IT’S ALL IN THE DELIVERY
deploy to support our forces in Afghani- stan. A lot of those linguists come from small businesses, up to the scientist that helps work on a research and develop- ment project with the
[U.S. Army]
Research, Development and Engineer- ing Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground [MD]. In terms of services, the Army spend with small business is about 81 percent on services versus 19 percent on products. (See Figure 1 on Page 19.) Small business plays such a big role in services that sometimes we can’t find enough of them.
Army AL&T: One of the things that the commands seem to be very accustomed to doing is measuring their success in the amount of dollars spent. How do you measure success with small business?
Marks: Well, the true measure of success is when requiring activities, our com- mands, want to keep them on their team. Tat’s really the true measure of success, the capabilities that they brought to the table.
Army AL&T: How would you rate the information systems support to the Army’s small business effort? Is the Army, first, doing enough to make it easier for small business to qualify and compete? And, second, is the Army making it easy enough for program managers to track those small businesses and their performance?
Marks: We’ve created some in-house things here. We have a website that small businesses can go to—any business, but
in particular our small businesses. Tey can search for every small business spe- cialist that we have employed by the Army, by command, on that list. So if you’re looking for the AMC small busi- ness advocate, it pulls up the contact information for Nancy Small [director of the small business office at AMC] and her folks, or somebody down at the Army Contracting Command, or the Mission and Installation Contracting Command in San Antonio.
We also have on that website a step-by- step guide on how to do business with us. And we include an acquisition forecast that our commands put together, which we update throughout the year, because things change in what the out-years look like based on mission requirements. And we work with CIO [the Army chief infor- mation officer]/G-6 to try to get the right information support systems in place.
When we get those forecasts—all posted by those five major commands—busi- nesses can go there, click and see what’s hot on the shopping list for AMC. I will tell you, we’ve got commanders in the field today, like GEN Via at AMC and LTG Bostick at USACE, that really believe in small businesses and want to see them succeed. As long as small businesses can bring the right capabil- ity to the table to support those mission requirements, they have an opportunity to compete.
Army AL&T: Can you give us some examples,
SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Pamela Monroe, program manager, Army mentor-protégé and subcontracting programs, leads the DOD panel discussion at the Montgomery County [MD] Chamber of Commerce GovConNet Procurement Conference in May 2015. Seated, from left, are Sandra Broadnax, director, Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Patricia Obey, acting director, Department of the Navy OSBP; and Kenyata Wesley, acting director, DOD OSBP. (Photo by Jordan Silverman)
if necessary without naming
them, of small businesses that have suc- ceeded as the result of working with the Army Office of Small Business Programs?
Marks: What comes to mind, even before I came here, is the mentor-protégé program. Tat’s been around for sev- eral years. To date, we’ve had 80 small
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Army AL&T Magazine
January-March 2016
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