Government at all levels purchases billions of dollar’s worth of products and services each year, but contracting with them can feel cumbersome. Ohio University APEX Accelerator guides our clients thought the processes required to successfully compete in the government marketplace. Our counselors provide a range of assistance including registrations, certifications, market research, collateral development, bid and proposal development, compliance and standards support, post award support, and education.

Marketing to the government requires unique documents and messaging to state your value proposition and differentiators. The Ohio APEX at Ohio University helps our clients create powerful capability statements to increase your chances of success. We help our clients develop a combination of technical data such as NAICS codes, Product Service Codes, and Federal Supply Codes with qualitative data such as core competencies, differentiators, and value propositions to make the most impactful introduction to potential clients. We also assist our innovation clients with “quad charts” and white papers to effectively market their latest technologies to programs such as Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer.

Our counselors use a variety of internal and external systems such as USASpending. Gov, SAM.Gov, Federal Procurement Data System, and DLA Internet Bid Board System to help you locate potential Customers. We take you through a step by step approach on how to use make data drive decisions using actionable data. After doing investigation into the strategic plan, mission, and objectives of potential clients we teach you how to reach out through their small business organizations and create relationships.

We also set up a search profile in our Bid Matching services that send you daily bids from over 2800 different federal state and local databases.

An obvious part of the Ohio APEX accelerator at Ohio University’s support is helping guide and prepare you to find and bid opportunities at the federal, state, and local level. We do this by helping you set up searches in SAM.Gov for bid opportunities, leveraging our Bid Match emails, and helping you navigate state and local sites. Once you find an RFI, RFQ, RFP, or ITB to bid on we help you do a Bid/No-Bid assessment. Once a decision is made to proceed, we assist with the initial review after you have read the documents, we give feedback on set up, management, and timelines of submission. We also offer a final review of your proposal before submission.

Note: we do not write any content or review subject matter, we are here to support from a purely advisory standpoint.

Once you have won your contract we assist by helping you with contract review, negotiations, kick off planning, and the protocols in maintaining a healthy relationship with your government client.

We assist with various registrations needed to be compliant with federal, state, and local standards. These include SAM.GOV, State and Local Procurement Sites, PIEE, DIBBS, and many others.

Cybersecurity is a growing concern for small businesses, especially defense contractors. Ohio APEX Accelerators are collaborating with Ohio Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) to ensure our clients are preparing for the future cybersecurity regulations known as CMMC 2.0, or Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0.

APEC Accelerator clients can take advantage of free cybersecurity counseling to prepare for the future CMMC 2.0 regulations.
Requirements for the program:
• Client is an Ohio-based business.
• Client has fewer than 500 employees.
• Client must register with their local SBDC.
• Client must be referred by their APEX counselor.

Eligible APEX clients may receive up to 15 hours of consulting provided by a cybersecurity consultant. This counseling will assist clients in preparing for Level 1 certification under the CMMC 2.0 model. Client expected to certify under Level 2 may receive additional free counseling. This counseling will also help clients understand current Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) cybersecurity requirements of defense contractors.