This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by fellow GovCon consultant Mike LeJeune of RSM Federal for a wide ranging discussion on branding and marketing in GovCon.

Topics include:

• Defining your market niche
• Being able to enunciate your market position in 90 seconds or less
• Why your capabilities statement is not etched in stone
• The power of social media in GovCon
• Staying on the radar

The post Branding & marketing in GovCon first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by Kevin Plexico, senior vice president of Information Solutions at Deltek, to discuss the latest Clarity Study.

Clarity is Deltek’s annual study on trends and contractors perspectives of the government market.

Topics discussed include:

• Companies attitudes and mindsets toward the government market
• How this impacts their various internal functional areas
• The differences in government spending of=ver the past few years
• How DEI is impacting the market
• Potential changes in the 8(a) program
• The large opportunities, Alliant 3, OASIS+, SEWP VI and other large contracts impacting the flow of business opportunities

The post Trends in the government market first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by Lee Frederiksen of Hinge Marketing to discuss Lee’s new book, The Visible Expert Revolution.

Topics discussed include:

• What is a visible expert
• The value of visible experts to a company
• Steps to become a visible expert
• Five styles of visible experts

The post The Visible Expert Revolution first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by business strategy advisor Shirley Collier of  Scale2Market.

Topics revolved around strategies for small business growth, including:

• understanding and controlling how your company is perceived in the market
• using data to assess market demand for what you do
• differentiating and carving out a niche
• focusing your limited resources for the best ROI
• reevaluating annually to determine if you need to pivot to grow

The post Marketing strategies to boost small businesses first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by contracts guru Larry Allen, to discuss the current GovCon landscape.

Topics include:

• Three GSA audit issues to watch out for
• End of FY spending and the possibility of a shutdown at the beginning of FY 24
• GSA OASIS+ RFP hitting the street and Alliant 3 RFP due out in Q1 24
• Is POLARIS dead?
• Will SEWP VII expand in scope?
• Q4 marketing and outreach to ensure your pipeline stays full.

The post A discussion of the current GovCon landscape first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host MarkAmtower is joined by digital marketing pioneer and  Evalueserve Vice President Geoff Livingston, for a lively discussion of the issues around ChatGPT.

Topics include:

• ChatGPT: What is it really?
• The job impacts of AI and ChatGPT
• The Biden AI memorandum
• Potential uses for ChatGPT
• Prompting ChatGPT to get what you want

The post An expert’s take on ChatGPT first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by Zero Trust expert Hansang Bae, Public Sector chief technologist for Zscaler.

Topics include:

• Three tech events that changed the world
• Why Zero Trust adoption is slow
• What zero trust really means and what it is not
• How to discuss the need for zero trust with executives
• Zscaler’s solutions on FedRAMP
• The availability of Zscaler’s Public Sector Summit videos on the Zscaler Public Sector page https://www.zscaler.com/public-sector-summit-2023

The post All things Zero Trust first appeared on Federal News Network.

GovCon guru and attorney Alan Chvotkin, partner at Nichols Liu, joins host Mark Amtower on this week’s Amtower Off Center  to share his key rules of government contracting.

The rules include:

• know the current contracting rules because everybody assumes you do;
• neither ambiguity or time is a contractors friend;
• oral comments are not worth the paper they are written on;
• read the entire solicitation AND the contract you win.

The post The key rules of government contracting first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by Mark Krzysko, DoD executive and president of the Association for Federal Information Resources Management(AFFIRM).

Topics include:

• the history of AFFIRM
• what AFFIRM is doing in and for the GovCon community
• the value you get from participating in AFFIRM, for both government personnel and contractors

The post All things AFFIRM first appeared on Federal News Network.

David Shea, director of the General Services Administration’s Office of Charge Card Management joins host Mark Amtower on this week’s Amtower Off Center for a deep dive in the federal SmartPay™ program.

Topics discussed include:

• SmartPay’s 25th anniversary, including the original micro-purchase threshold and how the program has grown
• Total spend across all three categories (Purchase, Travel and Fleet) and the number of cardholders for each category, and the top five agencies (spending-wise) for each category

  

• The training programs behind card use
• The GSA Commercial Platform leveraging Amazon Business, Fischer Scientific and Overstock.gov
• The soon to be initiated program for Section 889 where contractors have to certify that they are not using technology that is banned

The post An inside look at the federal SmartPay program first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by Kevin DeSanto, managing director and co-founder of KippsDeSanto, a leading mergers and acquisitions(M&A) firm.

Topics include:

• M&A over the past four years, including the impact of Covid and the pandemic
• the types of deals that dominate GovCon, the 80% of M&As that are under $100Mthe four types of companies involved in GovCon M&A

The post Mergers & acquisitions in GovCon first appeared on Federal News Network.

Washington Technology Editor in Chief Nick Wakeman joins host Mark Amtower as Amtower starts his 16th year on Federal News Network.

In a wide ranging conversation they discuss:

• the state of NITAAC and CIO-SP4
• M&A in GovCon
• Supply chain issues
• the competition for the cloud
• the state of CMMC
• top tech issues in the market
• VA’s perpetual problem with health records

The post Top tech issues in the federal market first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, Naveen Krishnamurthy, CEO of RIVA Solutions, joins host Mark Amtower for a wide ranging discussion covering:

• The RIVA Story
• Building the staff- recruiting and retention
• RIVA’s culture
• Mentor-mentee program
• Charity events- RIVA Karma
• Naveen’s visibility & involvement

The post The RIVA story first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Kevin Jans, CEO of Skyway Acquisitions, and host of the Contracting Officer Podcast, joins host Mark Amtower on this week’s Amtower Off Center for a wide ranging interview.

Topics include:

• top issues facing federal contracting officers
• getting in front of the RFP
• CPARS

The post The top issues affecting federal contracting officers first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower is joined by Sanjt Ganguli, vice president, Transformation Strategy and Field CTO of Zscaler.

Topics include:

• Zscalers FedRAMP authorizations
• the evolution of the need for Zero trust architectures
• the new book Seven Elements of Highly Successful Zero Trust Architecture, including a dive into each of the seven elements

Download the book and follow the Zscaler Public sector page on LinkedIn for updates.

The post How to make Zero Trust architectures successful first appeared on Federal News Network.