 So please a warm open group. Welcome for Cheryl McKinnon So good morning. Thank you so much for the invitation from the open group and for soup for inviting me It's my privilege to be here amongst all of these lovely faces. You make me nervous So if I get a little shaky and my southern accent comes out, you know, it's going off This has been a really long journey. I know our company has been tracking supply chains since 2005 Which is approximately when that picture was taken that you saw up there, but it's my favorite and I'm sticking to it All right, the history goes You know, I was invited to talk about what the process is and what the value proposition is for me and my company I wanted to go into a little bit more detail of the journey to get here so Back in 2005 was when I first was introduced to the issues surrounding counterfeit equipment When the FAR council invited everybody into Bethesda, Maryland and they start bringing up all of these counterfeit pictures of various OEMs and there was a conflict between what was actually counterfeit and What was not, you know, what's a warranty? So this has gone through an evolution over time So back in 2009 the government came to the open group and said hey We've got to do something about this as the government's moving away from GOTS products to COTS products They needed some way to Help to ensure that the equipment that they were getting was not counterfeit There were bills going up into Congress that were gonna cost Tens of millions of dollars in penalties and everybody's throwing up their hands going wait a minute You still haven't clearly defined what counterfeit equipment is. So again, they had to go through this whole evolution So when we heard of the ISO IEC 20243 coming about We were first We were trying to find a way to give our company the golden stamp of approval that we're already here We're already doing everything that NIST says We're already doing what our OEMs want us to do and getting that certification was really We just had to do it, right? Okay, so I'm gonna move on Whoa All right. Sorry about that. That was a huge jump All right, so I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the process I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the certification and what it's done for us and then what's next There All right When you make a determination that you're gonna go after this certification There's some some decisions that you have to make right you can do a self-certification or you can do a third-party accreditation right CVWG chose to do the self-certification it was low-cost and That was a starter because every company has to go out and they have to develop a budget of what they're gonna do for the year And if all of a sudden you come in and you find this new opportunity that you have to have it It's not necessarily in the budget that third-party certification or accreditation process tends to be a little bit more pricey So CDWG chose to go for the low-cost option. It was it was $4,000 We did you have to make a decision of what are you going to certify? Are you gonna certify a product? Are you gonna certify a product line? Are you gonna certify a business unit those kinds of things CDWG opted to Certify for the entire business unit of CDWG It's a for document process The most time you will spend is on the certification Excuse me the conformance statement. Sorry about that So this is where you basically have to be very honest with yourself and look at your processes and procedures And clearly identify it CDWG started the process and we started talking about the process in December of 2016 We had a lot of conversation We had to figure out wait a minute where the gaps we went through and identified here are all of our processes Here are the things that we need to work on while going through the processes. These are the things that we can fix Fix them we did So what we went through the process we turned in all the documents There are some system glitches on the open group side since we were the first eight or some Anomalies they hadn't quite figured out yet which have since been fixed and we were awarded the certification in May of 2017 Not not a bad gig Okay, the next thing you have to do is Marketplace awareness marketing everybody's got to market it Once you get it you just don't sit on it. This is your golden stamp of approval that you know what you are doing The whole idea behind the ISO certification is to ensure that there's no malicious intent and incorporating Counterfeit product into the products that we sell because when you do that things go really bad. I saw a recent news story How many are here from the Washington, DC area hands up You may have seen this news story. Thank you very much. You may have seen this there was a first-time surgery To repair a young girl's scoliosis in the rest rest in hospital anybody see that All right, you know what I'm talking about All of this the surgeon was fantastic I found out afterwards that the surgery went really really well, so don't let me scare you to death But this was all done by a robotic arm and all the software that goes around it to really navigate where every Bracket and every screw goes and if one piece of that technology Went bad as a parent. I'm freaking out What's gonna happen if something glitches in that robotic arm that? That's my daughter on a table things go bad when you have bad technology and This is what this certification helps you do to show that to golden stamp of approval to your federal government customers right It labels you as a trusted supplier It gives you the opportunity to sit at the table with your government customer and go look I'm good There's some bad players out there. I'm not one of them. I have this certification. I've already been accredited Here's my golden stamp that says you don't need to look any farther If you want to come in check out my processes. Okay, you have the right to do that But I'm telling you I've already done it for you. It also helps our our OEMs our manufacturing partners Because the worst thing that can happen to them is that their brand name and the integrity of their brand name gets Demolished because somebody did something wrong If there's a bad actor out there selling counterfeit equipment that they're labeling. I'll just I'll use the name Cisco You can name any of them in that app Nutanix whatever If they're selling a counterfeit product and claiming it it's this OEM It doesn't necessarily go back to that bad actor. It goes back to that OEM that it's their product that was messed up So the last thing my OEM wants is me going out and selling counterfeit equipment and their their brand goes down the toilet So I can actually comfortably sit in front of my men my manufacturers and go We're good I've been certified. I have the certifications to take your product. I know where to buy it from I know how to transport it. I know how to integrate it and I'm not going to mess up the integrity of your brand name Right Right. Alrighty This also helps us to align with our government partners, right? We we all want to make sure that nothing goes bad. We don't want things falling out of the sky We don't want things blowing up. We don't you know, these are our taxpayers dollars because every time something goes wrong It's our taxpayers dollars that pay for it. All right So what's next? I've got it. I Know there's a few of you that have the certification. Are you in the room? All right congratulations Right, don't stop here Look technology and evolves you go back to Manufacturing there's so much robotics and manufacturing now it used to be people sitting behind It doesn't happen that way anymore delivery changes We've got thrones delivering stuff to our front door, right? So things change regulations change So you need to stay focused Keep your eye on the ball Don't stop here Things continue to change be aware of them stay on top of them. It's a journey. It's a long journey Talking about delivery of products Delivery of things on your doorstep. You want to go back to the future and go to Star Trek days and go Hey, Scottie beam me up Maybe one day that'll happen. I Don't know just say it when you go back when you went back to Disney World and saw all the technology back in the 1960s where oh Somebody's actually talking to their mother on their cell phone and seeing their face Things change they evolve those things that we saw on TV or that were futuristic are here now and today Who knows where they're gonna be tomorrow? Thank you Oh, I wasn't ready for this one Yeah, we've had a few people using Slido, please keep going with with Slido Yeah, several questions for you, thank you very much. It was nice to hear the point of view from the other side of the Events so what it's like from to actually go through the process and that's really what these questions are questions are about Yes, it's what's involved in certification from a soup contract holders point of view I mean you kind of described The product standard, but you know what's involved in getting certified Under the OTQBS program So If you go out to the open group website, there is a list of Documents that you have to prepare it's really for documents and as the slides indicated I didn't go into each one You have to complete them and you have to do a self certification process I am unfamiliar with the third-party accreditation process But I have been through several other accreditation processes that can be quite intense and costly But I would assume and maybe you can answer that question better than I can about the third-party certification Yeah, there's there's actually a separate question on that is Relative time frames for those and we are gonna hear more about the third party one a bit a bit later, but For now, can you speak to the time frame from start to finish? I think you did mention it in your presentation So again when we started the conversation it was December of 2016 and we were awarded the certification in May of 2017 and I think depending on how deep you want to go and how many things that you need to certify or Address in your conformance statement that really depends on you, but for us it seemed like a pretty quick process So six months I would say you know for a company my size Was a pretty reasonable time frame, but I think it can be accelerated Okay, thank you Did you find that you had to did your organization find that you had to create policies in order to meet the requirements The policies were already there. We what we really needed to do was refine some of the processes So there were some gaps in the process that we quickly cleaned up and we're able to feel very comfortable about our certification Does CDWG partner with small businesses to jointly market on government opportunities Requiring OTTPS certifications. Yes, we do. Yes, we do So typically the way we're organized is by Customer set so if you have an opportunity that you are working for a particular customer We would engage you you could engage with the account manager or you can send some you know A question to me and I can direct you in the right Let's see. There's a question What's involved there's some duplicates here Policy question we asked Oh, yeah, has it made has it made a difference To you that this has been recognized as an ISO standard I don't know how best to answer that other than say absolutely Again, it gives us the credibility to sit in front of our government customers and talk to them And they're assured they're comfortable talking to us. That is so important these days That's all the questions we have so you must have oh no, sorry once just come in late breaking news What was the size of the team CDW used for the OTTPS process Literally well, it it takes a village to be quite honest with you, but the primary team actually Completing the conformance statement. It was only three people But those three people touch another 10 to 20 people you you have to talk to everybody within your organization And make sure that everyone understands exactly what we're what we're doing and making sure that they're trained on those kinds of things So the organization as a whole is 8600 people But we've kept but the people completing the certification and going through the process was primarily three people myself included Final question That came in kind of the same time. Did you use an ISO consulting firm to walk you through the process? No, we did not Great. Thank you. Sure. We're gonna leave it there. Thank you very very much for your