can find all the resources we provide for our projects in one place; that doesn't exist anywhere else," said MAS Program Director Stephanie Shutt.

These improvements are another example of the GSA's ongoing work to make it easier to do business with GSA and improve customer experience throughout the agency.

Check out our new and improved Vendor Support Center at vsc.gsa.gov.

Have feedback or questions? Send them to maspmo@gsa.gov.