|
Free Subscription to The Amtower B2G Market Report SmartPay and Other Mailing Lists Amtower Tele-SeminarsAmtower's Book Recommendations  |
The Amtower B2G Market Report Volume 3, #07, February 17, 2004 (Sign up for your free subscription at http://www.FederalDirect.net and if you like this, please pass this along to your colleagues. To unsubscribe, email me at amtower@erols.com). Past issues available at http://www.federaldirect.net/newsletterarchives.html) Amtower Off-Center Observations I hope we are beyond the MyDoom problems of two weeks ago. We have implemented a new email service and again, I apologize for any inconvenience caused by the newsletter being hijacked by MyDoom. The Army has mandated Emall for their entire office supply purchasing. They have BPAs with 12 companies and have mandated that they participate in the Emall. Most customers hate Emall and would prefer to use the vendor sites or phone in orders. The Air Force has recently announced a similar move (Reference-Number-PKS-001) - instead they use Air Force Advantage, managed by GSA. This does not bode well for buyers or vendors. In the Amtower B2G Market Report form December 22, 2003 (http://www.federaldirect.net/newsletter122203.html) I review the total FY2003 dollars spent on GSA Advantage: “GSA Advantage (GSA online ordering system) again was rarely used for ordering in FY 03, as less than 1% was ordered online, which represented 292,615 orders with an average sale of $387. GSA plans to introduce a pilot electronic mod processing this spring, which would allow contractors to edit their prices (i.e. reductions, deletes) in near real-time. Right now most of GSA Advantage listings are 45-60 days old. If GSA Advantage were a real business, they would be out of business. Would Amazon be successful with 60-day old pricing?” Most government buyers and vendors required to use the Emall, or the Air Force variation of the Advantage system, will be frustrated. Why? Simply put, e-commerce depends on ease of navigation, ease of use, easy to find products and easy to purchase. These criteria are not met at Advantage or Emall, and will lead to much miss-spent money, much time wasted, and people getting unnecessarily irritated. The vendors already have very good sites. If they are “approved”, simply tell your buyers that these are the vendor sites they should use. They should not force buyers to use un-useable web sites A quote from the USAF announcement explains the intent: “The goal is to save time by purchasing from the desktop and save money by obtaining discounted prices.” And it is a good intent. But it will NOT be accomplished by forcing buyers to sites that have already proven inadequate. The approved vendors already have web sites that meet this intent. And for some reason, this reminds me of Oscar Wilde talking about fox hunting: "The English country gentleman galloping after a fox is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable." You cannot propel vehicles on square wheels. Not that I have an opinion. ONE-MINUTE MARKETING CLINIC: .GOV RESEARCH DefenseLink, http://www.defenselink.mil/, is a useful shortcut to a variety of DoD-related sites, information and enews. As always, your comments, questions and suggestions are welcome. Thanks The Amtower B2G Market Report is published and copyrighted by Amtower & Company. It combines our former newsletters into a single, bi-weekly newsletter for companies targeting the government marketplace. Contact us at Amtower & Company, PO Box 339, Ashton, MD 20861-0339 (301-924-0058). This material is copyrighted and may not be duplicated, reprinted or otherwise replicated without written permission of the publisher. EMAIL subscriptions are free by request: sign up at www.FederalDirect.net. |
 |
|
Site maintained by Dragonfly Design |