“SMALL TO FEDS” By Ken Larson
“Most small enterprises must undertake some form of business process augmentation when entering federal government contracting. The natural inclination for small business is to immediately jump to buying computer software tools or services in an effort to expedite the business system growth process.
Cautions and tips regarding an immediate jump to software or services as a means of growing a government contract business system with some rules of thumb to insure wise business system development decisions, specific to your company, for managing the associated risks”
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PROCESS COMES FIRST – MAXIMIZE WHAT YOU HAVE Given a thorough understanding of the requirements for a government contract business system that fills the need for your specific product or service delivery, the next step is to examine existing processes to determine if they can meet the need or be minimally supplemented to do so. Finding a need for major process changes or enhancements in the existing business system is the beginning of a requirements analysis to determine the labor, process change, planning, costs and eventual selection of new automated tools that fit the company and that need. Many start-ups and small enterprises find they can crutch their existing job cost accounting system for service contracts with spread sheets instead of buying an expensive, data base oriented, software package or services initially. As the company grows into government contracting and the number of transactions and associated revenue warrants the expense, the firm can then evaluate more expensive packaged software tools or services and ease into them with a plan to minimize disruption.
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