By
Jeff Erlichman
The SEWP vision is “to be the premier customer-focused contract vehicle for federal government purchases of IT products”.
SEWP was recently named #1 in the “Federal IT King of the Contracts” MeriTalk survey.
In the process of preparing for the 2009 SEWP IV Conference, SEWP PM Joanne Woytek’s thoughts naturally turned to the program’s customers. “It’s not just an office here, an office there. It’s not just one agency – it is 67 federal agencies with 3,100 contracting officers at 1870 sites. That’s not counting the customers; and that’s just the people who have signed orders,” Woytek explained in a recent interview with 1105 Government Information Group Custom Media.
“Tens of thousands of people in the government have touched our contract in the past few years. So that causes us to feel a little pride and understand just how much we have to deal with these days.”
At that same conference, Mark Amtower of Federal Direct delivered the keynote address. Amtower’s message: SEWP is not just a conference, it is not just a program, but it is a community of government and industry who service government’s IT needs.
“You got a lot of that from the conference; how we run it and how we interact with people,” said Woytek “We are not a program that’s out there in the nether world; we are there for people and want to be involved at both ends as a conduit between industry and government.”
Growing Staff – Reducing Fees
Every season is buying season for those who use the SEWP GWAC. That volume has two positive results.
1. Reduced Fees
The fee has been lowered to 0.55% (compared to GSA’s 0.75% fee). And the fee is capped at $10,000 on each order. So, once the total dollar amount on a particular order reaches above $1.8 million, the fee is capped at $10,000.
2. Increased Staff
“In the past few years use of the contract has grown,” Woytek noted. “That’s allowed us to do the two things we wanted to do in order to grow. We’ve lowered the fee and increased our staff and balanced the two. In the past year we are down to 0.55% instead of 0.6%.”
The staff has grown by nearly ten. “We want to increase customer service. That’s always been a key; if you get more usage that means you have more issues and more phone calls so we need to be thinking of that,” Woytek said. The expectations of SEWP customers have grown to match the increase in the program’s visibility. That’s good according to Woytek. “We’ve always said that we wanted to be there for the customer. Now they are taking us up on that. So we have to make sure our staffing reflects that. It’s helped us keep up and improve our customer service.”
SEWP business has grown 30% per year for the last two years. This growth and increased use of the contract is allowing SEWP management to organize customer service staff into a help team and an order processing team. The two groups will work closely together to increase customer service levels.
Woytek said, “To have a dedicated group on both sides allows us to give better service in both areas. This is something we have really been pushing for.”
Fulfilling 10 Year Plans
For the conference Woytek went back and looked at slides she made 10 years ago. “On one of the slides I wanted to have a separate customer service help team from the order processing team. Today, that mission is accomplished.”
Another goal on Woytek’s 10 year slides was creating a “Call Me” feature on the SEWP website where you can click and get a live chat.
“We are now looking at launching a software package that will allow us to do live chats for customer service. So that’s another cool thing that will help us. We almost do that now. Emails come in and we spot them within a few minutes. But this will be even faster.”
As a government procurement office SEWP doesn’t have to be open 24/7, but “we have people who work early; we have people who work late; we have people in Europe; and we have people in Asia who use us,” said Woytek. “We have expanded our hours and we are hoping to expand them more.”
“So the more we can expand our hours by increasing our staff, the more we can support the customers. I have a goal of more like a 16/5 or 12/7.”
Often Happy, Never Satisfied
Woytek is known around SEWP as someone who is “often happy, but never satisfied”. That attitude is
also the attitude of the SEWP staff which is constantly looking to improve its performance. “We are here for agencies. I think that sums up our thinking,” Woytek declared. “We are here for the agencies of the government to help them get the best value for their money above anything else. That’s why we exist.”
Helping customers get their best value is SEWP’s dynamic catalogue. It is based on the simple idea that the catalogue contains everything you need. “So if you can’t find it, you come to us and we’ll help you get it.”
“Because we have 300 orders a week we have to be responsive; we have to be on top of things and if somebody thinks we are not responsive, then we have missed something and they should tell us,” Woytek said.
Have a MAC – Let SEWP Help
If your agency has a Multiple Award Contract (MAC) that’s coming up for renewal, Woytek urges you to contact the SEWP program office.
“Agencies – before they do their own contracting including follow-ons to current contracts – should come to us first and ask if we can do it for them. Veteran’s Administraion (VA) I believe has found that to be very useful,” Woytek explained. “We have given them more control, more information, more tracking, more insight than they could ever have done on their own because we have such a large infrastructure for program contracts – contract programs that no other agency has on their own.”
Woytek’s advice is to get exactly what you want by using SEWP. Her reasoning is it costs lots of money to set up a contract. So instead of setting up a contract, why not just come in?
“Do you want more control? I can give more control. Do you want to know what’s being bought? I can tell what’s being bought. Do you want to control what’s being bought? Do you want to see all the orders?” asked Woytek.
“These are things we do for VA now. VA sees every order. They used to not see that, but VA has specific things that they need tracked, and we track them for them.” SEWP can do the same for you.