An Acquisition Plan Summary is created and used by a federal agency to outline the proposed requirements and acquisitions of the agency. It helps formulate a strategy to satisfy the future procurement needs of the agency. The Acquisition Plan Summary ensures that the agency fulfills its procurement requirements in a timely and cost-effective manner. CLM addresses the frequently used (but non-standardized) need across federal agencies to coordinate and plan acquisition efforts. You can perform a combination of actions within the Acquisition Plan Summary, including capturing information related to procurement purpose, solicitation method, extent of competition, potential vendors, supporting attachments in multiple formats and other key data elements associated with typical procurement activities. The Acquisition Plan Summary is routed through an approval chain before it gets finalized. Another important feature of the Acquisition Plan Summary is the ability to reference the Acquisition Plan Summary in Purchase Requisition and Solicitation documents. This helps the agency keep track of all the downstream documents created referencing the Acquisition Plan Summary.
Note: An Acquisition Plan is a Procurement Strategy tool. Procurement managers analyze the demand and schedule tasks in order to find the best acquisition strategy for specific goods or service. For example, an agency would like to procure 10 combat submarines in the next 3 years. The method to acquire the goods or services - the strategy, the plan, the sequence of steps, is defined by an acquisition plan. As the agency works through the plan, the documents created in the procurement process are linked to the acquisition plan.