by Alan Davis | August 16, 2021

Hello, this is Alan Davis, President and CEO of I5 services.  Our company has created the CONNEX Marketplace, a vibrant database platform which connects U.S. manufacturers and their capabilities. In this article, I will discuss the ways that large manufacturers can use CONNEX to find specific suppliers that meet set-aside requirements.

As many of you know, it’s a significant challenge for large prime manufacturers, OEM’s and others that have SBA requirements to find the right supplier which meets their needs. Although there are many small suppliers across the U.S., it’s often a painful and time-consuming process to find specific set-aside suppliers such as minority owned, women-owned, hub-zone and more.

To help solve this problem for large manufacturers, we built the CONNEX Marketplace platform which connects manufacturers and suppliers together based on their exact needs and capabilities. The platform particularly helps primes and large manufacturers to find small U.S. suppliers based on their SBA designations.  With our highly detailed database and vast partner network, CONNEX ensures that manufacturers can find suppliers based on their exact capabilities and SBA set-aside designations.

We recently worked with a large prime manufacturer that had some very specific supplier requirements to meet for their NASA contract.  The prime had some specific suppliers they were looking at but they needed to find more.  We met with them and proposed that we hold a supplier scouting event based on our data within CONNEX.  They agreed and we added their requirements into what we call an exchange center listing, which is a notification post about the manufacturers needs.  Following that, we used CONNEX to find and notify the suppliers who could meet the manufacturers posted needs. We even took it a step further and reached out to our partner organizations across the country and asked them to help us find suppliers who had those capabilities. 

Between the CONNEX Marketplace database tool and our partner network, we helped the prime manufacturers find a wide variety of companies who met the SBA designations and set-aside requirements necessary for their NASA contract.  The prime contractor was absolutely thrilled as we setup interviews for them to interview qualified supplier after qualified supplier.

As you can imagine CONNEX Marketplace saved them hundreds of hours across their enterprise, which equated to significant cost savings. It was an extremely effective way for them to find the exact supplier they were looking for. 

For more information about CONNEX Marketplace, or to find out about how you can hold a CONNEXION event to help you find the exact kind of qualified suppliers you’re looking for, please visit: www.CONNEXMarketplace.com