If someone described the process of doing business with the state as being “extremely easy to navigate,” you may not believe him at first. But the more you talk with David Kelly, Senior Solutions Consultant at Valora Technologies, the more you start to believe him. Kelly has become involved with the Commonwealth through the IT Small Business Incubator Pilot, an initiative launched this past July with the goal of making Statewide Contracting more streamlined and accessible to Massachusetts businesses.

As a sub-contractor, Kelly was aware of some of the ins and outs of navigating a Statewide Contract. When he heard about the Incubator opportunity, the timing couldn’t have been better—Valora Technologies, a Bedford Mass.-based technology company specializing in providing services for classifying, controlling, and managing large volumes of document data, was in the early stages of initiating a contract with a large municipality and the purchasing official had asked if they were currently on contract. Kelly immediately put together his application packet, went through the appraisal process, and registered for his onboarding training.

“There’s a lot of hand-holding through the process, and I really felt the Incubator team is trying to help vendors—they want us to succeed. The training webinars were a slam-dunk, easy to follow along and explanations to the nth degree. COMMBUYS was extremely easy to navigate with the help of tutorials, and if we ever got stuck, we knew exactly who to call. I’m pleasantly surprised at how easy it all was,” Kelly praised.

As of October 27, 2016, the IT Small Business Incubator Pilot has brought onboard 21 small Massachusetts-based IT companies. These companies are now able to bid on projects proposed by Executive Agencies, municipalities, and other eligible entities as they become available. The Incubator is scheduled to run through August 2017 with rolling enrollment for new vendors along the way. If you’re interested in applying for the Incubator, click here or contact John Fitzpatrick in the Supplier Diversity Office at 617-502-8851.

Tags: Bidding, Bids, Business Registration, Cities and Towns, COMMBUYS, COMMBUYS Help Desk, Doing Business with Government, Goods and Services, IT Innovation, Municipalities, Online Bid Management, Operational Services Division, Procurement, Procurement Activity, Procurement Professionals, Purchasing, Purchasing from Statewide Contracts, Request for Response, RFR, SBPP, Small Business Purchasing Program, Statewide Contracts, Strategic Sourcing