Fill in the box below so we can keep you up-to-date with the latest best practices for winning more business.
Small Business Contractor Trends in the Midwest
This week's quiz looks at regional trends in small business contract spending:
In FY 2001, small firms accounted for 20% of all reported prime contract spending nationwide. What was the small business share of dollars awarded by purchase offices located in Ohio? A) 9% B) 21% C) 30% D) 38%
Your opinion about how well the federal government supports small business may depend on where you sit. Look at small firms in Ohio, for instance. This week's quiz takes about a minute to solve with Eagle Eye's FPC Advanced. Here's how to do it:
Fire up your year-end FY 2001 application and clear all prior search criteria by clicking the small funnel icon on the tool bar and clicking the Clear View button. When you return to the Active View Screen, switch to the Purchase Office Active View.
On the Purchase Office Active View, highlight any row of data and slide over to the Purchase Office State column. Right-click your mouse and select Field Search from the pop-up menu. In the search box provided, type OHIO and click OK. This will limit the data you see to contracts awarded by all civilian and defense purchase offices based in Ohio.
Next, click the Report Wizard or Generate Report button on the sidebar. We want to display our selected data in the report template called Business Type Rank Report. This report is located in the Report Type category called Rank and in the Report Group called Company. When you make these choices in the Report Type and Group menus, the Business Type Rank Report option will appear at the top of all the rank report options. Highlight this report and, with Output Destination set to Display, click the Print/Run button.
Scanning down the list of business categories receiving dollars from Ohio purchase offices we see that Category B, Other Small Business, is ranked third with a 6.7% dollar share and Small, Minority-owned Businesses is ranked fourth with a 2.13% share. This adds up to 8.8%, making A the correct answer to this week's quiz.
Switch from the Purchase Office to the Agency Active View and you will see that the DoD accounted for 93% of all prime contract dollars issued by Ohio purchase offices in FY 2001. Buying activities at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and Defense Supply Center - Columbus accounting for virtually all spending from Ohio purchase offices.
Obviously, federal purchase offices based in Ohio are holding down the nationwide 20% small business share of federal procurement. Until the Air Force and the DLA respond more strongly to the President's call for a vigorous small business federal marketplace, small, locally-based firms looking for federal contracts in Ohio will be largely relegated to subcontractor status, or worse.
Data supplied by Eagle Eye Publishers, Inc.
Show the author of this article some love and appreciation by posting a link to it or emailing a friend and telling them about it. Thanks!
