7(c)(1) Onsite Consultation Program

When purchasing office equipment, you'll often have the option of purchasing a service contract on the new equipment. In fact, sellers will often go out of their way to try to get you to purchase a service contract. The main reason for this is that the profit margin on the service contract is often greater than the profit margin on the piece of equipment you're purchasing.

The typical credit card transaction begins when your customer hands you the credit card. What you do with the credit card depends upon the system you have in place. You will either manually imprint the card onto your paper draft, if you still use the older technology, or you'll swipe the card through an electronic terminal, if you use the newer technology.

A noncompete agreement is either a separate agreement or a clause in an employment contract that prohibits an employee from working in a related business in your area for a certain length of time. Noncompete agreements are used to prevent an employee from using your business's confidential information.

Whether you need a confidentiality policy will depend upon what type of information you feel you need to protect. Some specific items that can be protected by a confidentiality clause or agreement are customer lists, trade secrets, inventions, discoveries, data, formulas, business methods, processes, machines, manufacturers, and compositions.

The majority of small businesses probably don't need a policy addressing employees' access to and dissemination of confidential information or trade secrets. However, if your business has spent a lot of time and effort developing its customer lists, highly specialized operating procedures, or some revolutionary technology or product and you want to protect your secrets from possible competitors, you may consider some kind of policy to address the matter.

The heart of OSHA compliance is becoming aware of its published standards, which address specific hazards. The standards are divided into four major categories based on the type of work being performed:

The DoD Regional Councils for Small Business Education and Advocacy are a nationwide network of small business specialists organized to promote national small business programs to include minority and disadvantaged small business concerns and minority universities and institutions.

The "Fast Track" is a special program for the Department of Defense SBIR and STTP programs that offers a significantly higher chance of SBIR/STTR award, and continuous funding, to small companies that can attract outside investors. Small companies retain the intellectual property rights to technologies that they develop under these programs. Funding is awarded competitively, but the process is more streamlined and easier.

Although similar in structure to SBIR, the Small Business Technical Transfer Program (STTR) funds cooperative R projects involving a small business and a non-profit research institution (i.e., a university, federally funded R center, or non-profit research institution). Established by Congress in 1992, the purpose of STTR was to create an effective vehicle for moving ideas from the nation's research institutions to the market, where they can benefit both private sector and government customers. The government STTR program was funded for $62 million in Fiscal Year 2000.

As we have already mentioned, packaging requirements are a big deal when you do business with the government. They need to be carefully considered and analyzed, not only in pricing out a bid, but also in implementing a QA program. To aid your understanding, we think it would be helpful to define the terms "packaging" and "packing" the way the government defines them.

ISO 9000 is a kind of "International Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval." It's actually part of a series of standards referred to by numbers--ISO 9001, 9002, 9003 refer to standards for quality management; ISO 14000s refer to standards for environmental management, and so forth. These and other international standards are administered via the International Organization for Standardization (commonly referred to as ISO*), founded in 1947 and based in Geneva, Switzerland. (Several previous efforts at international standardization were halted due to WWII, and ISO took up where those left off.)

ISO international standards, developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) based in Geneva, Switzerland, are considered among the world's strictest and highest quality standards. The ISO, a non-governmental organization established in 1947, comprises a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from each of 100 countries. The organization aims to facilitate the international exchange of goods and services by establishing international standards and reconciling regulatory differences between countries.

Which factors do government buyers consider in looking at your bid and finally awarding the contract? Here are some of the most important:

How can you decide whether to respond to the RFP or RFQ that you are considering? Here are some questions to help you make a decision:

Another way to track items involves RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, which use low-level RF signals to transmit stored information from a tag to an electronic reader. The RFID tags are simply microchips that transmit without the use of hand-held scanners, eliminating all manual labor associated with bar codes.

As previously discussed, all branches of federal government are required by law to migrate their business practices to a paperless operation. In implementing the new e-procurement way of contracting, it is clear that there is a need to ensure the confidentiality, security, and authentication of information exchanged between government and its contractors in the electronic environment.

We can't stress enough the importance of this area. Simply put, if you are not capable of doing business using some kind of electronic commerce (e-commerce) or electronic procurement (e-procurement), you will not be doing business with the government.

The concept of electronic procurement for a small business not yet comfortable with new technology can be overwhelming. E-procurement takes many forms and has become a requirement for doing business with the government. But the electronic procurement requirements that we describe here are not unique to the government. They are the same as a large private-sector business requires of its suppliers. Therefore, it is essential that any business at least consider these issues, whether it does business with the government or not.

Continuous quality improvement is the hallmark of successful companies, worldwide. Many successful Japanese companies have adopted continuous quality improvement as the number one operational principle for all employees and departments. Chrysler, Procter and Gamble (P&G), 3M, Compaq Computer, Microsoft, and many other less well-known U.S. companies clearly practice continuous quality improvement. P&G is famous for consciously developing and introducing improved versions of its own current products under different brand names as a method for continuous quality improvement and significant technological advances (e.g., improved effectiveness in laundry soaps).

Today's competitive market, in almost every category of products and services, is characterized by accelerating changes, innovation, and massive amounts of new information. Much of this rapid evolution in markets is fueled by changing customer needs. Significant customer behavior and market changes happen almost overnight. Changes in market preference or technology, which used to take years, may now take place in a few short months.

Many product categories have significant evolution and life cycles that may affect pricing decisions.

Sometimes the best, least expensive, fastest, and least risky way to introduce new products is to copy or improve upon a competitor's new product introduction.

Good ideas can come from anywhere! But can one consciously foster creativity and new ideas on demand? Certain successful companies and creative experts suggest that it is not as hard as most people think. Everyone can be more creative with technique, practice, and motivation. Perhaps "a leap of faith" is also required for the skeptical.

How often do small companies go out and test their products against competitive products with users of the product? Every five years? Ten years? Never? Even when a direct competitor introduces a new product, most small companies react by introducing a similar or slightly improved version of the same product instead of considering the sales potential and strengths of their entire line.