Press Release from the VA:

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) published an advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) today in the Federal Register to solicit feedback on its regulations governing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) Verification Program (38 CFR 74) guidelines for three major purposes:

• To improve the regulations to provide greater clarity

• To streamline the program

• To encourage more VOSBs to apply for verification

More info here.

SmallGovCon recently reported on a finding of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals that bears recognizing due to the implications for any other SDVOSB that intends to dispute an award:

SBA OHA rejected the protester’s effort to submit new evidence with its appeal.  ”[T]his information was not provided” in the protest, SBA OHA wrote, “and it is well-settled that an insufficiently specific protest cannot be cured by submitting more specific information on appeal.”  SBA OHA denied the appeal.

The Veterans Contractors Group SBA OHA decision is a good reminder that SDVOSB protests must contain specific evidence or information supporting the allegations.  If, as here, the protest vaguely alleges that the awardee does not meet the eligibility requirements, the SBA is likely to dismiss it without an investigation.

The implied takeaway is that if that award protests should come fully prepared to defend their claim at time of protest in order for their claim to be considered.

This goes without saying for AGi, but wireless technologies are essential to any small business that relies on mobility, multiple sites of operation and remote productivity.    Small Biz Trends tipped us off to the fact that AT&T took a look at wireless prevalence and put their findings into graphical form.  Here are the highlights:

Survey Highlights

• Nearly all small businesses (98%) use wireless technologies in their operations, with two-thirds (66%) indicating they could not survive – or it would be a major challenge to survive – without them.

• More than half (56%) of smartphones used by small business employees for business purposes are 4G, a 70% jump in usage from last year when only 33% used 4G smartphones.

• Nine in 10 (90%) of the businesses using 4G smartphones are satisfied with the speed.

• More than two-thirds (69%) of small businesses surveyed indicate that they use tablet computers, a slight increase from last year (66%).

• Findings indicate that the larger the business, the more likely they are to use tablets, with 90% of those with 51 to 99 employees using them, compared to less than seven in 10 (69%) of those with 50 or fewer employees.

• Additionally, newer businesses are more likely to use tablets, with 80% less than 2 years old using them, compared to less than seven in 10 (69%) of those two years and older.

• 85% of small businesses reported using smartphones for their operations, more than double the usage five years ago (42%).

To highlight their white paper, CMSWire hosted these two divergent essays on the merit of utilizing SharePoint for records management.  Take a peek: The argument against SharePoint by Joe Shepley:

SharePoint 2007, was supposed to be “records management ready,” but required users to put all their records in a separate area (the records center) to manage them ... SharePoint 2010 didn’t get much better. True, you could now manage records in place, but 2010 drove records retention and disposition using content types, which, if you had a few hundred of them, were incredibly cumbersome to work with

The defense of SharePoint by Mimi Dionne:

Two counter arguments immediately spring to my mind.

First, it is not hard to implement records management enterprise-wide ... Second, if a Records Manager doesn’t know how to implement SharePoint 2010 RM Services across the enterprise well, it is because the Records Manager doesn’t have a development environment.

From the comments section on Shepley's article, we found this additional analysis by Mark Jones at Collaboris that's worth reading as well.

Communication is key in small business.  A recent post by Brett Snyder at Intuit's Small Business Blog highlighted one small business owner's struggle with their virtual phone system.  The virtual phone service provider made a key mistake -- omitting to inform its customers of a system change which would affect their service -- that led to significant consequences:

Our service provider decided to “update” its system, and the new version decided to stop interpreting our custom settings properly.  That meant incoming calls weren’t being routed to the right people at the right time.  Sometimes, they were even going straight to voicemail, even calls to our urgent line.

What can we learn from this as providers of business support services?

• Broadcast changes in service well in advance
• Troubleshoot foreseeable errors but
• Respond quickly and graciously to unexpected errors
• Own your mistakes

For those looking to separate the cream from the chaff of phone services, we found this list at Small Biz Trends that might be helpful.