FROM THE ASA(ALT) SERGEANT MAJOR SGM RORY L . MALLOY
DIRECTION: ‘MAIN STREET’
Making the most of small businesses’ strengths S
mall businesses are the heartbeat of communities across America. During the recent Association of the United States Army (AUSA) convention, I had the privilege of engaging with several small businesses and saw firsthand the fine services and high-quality products they provide to our military. I like to engage
with small businesses to ask how they are able to succeed in a marketplace that is not only tough to enter but filled with larger, experienced corporations that have vastly more resources to find opportunities and write the proposals that win government business.
One of the small businesspeople I spoke with represented a small, custom manufac- turing firm that just two years ago had no prime defense contracts. Since then, the company undertook a defense market strategy, whereby it employs veterans in order to better understand warfighters’ needs, to become a prime supplier to DOD with a commitment to bringing the highest quality and best value directly to the government. Trough meticulous efforts, hard work and determination, this small business now holds multiple prime contracts with DOD and has made good on its commitment.
A program manager with the company summed up its success quite well. He said his company understood that, in the current budget environment, in order to be com- petitive it must provide warfighters the right product, at the best value and with the absolute best quality. An example is when the company was a subcontractor to a larger program in which they were making a carrying case for a product. Te Army was faced with a challenge when the prime contract ended. Tere was a new need for the carrier, but the former prime was no longer interested in providing it. Tis small business saw the opportunity and competed and won the contract. Now it provides the same high- quality carrier to the government at a third of the cost. Tis is an example of a small business that doesn’t just wait for opportunity to knock, but actively seeks it out.
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COMMENTARY
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