Happiness fuels success. When employees feel connected to the community, their workplace, company leadership, and to their jobs, they perform better. Leaders and companies have the power to cultivate a positive work environment and promote a happy and engaged workforce. Here are six ways BVTI fosters employee happiness and drives success.
5 ways improve skill, knowledge and experience
Experience – It's a desired and sought-after quality for both employees and businesses. The funny thing about experience is that it can't be bought or taught. It has to be earned by being on the front lines. Here are five ways BVTI cultivates encourages and cultivates experience in its employees.
Investing in your employees is an investment in your company. Providing ongoing training and certification opportunities for your workforce helps employees to grow in their careers and reach their potential. BVTI offers training in several different areas, including program management, computer programs, and security policies and emphasizes a different area each month.
“As leaders, we do a lot of reading, studying, and talking to other contractors and government people to find out what's going on and to identify their hurt spot,” says BVTI President, Dan Zimmerman. “But really, the tentacles that go out there is each and every one of our employees. We encourage them to stay current in their individual areas. I can't stay current on cost and price analysis, IT work, and program management alone. We rely heavily on our people.”
Growth in business isn't possible without change. In order to grow your client-base, it's important to expand your services into related areas and offer integrated solutions. As a company grows, it is able to support a diversity of services and can hire new employees with the skills necessary to develop them. Over the years, BVTI's workforce and services have evolved based on the needs of clients.
“Our workforce has changed,” says Scott Deibler, Vice President of Human Resources and Security. “It is more diverse in the sense of age and what our employees are doing. We started as a tech company and all of our employees were focused in technology. Now we do program management and customer service.”
No matter how big your company gets, never compromise in your hiring standards. A great team truly makes a difference in your business and can transform your products and services. Employees must be willing to work with clients and listen attentively to their mission and goals in order to provide the best value service. BVTI listens to its client's needs and then educates, trains, and develops its personnel to meet those goals.
“Our focus has really been to try and hire the best and brightest talent we can find,” says Scott McCrae, Vice President of Operations. “Part of that expertise comes from the people we have working for us. I think as a company our expertise is based around the individuals, and that is a real asset to the people.”
Cost matters. In order to lower costs for the customer, the operations of the company must be innovated and revolutionized. But there's a catch – The best innovation doesn't sacrifice quality; it improves it. With their vast experience in the intelligence community, BVTI's team of experts knows how to lower costs by increasing the quality of personnel. They can lift more weight, accomplish more, and utilize time better. BVTI ensures that taxpayer's money is spent wisely.
“We work against traditional staffing models to save money as taxpayers,” says McCrae. “As taxpayers, we don't just want to sit around – We are not just butts in seats. We want our staff to be challenged and to provide value to the government.”
It's not enough to simply have the right field knowledge and experience. You need to deliver top-quality services on a consistent, daily basis with that knowledge and understanding in order to attract clients and businesses. Reputation and past performance are crucial in determining the quality of a company's future work. Often, success from one project can lead to new contracts and other projects. Despite all the changes in the world of business, word of mouth remains as a prominent source in identifying the most qualified vendors. BVTI ensures that their reputation reflects their company culture of honesty, integrity, and best value. The company hires the best and brightest talent they can find, which has lead to companies vying for their services because of a particular worker's positive reputation.
“A government client may want Best Value Technology, Inc. for a job because they have seen our people working on other job projects,” says Deibler. “Success in one contract can lead to success in other places. Sometimes, it is just the individual they want.”
How BVTI's employees are the solution their customers need
A company's strength is made up of the collective whole of its employees' skills and talents. The passion and integrity of your employees alone has the power to spark long-lasting positive word of mouth about your company and satisfy the needs of customers.
How BVTI creates a company culture that inspires its employees
While it's been studied a thousand times, most employers can tell you: Employees simply work better, faster and smarter when they're happy. A positive work environment is crucial not only in the lives of workers, but also in a company's success. Here are six ways BVTI creates a positive work community that motivates its employees to go above and beyond.
Continue reading 6 Ways to build a positive work environment
In business, nothing is certain. It's a gamble business owners must be willing to take. A company's ability to roll with the changes and innovate during trying times speaks volumes about its quality performance. BVTI shares five ways it has adapted to change with success.
As a Service-Disabled Veteran owned company founded after 9/11, Best Value Technology, Inc. strives to support fellow military veterans in every aspect of business.
Continue reading Giving Back To Veterans: How BVTI Creates Opportunities for Military Vets
How BVTI Built A Business By Providing Solutions
Solving problems isn't merely a defensive strategy for BVTI. It's how the company got its start and how it continues to consistently deliver growth for its clients.
In order to solve problems, you first need problem solvers. A culture of honesty and integrity helps to attract the right employees and keep customers.
“The immediate answer that comes back to the question, ‘Who is BVTI?' always goes back to integrity and honesty in everything we do, ” says Cheryl Warner, Vice President of Business Development at BVTI. “We are who we say we are. It matters greatly to us that whatever service we provide to the customer are the best that we have and are delivered in a way that reflects quality.”
The right employees will produce quality work, but they must be trained to ask the right questions and lend a listening ear in order to fully meet the needs of customers. The client's mission and goals must be identified and understood.
“We spend a lot of time trying to put ourselves in our customer's shoes, understanding their requirements,” says Cheryl Warner. “We look at their mission statement, where they have come from in the last five years, where their successes are. We look at their mission statement going forward for the next five years, where they want to go, where they see challenges, and even where they don't see challenges. We try to understand the whole complete picture.”
In addition, BVTI's ability to anticipate market trends helped the company to grow when other big name industry partners were downsizing.
“I think a real testament to BVTI as a small business is that we anticipated a lot of the market trends that started at the end of 2010,” says Warner. “From 2010 forward, BVTI was the recipient of the Inc. 5000 Awards four times. We won it in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. What's important to note is that many large businesses in that time frame, federal government contracting businesses, actually had massive layoffs, while other industry-known big name industry partners were downsizing, BVTI was actually growing. We may be small, but we effectively anticipated the market, made necessary adjustments internally within our own internal operations to make us more nimble, make us more competitive. And to adjust the solution offerings we were offering to the government to fit within their budget and to really pair down to what was essential to the government and offer those kinds of solutions.”
As a D.C.-based company, BVTI has the resources to be flexible and can make adjustments within internal operations in order to remain competitive. With this nimbleness, BVTI has managed to consistently grow year after year.
Best Value Technology, Inc. got its start by solving a problem and will continue to grow by crafting more solutions to problems existing today, and tomorrow.
How BVTI makes strides in the industry with a philosophy based on strong moral principles.
Best Value Technology, tadalafil Inc. doesn't just value integrity and honesty; these principles make up the core of the company. There is serious care taken in ensuring that the services it provides are delivered in a way that reflects quality – at every level of their company.
Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Integrity Always Wins Business
Life is not always easy – especially when it comes to business. Challenges and unforeseen issues can arise out of nowhere. How a company and its employees roll with the punches often directly relates to the overall success of the business. As the founder and President of Best Value Technology, a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business (SDVOB) that provides services to the United States Federal Government, Dan Zimmerman shares four values that have helped his business flourish into one of the fastest growing private companies in America for four years in a row.
As a contractor to the United States Federal Government, BVTI specializes in providing a variety of information technology and program management services. Where the company really excels, says Zimmerman, is in identifying potential problems be and providing cost-effective solutions.
“BVTI's mission is to solve problems for the government,” says Zimmerman. “We want to find out where the biggest pain points are and come in and solve them. We don't bid on things just to bid on them. We only bid on things we know we can be excellent at because we don't want to come in and be a mediocre contractor. We want to make a difference and make an impact. We want the government to say, ‘we're so glad we hired them.'”
Fear of making the wrong decision is often an obstacle in any part of life. Getting to the root of a problem, taking it apart and finding out what makes it tick, can ease fear and provide a solution to even the most complex issues.
“When I was at the National Reconnaissance office I was hired to be a person who answered the phone and solved problems for the government,” says Zimmerman. “I didn't actually know that until I was actually on site. So when they told me I had to sit at a desk and answer calls I told them that's not really going to work. I'm ADHD, I'm hyperactive and I need to something. So I went and I walked the halls of the government and talked other contractors and asked them, ‘What is it that could help your jobs be better in regards to the acquisition realm?' After two weeks of doing that I went home and created a façade of a website. I brought in several people that I talked to and asked them if this would solve their problems. They said yeah, this is exactly what we need. So using a cold fusion developer and a Microsoft developer I was able to develop this program called the ARC, Acquisition Research Center. From there was the germination of the company.”
Leading by example is vital to building a positive and thriving atmosphere across the company, says Zimmerman. It's also equally important that the company leaders sincerely care about their employee's success – both professionally and personally.
“You have to love the people that work for you, and I absolutely love the people that work for this company,” says Zimmerman. “I feel so blessed to have them, the leadership team and the people in company. We have a survey we send out each Friday and everyone in the company gets it. They respond in it with, ‘This went great, I did a report for the director today and he loved it.' Or, they might say something like, ‘My dog died.' All of that effects how they do their job. Either they come in excited because they know they did a good job or they come in sad because they had to bury the dog they loved for so many years. We need to know that so we can help them with that.”
Honesty, integrity and diligence are the marks of a company, or a person, that puts the highest quality of work into every project they tackle. Doing the right thing at all times, even when it's not easy, will attract employees and other businesses with similar values.
“When I was in grade school I won a little Bible for giving the best definition of integrity,” says Zimmerman. “I still have that Bible and it's always stuck with me. That's the way we want to run the company. We want to do a great job not just when they're looking but when nobody's looking. When nobody's around, we want the government and partners to know we're going to treat them right and do the right thing. That's a big reason why people like working with us.”
BVTI has for 7 years provided cradle-to-grave services for acquisition management, including automated market research design, workflow processing, simple source selection, secure acquisition facility construction and management, cost & pricing support, negotiation support, and conference management. BVTI has experience in program management and business process re-engineering, specializing in transitioning legacy systems to modern, automating routine activities, and templating repeatable tasks.
