Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dr. Nazeera Dawood. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Dr. Nazeera, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with something countless entrepreneurs have had to figure out on the fly – how have you dealt with the rise of remote work?
We’re a global company. Always have been. We are headquartered in Atlanta but our client targets extend worldwide; Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Here in the US as an example, we work with a global client with operations in Florida who just bid on and won a project in California. With respect to our own internal base operations, we had to make some quick decisions to continue our established rate of service to all of our clients. Similar to many resilient companies, we accepted remote work and adjusted to its untapped advantages in building a flexible, agile and creatively responsive work environment. We are now an almost entirely remote-work team across the US and various countries.
As the pandemic hit, government entities on every level, whether federal, state, county or municipal, began looking for some distinct products and solutions – PPE, cloud computing hardware and software solutions saw the greatest increases in demand. We saw companies that hesitated to invest in that demand shift, and we saw companies that jumped on the opportunity.
In the State of Georgia, nearly 90% of municipalities were unprepared for delivering basic community services in a work-from-home manner. Over the last couple of years, we have observed the trends in broadband, cloud migration, application development, data management, payment processing, access and cybersecurity. The trends will continue to influence buying decisions on all levels of government from cities and counties to state governments and public-education institutions. We are now poised to work with any company ready to provide products or services to government entities.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
I am Nazeera, I was born in a remote village in India and we later moved to the city. I spent my childhood in the Mideast as my father moved there for his job. I came back to India to complete high school and later, medical school. As a child, I wanted to be a doctor, a policewoman and an actress. I became a doctor to serve the underserved. I completed my community police academy course in my city as well. The acting part is still out there.
As I reflect back on different roles I have played, the common thread has been to provide a platform that unites people and their capacities to contribute all in the best interest of harmony, peace, progress, love and purpose. I am passionate about healthy, inclusive and supportive communities. I am the Founder & CEO of Vendorship Inc. At Vendorship Inc, we coach companies to successfully bid on government contracts.
Vendorship was established out of the need for a liaison between innovative solutions providers in IT, construction, commodities (such as PPEs) and professional services, and multi-level government operations for the optimization of government’s service delivery responsibility.
Several of our team members like myself have worked in public administrations and understand the request-for-proposal (RFP) and procurement process. The RFP process is designed to be results-oriented and impartial, but the requirements tend to be complicated. I found that few innovative providers had the knowledge to position themselves as viable and competitive, and to also effectively navigate RFP ‘red tape’ along the process.
Just like any business, government entities need outside solutions to meet measures of effective and efficient functionality. And all businesses need new projects to grow. Vendorship helps small and medium-sized companies identify and successfully bid on those solution opportunities.
We are client and community champions. We are excited about providing government entities with a greater number of options to choose from while opening another sector to SMBs – especially female and/or minority-owned and run businesses – for diversification, growth and success.
We recognize that many small to mid-sized clients don’t have the resources to maintain a team of experts for bidding in the public sector. That shouldn’t hold back providers of great solutions from bidding. The Vendorship team becomes an extension of our client’s team. Our internal team is composed of documentation specialists, public-sector proposal writers and bid intel research analysts, among others. In collaboration with the clients’ teams, we identify opportunities, goals and action steps. We arrange weekly cross-team meetings to identify bids and actively work on proposals. We manage the process to involve needed specialists across the various stages. We deliver on the promise, to make government contracting easy.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
As a small core group embracing challenges and navigating big-business pursuits, we want to be a reminder to all that the road to the growth of a business is never an easy one. However, with a strong vision, and confidence in your product and team, anyone can reach imagined heights.
We want our business and other community neighbors to appreciate our core values:
Diligence – We are relentless in the pursuit of excellence in service and performance.
Dependability – We are approachable, reliable and trustworthy with the affairs of all customers. Determination – We are persistent in achieving success for all of our clients.
Our team is growing from a humble grassroots beginning. We would not have reached this point without each other’s support. We literally came from working from the couch to now having a dedicated core team and a satisfied and growing clientele.
Vendorship’s mission is to help level the playing field in government procurement. The company provides more equitable access to help identify and secure contracts for marginalized businesses (small, women-owned, minority-owned, Veteran-owned, economically disadvantaged, etc.). Vendorship celebrated its five-year anniversary with a new brand launch event on January 12th. Due to increasing cases of COVID-19, the event was held virtually, but that didn’t stop over sixty supporters from attending to share reaching this exciting milestone, including public officials.
Company associates, clients, partners and supporters are strong advocates for this socially responsible brand. Even public officials have noticed. The Vendorship team visited the Georgia House of Representatives this past February, where members recognized the company and our leadership with a Resolution: A Reaffirmation of Diversity in Patriotism Day, and for our contribution and service to the Greater Atlanta community.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Of course. The Vendorship philosophy has little to do with business and individual contractor profit as much as it does with service and advancing the capacity of communities and constituencies. We pride ourselves on being motivated to help governments solve problems and help governments innovate quality-of-life enhancements in the delivery of public services.
While our work is certainly not a new idea, our drivers and our goals are based on social entrepreneurism. We connect good ideas with community needs through the funnel of business interests and responsive governance. We work with companies, larger and small, new and well-established, to build and condense capacity to get the attention of governments, and build contractual relationships with governments over time, to solve problems and even raise more interests in specific lanes of social and structural innovation.
To best excel at this kind of solutions approach, we don’t have to be lucky in a numbers game of helping companies win more government contracts. We have to be proficient in understanding how the government thinks, what the government is really looking for, and then shaping capable players into those gaps. It’s also the best way to sustain relationships and therefore, success outcomes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.vendorship.net
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vendorship/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vendorshipinc
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/_nazeeradawood
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnpSOM59LgsuN9a4VG1sTg