65 Toss Power Trap

Kansas City is known for barbeque, early bebop jazz and the football team, the Chiefs. Although the Chiefs’ glory days in football are for the moment distant memories, in their heyday the Chiefs figured in what is still one of the most famous plays in the NFL’s Super Bowl era:  65 Toss Power Trap. The play, immortalized by Steve Sabol of NFL Films and Kansas City’s voluble coach, Hank Stram, became a signature moment because Sabol convinced Stram that a live mike on one of the head coaches on the sidelines during the game would be a great idea.

You just got a huge RFP, now what?

Let’s face it- when a 113 page RFP hits your desk with a response deadline of 6 business days out and counting, the task at hand seems arduous at best. Even with the assistance of extended team members (at the vendor and internally within DLT), the level of effort needed to submit a compliant response is daunting and forces us to truly raise the bar on our attention to detail.

The Darwinian Challenge of Cybersecurity

The adaptive nature of threats to information security has proven to be one of the greatest challenges to personal, business, and government adoption of computing in general, and communication of digital information over the public Internet, in particular. Today we are not only concerned with theft of private or sensitive information created and stored on ubiquitous personal computing and communications devices, we also have to be concerned with the security of our information while it is in transit and when it is in storage at its destination.

Another Barrier to Entry – Government Marketing

I was talking to a regional marketing manager a few months ago who asked my advice about a marketing initiative her company was about to pursue.  Basically, she was told by the Marketing VP at HQ to execute a “one-off” program to generate 1,000 public sector leads for a new case management and collaboration product they had which was showing early success in the commercial SMB market.  The VP calculated that with 1,000 leads, they could generate enough qualified prospects, quotes, and wins to grow revenue for the next quarter.

Government Procurement - What's the Big Deal?

In my last blog, I outlined why public sector is an attractive market and draws the attention of many companies, especially when the commercial market is soft.  I also mentioned that only those companies who add real value have a chance to win and the “Johnny Come Lately’s” have a real challenge to try and be successful.  Today, I look at one element of this complex market – the procurement process.