2019 News

The trend to consolidate or “bundle” large-scale Government contracts has become more prevalent in recent years as policymakers and Government offices strive to find new ways to sustain critical services at a lower cost rather than just cutting them. The perspective offered by Governments is that spending on fewer providers helps minimize costs, streamline efforts, and secure lower prices from suppliers—which translate into lower costs for taxpayers. This consolidation trend has received pushback, however, from groups representing the interest of small businesses such as the House Small Business Committee, because it arguably creates an unfair advantage in the bidding process when several unrelated goods or services are lumped together into a single contract. Despite the debate, the welfare and viability of small businesses should not be viewed as being at odds with more efficient business models and cost savings for taxpayers. In fact, the small business model facilitates the cost-saving and efficient outcomes that contract bundling endeavors to create in many ways that big business model cannot.

As a child, playing “telephone” could lead to hilarious misunderstandings. There were some positive lessons to be learned from playing this childhood game such as crafting a strong message, relaying your message to a group, using your voice to speak clearly, being a good listener and working as a team. Yet, these subconscious learning outcomes were not the reason most would play the game and in fact, it was rather disappointing when the message remained unaltered by the time it got to the last person in the chain.  It was much more entertaining when the message mutated into some distorted version of the original phrase. However, the same enjoyment cannot be found in the workplace. Clear and continuous communication is often a business pain point for Government and contractors alike. Distorted messages and misunderstandings can cost time, energy, money and, on the odd occasion, hurt feelings.

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One of the questions I often see directed towards small businesses on new solicitations is: “How do you intend to staff for this project?”

 Answer: We staff exactly the same way that the big guys do it.

I find it odd that small businesses must answer this type of inquiry because nothing separates many of us from big businesses other than perception. We are capable of the same innovation, and use the same processes and industry standards that make some big businesses effective. I say "some" big businesses as all of us have seen the seed sown on shallow ground kind of large business, whose processes and leadership did not grow as fast as the business did.

However, here at Ellumen, we ARE more flexible and in some ways, we offer advantages that some bigger entities cannot. 

We frown on the practice of preassigning characteristics to people without full understanding of the complete picture. It’s equally as harmful to stereotype companies. 

Assuming all small businesses can't achieve the same results as some big businesses hurts the consumer just as much as it hurts small businesses because it leaves them blind to the benefits that mature small companies can offer.

The infographic below represents a few examples of how Ellumen, as a small business, gets results.