With Congress passing a very short term continuing resolution to keep the government running, there just isn’t going to be that much new business right now. So what can companies do to make sure they get a good start to fiscal year 2025? To help with that answer, Larry Allen of Allen Federal Business Partners joined  the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Eric White Absolutely. So as fiscal year 2025 gets underway, what are some of the things that contractors need to take inventory of and have a little break here with this continuing resolution that we’re going to have up until election season?

Larry Allen So, Eric, I think congratulations to everybody for a successful FY24. Year award for FY25 is to crank it up and do it all over again. So right now, I think that means not really chasing down deals or trying to pursue business. There’s certainly always business being done in the federal market, and I would never suggest otherwise. But because we are starting under a CR and it’s going to be slower, I think there are a couple of things that companies might want to shift gears on right now and pay attention to, because they’re important as well. And one of those is making sure that you’re fulfilling the projects that you’ve been awarded. Congratulations, you were given a lot of before the end of the fiscal year, and now you’ve got to concentrate on fulfilling that business. Nothing irritates or cost more than a company that is awarded business and then has fulfillment issues. The second thing I think that people ought to be looking at is training. There are a whole bunch of new rules, Eric, that are coming down the road, and that have come down the road while people who are out selling in the fourth quarter, and you don’t want to not be aware of those rules because they can trip you and your organization up. And right now, between now and the end of the calendar year is traditionally a great time for companies to do their training on compliance and ethics. So wherever the holiday season is right around the corner, that means a little gift giving a reminder is always in order this time of year. So make sure that you’re getting trained up on things that you can stay on the right side of the procurement ledger. And if you do have problems, you can point out to anybody that wants to know, hey, we actually did take training on this, so it’s not that we weren’t paying attention, because that’s always a bad thing to not pay attention.

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Larry Allen And then I think the third thing that people ought to do is they ought to get out and network. As you and I know, Eric, this is high time for people in our industry to go out. It’s conference season, and there’s going to be at least one conference a week, at least between now and probably the middle of December. And this is a great time to go out and expand your network, whether it’s a network of government people or a network of industry people. So whether you’re in government or industry, this is a time to get out, see and be seen. Don’t assume that you know all the trends if you haven’t been out and gotten training or been to a conference lately. Make sure that you’re on top of what’s happening, what’s going to happen over the next few months. This is training and conference season. So this is not the time to be sitting behind the desk.

Eric White One of the major developments in the contracting world was the shock that came to everybody with the FBI and DCIS raid on a major conduit to federal agencies for a lot of government contractors. We’re not going to speculate on any wrongdoing done by anybody. But what effect does that had on the whole reselling industry? And what are you hearing from folks who may be a little bit worried about how they approach the government now?

Larry Allen So, Eric, I think it’s important to note that there have always been pockets of people inside the federal government who have taken a jaundiced eye at government only or government mainly resellers. And the recent FBI, DCIS actions, I think are only going to shine a little bit more light on those things. So if you’re a reseller or even an OEM that sells through resellers, this is a time to make sure that you have your value proposition written up and current, because it wouldn’t be all surprising to me to find that some people and agencies, maybe the oversight community, maybe even Congress, when they come back in session, start asking questions about why are we doing business with all of these government only or government mainly resellers. And I think there are a number of good answers to those questions. But you want to make sure that you have those answers prepared before you’re asked them. And no one should assume that everybody in government likes doing business with the reseller. Now, I worked in this business for a long time, and I’ve seen various federal agencies actually pursue government only or government, mainly resellers who they didn’t feel were appropriate for to do business with or not because they were doing anything wrong. They just didn’t like the idea of a reseller. They felt that that intrinsically meant that they were going to be paying more than if they had gone with the OEM not realizing that a lot of OEMs aren’t really set up to sell directly either the government or any other type of customer. But you just want to make sure that you got this gut check. Take the time to make sure that you’ve got your arguments and your case ready in case somebody starts asking questions.

Eric White We’re speaking with Larry Allen from Allen Federal Business Partners. And so, as you do that gut check, there are a plethora of acquisition cases that have yet to be decided coming down the pipeline that could mean some new regulations and new regulations that are actually going to be proposed rules in the coming future. What are some of the major ones that will need to be on the lookout for?

Larry Allen Well, Eric, I think that there’s been a tendency, including on my part, frankly, to talk about socioeconomic and environmental rules that are going to impact contracting. But there are other rules that are coming soon to a contract near you. And with that going into a lot of excruciating detail, these are areas in like organizational conflicts of interest. There’s a new rule that’s going to be coming out talking about that. There’s even going to be some augmentation to the human trafficking rule. This is something that I thought was kind of settled science, if you will. And yet it wasn’t that long ago when we saw a government contractor get in the news for not following all the human trafficking rules. And there are going to be new ones. There are also a host of small business rules. One that I’m watching is going to really potentially impact small business task orders on multiple award IDIQ contracts. That’s coming down the line. So whether it’s a socioeconomic role or something that’s really court in contracting, I think contractors do need to know that there are currently about 14 pages of open FAR cases, and you don’t have to geek out and read all of those. But if there are 14 pages of these things, that is an indication that the market you’re doing business in today is not going to be the same market six months from now. And you don’t want to wake up and find out that there’s a new rule or regulation that you can’t comply with or that you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden it’s part of your contract and you’ve got some catching up to do.

Eric White And speaking of the changing tide, since it is October, and the election has yet another strong dichotomy between two folks who want to run the government in completely different ways. What is on the mind of the contractors that you speak with when they talk openly about potential change coming down the way?

Larry Allen This is definitely a topic of discussion, Eric, and it’s a topic of discussion not only with industry, but among the people in government who I speak with as well. And there are a lot of questions right now, a lot of questions like what could happen given different scenarios. And I think the answer is we could have some very different scenarios indeed, depending on who wins out and not just at the presidential level as well, but at the congressional level. On the presidential level, I think the difference in who wins was going to be really setting the regulatory tone for the next four years. And, of course, that transcends government contracting. But it’s going to be just as true for that segment as anyone else. But also, depending on who wins congressional majorities, that’s going to set the oversight agenda, the hearing agenda, the priorities for what Congress tackles on this area. So it really bears some close watching. I think if you listen to the pundits that do a lot of election coverage, you know that we probably won’t know Nov. 6, what the landscape looks like. We may not know until the end of November or the beginning of December even. But it will again have an impact on your market. It may not have an impact on your market as soon as January, but January, a year from now, it’s going to start to definitely have an impact.

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