How I won my business a $20 million government contract

But surely a good business would already have those in place?

That’s right, and it’s only about what you’re offering too, they’re not asking for details about every single part of the business, only the parts that are relevant.

How long has this whole process taken?

Our business has been around for quite a while now, and this process has taken quite a long time. We technically still call ourselves a start-up, but we’re growing very well and we’re pretty comfortable with what we’re doing.

To put this in perspective, we formed a team of about three people – including myself – and it took us about a month of work together. So it’s a big job, but the rewards can be pretty big if you put the effort in.

And it’s $20 million over 10 years, right?

That’s right, so $2 million a year. It won’t be all that, straight from the get go. We’ve got another two years of hard work ahead of us.

We will be putting extra resources on, so we’ve had to put people in Tasmania. The government expects a certain level of service there.

Back home, it’s business as usual really. The government has some additional qualifications about reporting, so we’ve had to give them some more details and so on. That’s all a bit new.

Internally, how has this changed the atmosphere in the business? Has it increased morale?

This has given us a lot of confidence internally. It’s our first government contract, it’s fantastic, and there are companies that obviously make a living just through government contracts. But for our first one, we’re very happy, and we’re actively looking at others now too.

We’re just more confident, and it will help us not only with more contracts, but with enterprise customers as well. It gives us a type of endorsement.