Us West Division Gives Local Firms Access To Federal Contracts

A year ago, Diana Gissel was driving from town to town in the Inland Northwest selling linens, furnishings and other goods to hotels.

Now, said the owner of Northwest Hospitality Inc., she does not leave her Coeur d’Alene home to make sales.

And none of her customers is local. None are hotels.

Gissel said she has transformed her business with a computer and communications software pioneered by the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute and a division of US West Communications, !nterprise.

Launched a year ago, the system has enabled more than 100 area businesses to land federal government contracts worth more than $1 million, said Miles Morimoto, !nterprise’s director of transaction services.

He said US West wanted to give small companies access to the federal government’s electronic procurement network, which has become the gateway to $200 billion in contracts.

All federal purchasing will be handled electronically by the year 2000.

Morimoto said state and local governments, as well as private business, are adopting similar technologies, with trillions of dollars in potential business at stake.

“The world is turning into a virtual, cyberspace kind of mall,” he said.

Government agencies post requests for quotes on the procurement system. Businesses can scan the listings, defining their search broadly or narrowly.

A broad search under “computers,” for example, turns up more than 3,000 items, Morimoto said. Refining that by specifying computers with Pentium processors cuts the total to a more manageable number.

When sellers identify items they could supply, the !nterprise system allows them to fill in the appropriate information immediately.

Morimoto said the federal government has shortened the bidding process significantly because everything is done electronically.

The system also enables businesses to specify the types of quotes that might be of interest. When quotes that match the specifications enter the system, vendors are notified automatically.

And because federal contracts are public information, competitors can check winning bids to see how their bids compared.

Jim Lynch, new projects manager at SIRTI, noted that fewer than 50,000 of the 1.5 million companies that do business with the federal government have access to the electronic procurement system. Such companies have a tremendous advantage, he said.

“This could have an enormous impact on locations like Spokane,” Lynch said.

Morimoto said !nterprise chose to test its system with the help of SIRTI because of the enthusiasm officials expressed for its value to small businesses, the mainstay of the area economy.

Officials understood the technology, shared the !nterprise vision, and recruited 137 companies willing to evaluate the system, he said.

“SIRTI has been a critical component,” Morimoto said.

He said !nterprise is anxious to make its technology the industry standard. The company makes its money by charging businesses for access, much like cable television, he said. The cost is comparable to cellular phone fees, Morimoto said.

Gissel said all her business since January has been done using the !nterprise system. She reviews 15 to 20 quote requests each day, she said, and has done deals all over the country.

Once Northwest Hospitality lands the business, Gissel calls a distributor near the military base or agency buying the goods and has them delivered.

A year ago, she said, she never envisioned doing business by computer.

“Then this opportunity came up, and I grabbed it,” she said. “It’s kind of interesting and fun.”

, DataTimes