If your company has ventured into traditional government procurement, you are probably well aware of the downfalls of the procurement processes. For years, traditional public sector procurement processes have been criticized for being slow, inflexible and for limiting the purchases of goods and services from a select amount of vendors by government agencies. These issues with traditional government procurement processes still persist today. To combat these downfalls, many organizations have devoted resources to improve the processes and overcome hurdles that are detrimental to government innovation and efficiency. If you currently are involved or interested in selling to the government, you should be aware of some of the improvements that are occurring in the government procurement process. The State of California is now implementing a redesigned Request for Proposal (RFP) and IT planning process to prevent backtracking and speed up the deployment of new projects. Traditional government RFPs with long timelines, complex rules, and tight guidelines around liability has discouraged some of the most innovative IT companies from entering the government marketplace. To help amend these restrictions and find better ways to procure technology, North Carolina plans to test products before purchasing them in the state’s new innovation center. This initiative will ensure that products can actually fulfill the statement of work and meet budget requirements. BidSync, a provider of eProcurement solutions, has created a vendor management portal to consolidate the entire procurement process called FastFWD. From soliciting vendors, receiving bid notifications, managing contracts and requesting purchases, this tool provides government agencies with greater ability to manage and grow their networks of qualified vendors, while reducing the amount of time and manpower needed to manage these relationships. FastFWD utilizes new startups to launch new projects and solve old problems from the lack of early engagement with vendors that have led to restrictive or limited solutions. To learn more about the improvements being made to the procurement process, read “5 New Approaches to Government Procurement.”

Businesses are always evolving, and through their evolution and expansion technology becomes obsolete and organizations find themselves needing an upgrade. As a customer base grows the need for technology grows greater. Most organizations spend thousands of dollars attaining and upgrading to the most current technology, but still have many problems implementing their new technology to meet all the demands of their customers. Organizations that invest in technology should also consider the effects of its implementation. Possessing technology does not necessarily prove it effective, and every organization needs an efficient system that can manage the services provided by its technology. That is where IT Service Management (ITSM) is born. ITSM is crucial to the functionality and expansion of organizations in several aspects: The number of requests for automating business processes is rapidly growing, ITSM can ensure speedy and accurate delivery to both internal end users and external customers. ITSM boosts productivity which results in lower operating costs and faster adaptability to customer requests for your business. ITSM can effectively capture and share knowledge for IT end users to quickly locate and fix reported problems. Upgrades and requests expand quickly, ITSM can assure a single, user friendly customer portal for reporting problems, software upgrades and requesting services. Tracking historical and real-time data through ITSM allows IT leaders to spot problems faster and using historical reports will increase productivity through analyzing past trends. IT Managers and business leaders can access their system from any location, allowing customers and employees to conduct transactions at any time, from anywhere. ITSM implementation is also designed for simplicity, meaning IT leaders aren’t required to have any special skills to create the customer forms, dashboards, and other various components. Implementing a successful ITSM strategy can help growing organizations process, maintain, and support a skyrocketing customer in-take and manage customers with a cost effective and simple solution. Read more about the benefits of ITSM and how it helped organizations such as PCMall and Evergreen in this white paper, “Leveraging Your IT Service Management.”

The U.S. government shutdown this past October has been one of the most damaging elements in the growth of business for GSA Contractors. The shutdown has taken a toll of $24 billion out of the economy and also reduced a projected fourth-quarter GDP from 3 percent to 2.4 percent.

During the duration of the government shutdown, there are a few things that can be done by government contractors to improve the position of their firm(s) in the Federal marketplace and realign their offerings with more essential government functions. Government contractors can use this downtime to reassess company goals and government sales strategies. As a result, government contractors will be able to create more business value for public sector customers in the next Fiscal Year 2014 while improving on their overall performance. It is important for government contractors to understand what the government shutdown means for their company, and how counteracting the problems presented by the shutdown will be critical to their success.

Contrary to popular belief, teenagers are not the only ones posting pictures and content on social media platforms. Federal, state, and local government agencies have been implementing commercially provided media technologies to promote their services and support their missions. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted several distinct methods that 23 of 24 major agencies are using to increase citizen engagement through social media platforms. Such activities include reposting information available on official agency websites, posting information not available on agency websites, soliciting comments from the public, responding to comments on content, and providing links to non-government websites.

The city of San Mateo, California is witnessing booming growth in both its population and infrastructure development. Since the year 2008, San Mateo has experienced an 8% increase in population, and home sales have jumped a staggering 28%. Consequently, the municipal government of San Mateo is faced with the enormous task of managing and overseeing the recent expansion while operating on an outdated help desk system. Their objective: maintain networks and PCs for 600 users spread across 22 facilities in a diverse and rapidly growing high-tech city. In order to adapt to these challenges, a new help desk alternative needed to be implemented to better serve citizens.