Small business owners and representatives take advantage of face-to-face discussions with Army buyer commands and OSBP small business specialists on how to do business with Army.
By Robert E. Coultas
The Army Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) launched its first-ever business matchmaking sessions during a small business seminar conducted at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting Oct. 13, 2015, in Washington, D.C.
Business matchmaking is the nation’s premier public-private initiative supporting procurement opportunities for small businesses in every industry, including those hoping to do commerce with the Army—which can be a daunting trip into the sphere of the unknown for small businesses dealing with the Army for the first time. The OSBP made it a bit easier for small businesses to stay the course when navigating the “uncharted waters” of Army procurement policy and regulations.
The OSBP matchmaking sessions featured a forum on how to do business with the Army for small business representatives that meet with small business specialists from OSBP as well as the U.S. Army buying commands, which is made up of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, U.S. Army Medical Command and the National Guard Bureau.
Sharon R. Morrow, OSBP’s acting associate director, said the matchmaking sessions offered the small businesses representatives an opportunity to get a customized guidance on how to market to Army agencies.
“We can’t give them a one-on-one consulting session,” she said, “but we can at least give them direction and guidance on how to market, who to market to, or if we know of a specific opportunity, we can point them in the right direction.”
Small business vendors from a range of market sectors were on hand, representing companies from cyber technology, Web applications and watercraft safety, to medical supplies and devices, business consulting, staff augmentation and recruitment services.
Among the attendees was Jen Reinkoker, director of Newport News, Va., operations for Conley and Associates Inc. Her company’s offerings include maintenance and repair services, technical and life-cycle support for shipboard, Web-based and tactical communication systems.
“The majority of our operations are in Newport News. We do sustainment services for DOD customers, primarily Army, but we also have some Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force contracts as well,” she said. Reinkoker said one of Conley’s largest contracts is supporting the Army’s command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance program onboard Army watercraft.
“We have technicians who travel around the world and fix the Army boats. We stock repair parts for and order them as necessary. We have technicians who go out and do those repairs for us. We have a management staff, of course, that keeps an eye on all that,” she said.
She added that the networking opportunities during the seminar were “huge.”
“I’m retired Army, so I’ve run into a number of people over the course of these past couple of days and talked with them, so that’s been really good. You do the business card exchange, and you just never know when, down the road, you might be able to reach out to somebody, or they to you, to help each other out,” she said.
King W. Gillespie, president of the Endeavor Group, a business consulting firm, got right to the point at his matchmaking table. “Do you have a pre-solicitation out? I’m interested in competing. Who do I need to talk to about shaping the requirement before it goes out as a solicitation? How do I approach the Army with my new business ideas?”
Gillespie got answers for all his inquiries and a little something extra. “To my delight, there was a lot more that happened that I didn’t anticipate, and actually didn’t even think about, but that thankfully, was because of very insightful contracting officers,” he said.
Morrow noted an unexpected benefit of the matchmaking sessions: “Not only am I able to help them—they’re able to help each other,” she said. “One gentleman (at the session) was coaching a newer business on the value of SCORE [Service Core of Retired Executives] because he took advantage of that service and he was telling somebody else about how they helped him. They can hear it from me, but when they hear it from somebody who’s like them, it’s more credible, more believable. And they’re going be more likely to go ahead and take advantage of those services.”
For more information about Army small business opportunities, go to http://www.sellingtoarmy.info/.
MR. ROBERT E. COULTAS is an editor for Army AL&T magazine and an Army AL&T news blog editor. He is a retired Army broadcaster with more than 43 years of combined experience in public affairs, journalism, broadcasting and advertising. He’s Level I trained in program management, has won numerous Army Keith L. Ware Public Affairs Awards and is a DOD Thomas Jefferson Award recipient
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