How the Federal Government Encourages Small Businesses - Essay Example

The US General Service Administration (GSA) is the one that deals with the needs and requirements of small businesses and ensures it encourages them. It does this through the use of several strategies including training on issues like partnerships, setting goals for the business and even how to win contracts, allowing small businesses to sell them their products, counseling on issues like marketing strategies, seeking procurement opportunities, dispute resolution and even how to effectively deal with other challenges endured by the businesses, set-aside opportunities to take care of the small businesses by women and people with disabilities who cannot compete with the rest, researching on their behalf and then providing the findings that enable them to know the opportunities present in the federal government that they can benefit from, teaching them sustainability techniques, acquisition processes and even opportunities for contracts.

Following an increase in employment needs, the federal government considered contracting businesses into these areas.

To land this federal government contract, however, several qualifications need to be complied with which include; the business has to be small, the ownership must be 51% from a US citizen (since these are security sensitive areas), the main office which they refer to as the “principal office” must be located within the HUBZone ensuring all main activities take place in that area, the employees must be residing in any HUBZone area (at least 35% of them) and finally, the US Small Business Administration has to have certified the business first before the contract is granted. If these conditions are fulfilled, then a contract will be awarded (Dilger, 2011).
Determine how Smart Pay and similar programs in electronic contracting will assist the small-business owner in obtaining more contracts.

Smart Pay is an online billing system. This system allows business people to send their invoices and other accounting documents, and payments and conduct other services electronically without the physical appearance of the business person to conduct all those activities. This online billing service that takes place by the use of an electronic card is present even in the GSA which is a federal administration dealing with small businesses. Smart pay and other electronic billings systems provide financial details of the business hence its performance are clear.

A small business that uses smart pay for its accounting transactions will just send the records immediately and they show the viability of that business for a contract.