Sept 1997

TCT Web Site Helps Small Businesses Seek Share of Defense Market

EL SEGUNDO, CA–Small businesses seeking a share of the multi-billion dollar defense market can gain valuable leads from a new link on a government Web site. Implemented by Transnational Computer Technology (TCT) of El Segundo, Calif., the link helps users locate subcontracting opportunities with major defense contractors.

By clicking on www.dcmdw.dla.mil, users access the home page and the Small Business extension of the Defense Contract Management District West, an agency that currently oversees nearly $450 billion worth of business obtained by prime contractors in the western half of the United States.

The new addition to the Small Business extension, the Contractor's Performance link, is meant to help small businesses–including women's and minority owned companies–locate specific prime contractors that may be looking for goods or services offered by small firms.

As part of their agreement with the defense department, prime contractors must establish "performance goals" that state how much subcontracting business they will make available to various types of small businesses. Twice a year, the contractors report to the District on how well they are meeting these goals.

This information is helpful to small businesses because it indicates which contractors have not met performance goals. Such firms are likely to have an interest in small companies qualified to take on subcontracting work.

In the past, up-to-date information on prime contractors has not been readily available because performance reports were submitted on paper and compiled by a Congressional office, which published the data annually in book form.

Late in 1996 the District announced it was seeking a "better, faster, and cheaper" way to manage the contractor performance data. "They wanted a test program that would automate the whole process of gathering and disseminating this information," says Ravi Kumar, TCT's project manager, "and we were asked to create a link on their Small Business page that would simplify data entry and access for everyone involved."

Using Oracle's WebServer, TCT completed the interactive link by the beginning of 1997. "The extension has been operational for months," says Kumar, "but its practical value to small businesses is just reaching full potential as data from various prime contractors keeps coming in."

Prime contractors electronically submit information about their performance during each of the past five years. This raw data is accessible only to District administrators who review it for accuracy and then make it available to all users in statistical form.

Small businesses may enter "Customer Access" and choose a smaller geographical area within the District to examine statistics about prime contractors located there. Alternatively, they may enter the name of any individual contractor to see how that company has been performing both in the short term and over a period of five years.

To speed communications between interested parties, the new link enables users to contact selected contractors and District field offices directly by email. It also lists the telephone number of each prime contractor's Small Business Liaison Officer (listed on the site as an "SBLO"), who can provide specific information about possible subcontracting opportunities.

Overall, such opportunities represent a considerable dollar value. The federal government's combined purchases of goods and services add up to approximately $170 billion each year. Of this total, about 5 percent ($8.5 billion) is made available to small businesses in the form of subcontracting work, much of it connected with defense department contracts.

In the computer field, for example, hundreds of major defense contracts require the involvement of small companies capable of providing assistance with various hardware and software requirements. TCT, with no previous experience as a subcontractor on a federal government project, got its opportunity to create the Web site link on its first try

Completed in January of this year, the site automates the procedures by which prime contractors in the Defense Contract Management District West (DCMDW)–which includes all states west of the Mississippi–enter data about subcontracting opportunities offered to small businesses.

Small businesses, in turn, are able to access reports based on this data so they can learn which major corporations may be seeking subcontracting help in a marketplace that offered 125,000 contracts last year.

The site, called the Contractor Performance Extension, had to be user-friendly and immediately helpful even to people inexperienced with federal government contracting language and procedures. "Beyond that," says Kumar, "security, scalability, and rapid implementation were also important criteria for the District."

Kumar acknowledges that rapid implementation proved possible only because TCT–an Oracle BAP since 1989–had standardized on Oracle's WebServer technology. Until recently, Internet applications were typically written in low-level languages such as C and Perl. "As an Oracle shop, we preferred working with PL/SQL because of its ease of use. All we had to do was learn a little HTML to go with our Oracle expertise–and then we were able to complete this job in only three weeks."

For the DCMDW, the need to capture and validate prime contractor data on-line through a layer of stringent security means that the ORACLE RDBMS was an excellent choice for storing data. "But they are also very happy with the powerful salability of the application," Kumar adds. "When they decide to expand this program across the rest of the country, all they have to do is define new regions. There's no need to change the application in any way."

For small businesses, the new site offers valuable information not previously available on the Internet. Users accessing the Small Business page and clicking on the Contractor Performance link can select a specific geographic region and browse through statistics of prime contractors doing business in that region.

Users can also enter the name of any contractor to see how that company has performed over the past five years. Contractors that have had difficulty meeting performance goals are likely to welcome inquiries from small businesses capable of providing appropriate products or services.

To facilitate such inquiries, the new Web link enables users to communicate directly with contractors and DCMDW field offices by clicking on email addresses provided for that purpose. The link also lists the phone number of each contractor's Small Business Liaison Officer, an employee whose task is to help the company meet its small business performance goals.

For TCT, the successful implementation of the new Web link opens up an important avenue of new business opportunities, Kumar points out. "We're now developing various types of Internet applications," he says, "including Web modules that access Oracle Financial Application data via the Internet. We've also added a Web module to our own latest product, a customer support system called SARA2000. In recent months, the Oracle WebServer has become one of our most valuable tools."

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