A couple of weeks ago, I participated in the eDiscovery Readiness for Government 2010 conference in Arlington, VA. It was a good opportunity for me to think about the progress that Equivio has made in our relations with the US Government.
When we wrote the original business plan for Equivio in 2004, we looked at the legal discovery and records management market from every possible angle, segmenting it, slicing it and dicing it, and exploring the weirdest “what if” scenario’s. Through all this analysis, we did not consider the US Government a serious prospect. We were just going along for a ride on the back of the conventional wisdom – viz. “they are too big to make a timely decision”, “they are ultra conservative”, “the procurement process takes ages”, “they only buy from large companies”, and so on.
And sure enough, Equivio’s first big sale was to the Department in Defense. Today, six years after we wrote the business plan, our revenues from the US Government are about one-third of our total revenues. So much for the business plan…but we have learned some things in the interim.
First, like any user community, the government has innovators, early adopters, followers, early majority, late majority and laggards. There are smart and visionary people out there who are constantly looking for new technologies and new solutions to bring into their agency. Many of them have the budgetary and political power to make it happen. Finding them is not easy, but they may find you. In our case, we were fortunate in that they found Equivio.
The challenges that the Federal Government and the agencies are facing are in many cases more acute than those faced by the private sector: shorter timelines, minimal flexibility of resources and demanding internal standards and regulations. These challenges provide a broad field of opportunities to the appropriate technologies.
The greatest myth of all is the procurement process. Indeed, nobody likes the standard lengthy bid process. But, if government people have an urgent need and you have the right solution, the process is actually shorter than selling to your standard Fortune 100 company.
And the best point about selling to the US Government is that the government is a tightly-knit community. That’s great if your product is doing the job. There are joint working groups, informal discussions and a sincere wish to share information. So once you fulfill your part of the deal, your customers will be glad to share this with their peers. | 
