 Hey, GovCon Giants family. Welcome to our podcast. My name is Eric Coffey, host of the GovCon Giants podcast, where we interview experts, technical professionals, and people in the space helping us to grow our government contracting business, embarking on your government contracting journey. What does it take? Who do you have to become all of that on our podcast and our show? In today's episode, episode 97, we interview Elizabeth Jimenez from NeoSystems. NeoSystems is a managed service provider, providing services such as cloud hosting, system integration, HR and IT services. Why do you need a managed service provider? We're going to talk about that. That is the basis for the show is what is a managed service provider? Why do you need a managed service provider? And the example that I provide is it's similar to outsourcing your CFO needs, outsourcing your payroll needs. And these are the things that successful government contracting businesses learn early because why we want to focus on just growing and building the business. We let other people handle the technical aspects, the regulatory things that we don't know much about, or we're not the profession experts in those areas. We go ahead and contract all that out and they scale with us as we scale, they scale, and then we can grow and build our teams out. So again, that's all of this and much, much more in today's episode with Elizabeth Jimenez. My name is Elizabeth Jimenez. I am the executive director for market strategy and development at NeoSystems. Hi, welcome, Elizabeth. Hi, thanks for having me, Eric. All right. And you are where you located right now, presently as we are recording this presently in northern Virginia, just outside the Beltway, right? OK, OK, but your company is located in Tyson's Corner. We are we're in Tyson's Corner. If anyone is familiar, most of you all will be, hopefully some of you at least, we're in that building where the Capitol Grill is. So we like to swing by and we call it playfully Conference Room C. OK, there you go. Actually, I was in Ruston and meeting with a friend from high school and he suggested he says Eric, you should get a place either here or like in Tyson's Corner. So is that like a new upcoming area? I think so. There's a lot of development there. And I mean, there are many small businesses, but more businesses are moving in than ever before. Despite pandemic, it's it's booming. Yeah, no, that's great. That's great. Now, NEO Systems, tell us about NEO Systems and what it is that they do. And then also, what is it that you do there? Sure. So NEO Systems kind of does a bunch of things. If you've ever been to our website and Eric, it's so funny. We were talking about this earlier, like, what is it that you do? So we're we're a problem solver, essentially. We're a systems integrator at the heart of what we do. But we provide essential back office functions and operational function support to small businesses that don't have the resources to take that in house themselves. So that ranges kind of from, you know, financial to HR and then more recently, IT and cybersecurity related. So that's kind of primarily across the board, what we do. All right, now we've got to dig a little bit deeper. I'm going to be a five year old kid and say, OK, what does that mean? OK, sure. So it means that we are capable of integrating different business systems so that they work in concert together. So, for example, if you have your controller is working with your ERP system, whichever that would be for government contracting, we would integrate that with your HR system, with your IT systems and make it seamless pull through. Not only do we integrate all of those and kind of hand it back to the companies if they take on that responsibility in a house, we can also manage all of those functions as essential business functions like accounting, you know, if you're a construction company and you have one person managing the finances, they might not know all the practices involved for full fledged accounting for government contracting, for example. So we take on that those essential functions. I think maybe a little bit more people understand like the back office functions, but they're just essential business functions to keep your business running. All right. Now, one example that you and I spoke to offline was something about like QuickBooks versus like a financial management system. Sure. Well, for really small companies that are growing, they might just begin with like a QuickBooks because that's what they know how to do or maybe that's what they can afford in that moment. And as they grow, especially with their contracts, they're going to want to look at more advanced systems. So an ERP system that can take in more data that can integrate with other systems. It's more advanced and it's really built for project based contracts. So if you have projects, you're going to need a different caliber of a system. And so that's something also that my firm can implement for the client or integrate if they are at a different point and they have more than one system that they want to to bring together. OK, yeah, I think that sometimes we don't know what we need. So we also kind of need someone helping to tell us, right, as we're growing our small businesses, what is it that I need? Right. What is it that because, again, a lot of people were coming into this space. We're new to the federal contracting, the federal arena. And I may be an excellent, you know, commercial contractor out there. But now I want to come into the federal marketplace and I definitely want to be compliant, right? So I definitely need some help with someone ensuring that I'm compliant. I can tell you I had someone recently, well, not so recently, maybe a few months back who reached out to me and they had they were subcontracting out 100 percent of the work, which is. Yeah, which was in violation of all the rules. Well, he got out of it. They were out of it. And the guys that he had no idea that he could not sub out subcontract out 100 percent of all the contract work. And he learned that through watching one of my videos. But then he needed to help becoming compliant with that issue. Yeah, I love it that you mentioned compliance, because that's that's a word we sometimes forget. Like when we're doing all of our back office things, are we in compliance with what's required for federal regulations or even for this contract? You know, if you think about all the the regulations out there, are you operating with all these compliance tools and pieces? So it's important to remember that. And yes, we help with that, too. OK, no, that's at what point three people, five people, persons, 10 at what point do we reach out to like yours and say, hey, you know, I need help. So it can be a three to five person firm and it can go all the way up to like one hundred and fifty two hundred or even higher. I mean, we have very small clients to enterprise clients. It really just depends on what the what is sought and help, whether it's accounting help. I mean, we do we manage a lot of the accounting for small businesses just because they need that. And as they grow and gain more contracts, then we wrap it up and hand it back to them and support them as they need it. But also, you know, for HR, onboarding, benefits, all of those kinds of operations, we help with that, too. So again, just a small person to enterprise. OK, I think I'm getting it now, Elizabeth. No, again, I'm trying to draw parallels between my life experiences and what you're saying. And I think that, you know, that helps the users and the listeners as well. I used to have a payroll company that handled my payroll. Right. And so they took care of all the payroll. And I advise small businesses to do this just because it's so much easier. You're trying to run a business. You're trying to win work, you know, turn the payroll over to someone else. So I I had a payroll company. And all I would do is they would, you know, I gave them all the employees. They gave me the applications. Everyone turned them in. They submitted them. They did everything for me. They print the checks and they mail the checks to me almost like Amazon brings your packages. They would send us the checks on Thursday. We'd have them the day before. And then I would just write them one single check from my company account to cover the entire amount. Is that was that so easy? Oh, my gosh, I'm Elizabeth. I tell my small businesses out here, do not get bogged down and trying to be part of the operations. Because ultimately, to be a CEO or a business owner, you have to step outside of the business and let other people run it. So it was for me, it was a lifesaver, not just time and money, but also just so I can focus my energy on something else. Is that a good example? It is a great example, Eric, because, you know, I'm kind of working on some things internally. And what I'm coming up with is like, we do the heavy lift, essentially. So our clients don't have to all the operational stuff, including compliance, that they don't really need. They don't have that expertise in house. Like they don't need to boil the ocean with their skill set in order to like win contracts and really grow. So we we take all of that burden off so that they can really win and grow forward with their contracts. OK, nice. Nice. Excellent. I like it. I like it. Now, we discuss talking about growth in small businesses, some things that you've learned through working at Neosystems, some like organizational things on how small businesses can can help them structure themselves in order to grow. We touch on a little bit on that. Yeah, so I find that when businesses are starting out and we're supporting them, they're really looking for not only just foundational support around their operations, but also kind of strategic business strategies that will help them wisely grow, not grow too quickly, not inch along and be able to kind of be on par with market growth. We've seen people charge ahead, but what we found is especially in this day and age more than ever before, it's important to understand business risk. So taking a look at do you have all of your operations aligned with business risk? Are you securing your business operations? I know we've heard a lot about like CMMC and DOD and what they're putting out there. But we're seeing a lot of companies that kind of feel lost and stuck because they don't know how to securely and foundationally build their businesses from the ground up. So having kind of a plan that helps them align all their business systems and strategies between the systems, like how the process, the people, the process and tool element kind of all together, if they don't have a plan that helps them kind of orchestrate their business process overall, then they're going to have a hard time. So we have been helping them with that. And I think that, you know, having that foundation in place will really keep them secure and ready for growth. So can you tell us, can you dive into some things that I can do as an organization to start like having my operation in place? Can you give me like a high level view of some of the things that I can do now, like some of the actual steps? So I think just taking a look at depending on, you know, where you are, how many people you have in your organization, if you're just forming, or if you're bidding on a new contract or if you're it would be different if you're just starting to bid on a new contract, or if you have a couple of contracts under your belt, you have something in place. I think reaching out to a company that's a managed service provider that can help them figure out what systems they have in place and they can build upon and then what systems will be needed to have that foundational support. And, you know, I mean, yes, NEO Systems provides managed services across the board and there are many other companies that do so as well. I think looking for a trust, most important, looking for a trusted advisor that really understands the industry, really understands government contracts, really understands compliance. All those pieces together is going to be, I think, your best advisor to help you move forward. So doing some research, finding maybe a local managed service provider, having a couple conversations and then comparing notes and then have, you know, a leadership discussion on what they think would be the best way to move forward. So I'll be honest with you, I coming from, again, we're outside of DC, right? And all of us, you know, DC is everyone understands the slingo, everyone understands the talk, but the rest of us out here, you know, we don't know what managed service provider is or what that means. We're going to have to get some more like managed service or brighter. What does that mean? I don't even know what that means. Sure. No, I'm and I'm sorry. Being more clear about that. So you hear that's why I'm here. Yeah, I'm here like to take and listen, by the way, I have some of my students that I have to remind them, OK, two years ago, you didn't talk like that. Don't forget how you used to talk. OK, let's take you back. So look, I'm here to help. I'm here to, to, to obviously to not just give content, but I want people to understand it, to absorb it, to make it useful and helpful for folks. So I think I've done a really good job and some people say to me, I talk at a high level, but I think when I'm hearing my guess, I try to like break it down to where people can can take notes and, you know, because I want people to understand this stuff and follow along. OK, so talk to all. So OK, so a managed service provider is an organization that that takes on specific functions for on behalf of the client. OK, so, for example, let's say you're moving into a new office building and you have to have like all your phone systems and all your cabling and all of that lined up for you. You would probably, I don't know, call Verizon, call other organizations like try to figure out, like, OK, what do I need to do first to get everything in place before my employees come in to this office space? So a company like a managed IT firm would do all that work and get you all set up and ready. OK, just like, you know, your payroll company, you know, that that's that is an essential function that you took on for your client so that they didn't have to figure all that out themselves. So looking at what companies need to start out with, they need to figure out what it takes to kind of set up a business. What are all those pieces? Do you have? Do you have QuickBooks yet? Or are you beyond QuickBooks? Do you have another ERP system like Daltech or Uninet or, you know, one of the major government contracting ERP systems that are built for project based businesses? You need to really think about it. And it's a lot. It's an awful lot to think about to put every all these pieces in place and looking to a managed server service provider that can take on at least one of these functions, you know, for you is like a good first step. Right. I just happened to work for a firm that does all of that. So so we have, you know, folks come and say, hey, can you help with accounting? And they're like, oh, wait a minute, you do this to you, you do this to how can you know, how can we make this work? So the managed aspect is really having it's basically having someone come in and take care of all of the office stuff. So all that you have to do is essentially work on the contract, work on your proposal, work on your bid structure, work on your capture. So does that make sense? Yeah, no, that makes makes sense now. That actually makes a lot of sense. Now, do you have, for example, I'm listening to the podcast, I'm listening to you, Elizabeth, this all sounds great. Who do I call to for someone to tell me, you know, so that I could explain my scenario, my situation as a small business, where I'm at and see kind of like a list or a menu of things that I need. What I call. So, I mean, you could you could definitely reach out to my organization, I mean, in terms of specifically and just a neo system specifically. So, yeah, neo systems, you can reach out to me directly. I mean, that's not a problem and I'll direct, you know, the business in any which way they want to go. OK, so I'm very happy to provide my contact details and anyone on this podcast listening. If they have specific questions, I'm happy to answer and pass that along. All right, what email address would you like people to send you to what email? First name dot last name. So if you see my name on the screen, Elizabeth dot Jimenez, J. I. M. E. N. E. Z. At neo systems with an S corp, C. O. R. P. Dot com. OK, beautiful. And we also just to mention this, we just are working with the S. B. A. S. B. D. C. North Star program, which helps small businesses that are trying to get into government contracting, providing them with resources and really training up the local field office representatives so that any questions around kind of jump starting a business from the ground up from, you know, what is needed? We provide resources there to we have a wealth of webinars and we're very happy to provide that foundational guidance on, well, here's what you would probably want to do next. And so we we did that with a ton of businesses that are prospects, non clients and clients. OK, OK, nice. Some of the webinars that you mentioned, are they all around cyber and I. T. Or what are what are the topics? What are some of the topics? They go from general back office operations, like accounting this or benefit H. R. Benefits in this area. So it talks about functional areas of a business. OK, of a back office. But we also go into, like, product specific updates. For example, new systems partners with Delta as an ERP system that we implement for businesses. So we have, like, here's what it takes to upgrade here. Here are the things you might want to think about when you're setting up a new system. It should have all these functionality pieces. And here's how to best configure that. So we we help not only with, like, OK, we'll take, you know, here's instructionally what you might want to consider from a resource and an operational perspective. But here product wise, here are the things that would fall into how you would set that up. Now, I'm looking at your website and it mentions hosting and security. Tell me about that. Because most of us get our hosting from like a go daddy or a blue host or just some online company. Why? Why isn't that is that right? Is that wrong? Is there a better method? Because, again, we are working with the federal government. I know that there's a whole bunch of rules surrounding security and cyber. So tell us about that. Sure. So, I mean, I'll get to the hosting piece in just a second. But when we talked about the compliance aspect and security, a lot of what we've what we've heard we've been hearing for quite a while is like the compliance aspect is really important because you're checking a box for the government. You're following the compliance regulations. You can say here, see, I did all of these things right now, I'm compliant. But compliance doesn't necessarily mean secure. So you can be compliant, but you might still have inefficiencies or vulnerabilities within your systems. So, NeoSystems also provides managed security solutions very mapped almost directly. Well, they're mapped directly to CMMC and maturity level three compliance. Maybe that's a topic for another segment. But we offer the security solution that also as a service as well as the other managed services we provide. So I'll add on to accounting, IT, HR, and security. And then the hosting is we host the instances, for example, an ERP instance in our cloud so that all of it is holistically tied together. So yeah, we also host the applications directly. OK, you host the applications themselves in the cloud. What about our actual like so it's not hosting for our website. It's just more for the applications that we're using. It's yeah, it's basically the software as a service component. So OK, we're hosting the applications in the cloud. OK, all right. OK, no, that's fair. Interesting. I know a security is a big deal and we're finding more and more people, companies, organizations are being breached. I personally, our company was breached and so we were down for a week and a half. And like you said, fortunately, all of our customer data is on others, you know, it's a part of other applications and it's not through our website. So nobody's data was at risk, but we've been breached. So I understand that as well. Yeah, yeah, no, I understand. You're doing some other things out there, some great things. Talk to us. So we are coming back to the whole CMMC cybersecurity maturity model certification that's really taken the government and industry by storm kind of in an upheaval of all have to get this done by this time. And what does this mean? What am I just entering the market? How do I understand what I need to do? So new systems kind of tried at a very early stage to begin to create some educational pieces in a campaign and drive that into the market. And so we've been consistently through the last year and a half producing education pieces for the greater government contracting community. Although, you know, right now CMMC directly affects the defense industrial base. It is expected that that will pull through all the government agencies eventually as the regulatory requirement, the certification. So we've really seen it as a responsibility for what we're doing in the marketplace to educate our clients so that they understand what they need to do to get ready. So we've been producing a series of educational events. So we do a weekly CMMC town hall. That's with our SISO at Bassett. And we speak to enterprise SISOs. We've had Amy Howlin from Prospecta, Mike Baker from GDIT, Alicia Lynch from SAIC all providing their perspectives from an enterprise and how they're communicating with their supply chain and what's needed to kind of get their supply chain ready. And this goes down to the really small folks that are just three and five. And maybe they have the sole source contract and a lot is depending on them. Like they need to be in the know. And so we're trying to look at this unfolding certification from different perspectives so that it reaches every eye and every ear. And so we do this weekly town hall. We just finished our second industry CMMC readiness summit which addresses a lot of those challenges of like, okay, I did this, but what next? Like what are the steps needed to get there from A to Z? So when we found that it's been really helpful and we received regular feedback that some of the questions we're asking and answering are really helping them make strategic business decisions. You know, from our perspective, I'm speaking on behalf of the, not everyone out there, but again, listening to the people who follow me, you know, we've been hearing this talk about CMMC and NIST requirements for 10 years. That fair? Is it right about 10 years? It's been a while. Yeah. Okay. And you know, it feels as though they've been really pushing this stuff and wanting it done. And you know, you jump up and you get ready for this one compliance and then they change the rules and then you jump up and you get ready for this new one and then they change the procedures. And then even with the CMMC, I know there were some issues with the certifying board and the third party organizations, right? So I mean, it just from a, it feels like a tough pill to swallow, right? To spend this money on all these things. And it's like, you know, it's not being enforced. It's just, you know, it's just, I mean, what do you see now? Because you're on the summits, you're on the webinars. Do you see this thing is really coming to fruition? So yes, I think it undoubtedly will come to fruition. It might take a little bit of time to get there. There may be some delays. They may change the name. They might change a couple of the requirements, but it's not going away. And I think that what the government is really trying to accomplish here is to get small businesses to think about their cyber hygiene and how important it is, because we're, you know, being breached left and right. And it's kind of, well, when is it my turn? It's not like if, but when. And so, you know, taking more personal responsibility for your company's cyber hygiene is the best thing that you can do right now. We understand that it's a cost. That's why working together with a company that can advise you on, well, here's the best way to go about it based on where you want to be in three to five years, but it's also a business. It's a decision that if you want to just stay a small company and not make any changes, like 10 years down the road, or if you want to grow and say like, hey, I really want to get there, then you're going to have to look at making specific investments. And working together with a company that can advise and really knows what they're talking about in terms of compliance, security, strategy, then that's the best thing that you can do. And there are, I mean, I'll be honest, I've heard the up people with the CMMC AB, I've heard a lot of, you know, moaning and groaning about, well, it's going to cost me X. And well, it's going to cost you something, right? It's not, you know, it's going to cost you something, but if you do it right, it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg. It really won't. And would you rather have that investment or would you rather lose your business potentially because you didn't take that risk mitigation? No, I agree with you, I agree with you. And it's the reason why we bring people on like yourself is to educate and inform so that, because again, there are people out there that are taking advantage of some of our small businesses, charging my arm and a leg, they're still not compliant, they're still not up to speed. And that's unfortunate and that's why we want to bring reputable firms on here discussing these things and also give us some additional resources and content from where we can draw from when we want to go there, right? When we're ready and we've made the decision, okay, I'm going to commit to this. Who do I talk to first? That's why we have people like yourself on the show. Well, thanks, Eric. That's really just makes me, you know, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here and to be able to provide these insights because I know it's hard and I see people kind of walking in circles just like, I don't know what to do. And it's just, it's about taking a step back and figuring what do I want to accomplish with my business and then taking that next step. Okay, who can I speak to? Who do I view in the space as a trusted advisor and then reaching out to that person or organization? If they're a trusted advisor, they're going to steer you in the right direction. No, that's great. Can you give us, have you seen any, I want to say success stories, but like stories where you guys have really helped somebody, because of your managed services, it's allowed someone to really focus in on their business and really take off. You don't have to be specific on a name, but just give us a story behind it. Yeah, so we were working. Just to help give people, you know, some example. Yeah, of course. We've worked with a number of really small firms that were able to double and triple their profits because they weren't spending time on trying to figure out their own accounting and like how to do their accounting correctly because they go through audits as well. And so we were able to help them really focus on winning new contracts. And they actually grew quite a bit because we were doing all the audit prep and all the accounting work for them from our managed accountant side. There's another firm that I have specifically in mind that learned about us through one of our cybersecurity events that we held a couple of years ago. They're in the construction industry and they were really trying to figure out how they could become secure because they were doing a lot of overseas. They had a lot of overseas contract work where they were doing some really sensitive work for some of our government agencies at the highest level of what I'm looking for, clearance, exactly, yes. Yeah, so they heard us speak at one of these conferences and then we just had really nice discussions with them and we were able to put in place a managed security practice for their organization and run it on their behalf. And so they've grown by leaps and bounds. And if you go to our website, if you're listening to some of the webinars and shows we're putting on, you might hear them every now and again. Again, I won't say the name, but construction firm that has been able to really take off due to the fact that we've got their security posture in place. No, that's great. I can tell you I hate accounting. I don't know if I already said that once on the show, but I really dislike accounting. So if you take over my accounting, what do I need to send you? Or what do you need to send me? Or how does that work? Do I just, I really would rather do nothing if that's possible. If you would rather do absolutely nothing, you just give us a call and say, can I please, can you just manage my accounting? And then we have our series of meetings. We put a contract in place and we just take it all over and we run it all for you. And so we send all the pieces to you that need to be sent to you essentially from accounting for all the reports that you need, all the audits. I mean, what we've done in the past, we kind of like stand, we handhold and we just kind of stand together through the process of any audit that takes place. But we manage all of the accounting pieces and reporting in some aspects where it's needed or requested, we'll bring in like a budgeting and forecasting tool that will help do some of the forward thinking planning that will go into scoping the business or scaling the business for future contracts. Okay, all right. No, that's again, that's good to know. And at the very least we could call and figure out what does it cost and what does that look like and then we can make that decision moving forward. Absolutely, yeah. Okay, okay. No, that's great, that's great. Finance, accounting, IT, HR, security, hosting. That's the whole deal. Systems integration. Systems integrations. A lot of education, lovely marketing. Yeah, where can we go to find out about the weekly town hall events? So you can go to our website on our landing page directly at www.neo-systems-corp-c-r-p.com you'll see a scroll at the top of the page and the very first thing you see is the CMMC town halls. Okay. So you can register for any of all the upcoming town halls. This week we have Bob Metzger and you just register and you can register for any of the upcoming ones. So for example, this Wednesday we have Bob Metzger from RJO and he'll be talking about kind of the legal update and his take on where we are with the rollout of CMMC but we also have other guest plan coming up soon. So and all of our resources events are up there but for any specific questions related to CMMC specifically for the purposes of this audience, feel free to reach out to me. We also take questions and give them to our CISO Ed Bassett for him to kind of review with our guests prior to recording and then they'll hopefully be answered. All right. And the number that you want us to call if we have to call for questions? I think it's up at the top of, oh yeah, the 855 number but I have about three or four phone numbers that I can share where you're gonna get immediate help. That you said that I think it's a 3752? 3752, the let's chat function. You're gonna probably get instantaneous feedback. So if you have a question, my colleague and I kind of help with that a little bit. So we're gonna get to you right away. Okay. All right. So when we go on the website, we could just chat directly there. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Oh, so you're power, you're powering the let's chat function. Mostly my colleague. So we are powered by my colleague. Powered by my colleague. So we try to, you know, the five star, three star, one star, we're in competition of like, who gets the best rating for service. So after this, we better be on our game. All right. You better be on your game. That's right. That's right. You better be on your game. All right. So go to your website, neosystemscorp.com on there will be a chat function. And then there we can go and ask questions. Absolutely. And we will direct you to the person that will help immediately. Okay. And then give you five star reviews. And then yeah, five star reviews. Feel free to, you know, color in with comments. Don't be shy. Uh-huh. Okay. All right. Listen, can you wrap this thing up? Tell us, you know, as a small business that again, we're growing is the landscape is convoluted. The waters are murky, you know, help bring some light. Help us see through that. So, you know, again, you're up in the DC Beltway. You've seen some stories of people doing well. What would you say to the small business listening to this? That's like, hey, it's a lot to take on. It is a lot. Yes. Hey, it's a lot to take on. If you're in a position where you're trying to make it all work and you're either starting out or have been around for maybe a year or two and just need to get going, you know, get in contact with us and we'll help you figure out where you need to put, what systems you need to put in place to really create that foundation and to growth. And whether you need a man's service, whether you need a degree of support, whether you have some people in-house that can take on the work or you just need supplemental support, we're here to help small businesses do that. And we focus pretty much slowly on government contractors. Perfect. That to me I found is really, really important. It's critical. Is there any minimum revenues that I need to have in order to talk to you? Not necessarily. I think that we help small businesses just get started. We've had organizations reach out and said they're getting their funding in and so they're trying to put their business plan together. We've helped them at that stage. We've helped them when they're past 20 million. So we're here to help really get the ball rolling. Okay. All right. No, no, definitely. And as always, we will have all this information, her contact information, the emails, the website, and more in the show notes. Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you today. I appreciate you sharing this. I have a page of notes. So I know that the people out here listening to this, they're gonna also have a bunch of notes as well. So thank you so much. Eric, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much. I'm grateful to be here and love the show. All right. Thanks. Take care. Thank you. Take care. Bye.