Staff photo by ERICA MITRANO
Elsie Evans of Waldorf, left, and Pam Bolden of Lusby chat after a presentation unveiled the SmartBiz Tool, an Internet database intended to help businesses find contracts.
Last week, officials unveiled a new website intended to help small and minority-owned businesses find local contracts, including work with municipal governments too small to appear on existing contracting databases.
The SmartBiz Tool was developed by the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland to help new businesses, which tend to have less expertise in using the Internet to its fullest potential, to find appropriate contracts and advice, according to an information sheet distributed at the Nov. 17 meeting at the College of Southern Maryland in La Plata.
Anyone can register, including business owners and public and private entities seeking contractors.
The SmartBiz tool lets businesses create accounts exposing the work they do, and shares the contracts being put to bid by other members, including participating governments.
Ann Frank, special projects manager for the Tri-County Council, set an ambitious goal for promotion of the database.
“We want this tool to be as well-branded as this,” she said, holding aloft one of the ubiquitous neon green pens advertising Ken Dixon Automotive.
“He has saturated the market with this pen and we want to saturate the county with the SmartBiz Tool,” Frank said.
Local officials urged businesses to take advantage of this new means of finding customers.
“We are not the people who are the economic development offices in the three counties … but this new tool will put you in contact with the people that will work with you,” said Wayne Clark, executive director of the Tri-County Council.
“Your charge is to go home tonight and register,” Ellen Flowers-Fields said. Formerly the director for regional economic development at the Tri-County Council, she now oversees workforce investment boards for the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.
At least one small entrepreneur planned to do just that.
Andre Ford, who runs a small tech-support business from his Waldorf home, said branching out into government work is “a long-term goal” for expanding COBAR Consulting. He eventually plans to hire employees, he said.
He “absolutely” would try SmartBiz, he said. “I’m going to register for it as soon as I get back.”
Charles County’s high growth rate requires him to keep tabs on the way things are changing but provides him with more opportunities, Ford said.
“This is an opportunity, a chance to give back. The county served me well,” he said.
Dwayne Ross doesn’t have a small business but wanted information on how his employer, the Spring Dell Center in La Plata, could use set-asides for disabled people or small businesses to help its developmentally disabled clients.
The nonprofit is looking into creating a program to help clients start their own small businesses, like coffeehouses, as a move toward independence, and wanted to see how the SmartBiz tool could help, Ross said. He is the center’s director for vocational services.
“It’s something we’re looking to do, not for [employment through] Spring Dell itself … but it is one way we, instead of looking for jobs, could create jobs,” Ross said.
The SmartBiz Tool can be found on the Tri-County Council website at www.tccsmd.org.
emitrano@somdnews.com