We’re headquartered just outside Washington, DC, and like many companies in the Nation’s Capital region and beyond, we’re happy to be doing business with the government. It’s pretty rewarding to know that our brains have helped to conceive, plan, build, and integrate web processes and technologies that ensure soldiers are paid on time, organizations are tracking cases more efficiently, and — with our ongoing Consumer Product Safety Commission efforts — individuals’ lives are being saved.

When we decided in August to unveil a new division of Tellenger to handle incoming requests from the private sector, we were concerned that balancing commercial and government prospects could be exceedingly challenging. (For example, we feared our experiences with enterprise-level systems like SharePoint may intimidate someone looking to launch a website, build a product, or implement an off-the-shelf content management system).

But what we’ve found over the past few months is that decision-makers from small business owners to not-for-profits to $100+ million firms are reassured by our stability. Our contracts continue to renew and multiply, and that’s comforting to those wanting a long-term technology partner who is thriving in today’s economy.

The government folks also are reassured because we’re growing, diversifying, and innovating with what’s cutting edge in the digital marketplace. They want to work with efficient, dependable companies — growth in a recession certainly is one way we’ve demonstrated that successfully.

Sure, we’re consistently tinkering with the messaging on our website and in our marketing collateral to ensure Tellenger brand integrity and a commitment to our two unique audience sectors, yet so far the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

For all those government contractors or private companies looking to take the leap into the OTHER sector, we say go for it. But, if you’re in the web consulting business, then expect stiff competition from us!

Where I see the most opportunity for capitalizing on web and mobile technology is for traditional, old-line businesses and organizations, not just high-tech firms.  These are the firms that can use the technology to create even greater value. Manufacturing, retail shops, even agriculture can realize efficiencies and create new opportunities using these technologies.  Government is the perfect example.  In the government, things have been done largely the same way since the advent of the “modern bureaucracy” during China’s Qin Dynasty well over 2000 years ago.  Slowly people in bureaucracies are looking at their processes and procedures, then asking, “How can technology improve the way we work?”  For example, the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves used paper-based processes to schedule training and administer attendance and performance.  Since pay is linked to these records, errors made on paper created problems with issuing accurate checks in a timely manner.  Automating the system not only made it easier to manage drills, it reduced the lag in pay from months in some cases to the standard of two weeks.

It is the intersection of web and mobile technologies with traditional ways of doing things that is the most exciting because it can yield the greatest results.  The firm Legal River created a platform to link small businesses with a legal problem to quality lawyers able to solve the problem.  They used technology to address the issue of “how do I find a good attorney.”  Manufacturing plants are using mobile phone applications to monitor assembly line metrics, which are automatically input into a web technology that generates performance reports broken down by machine, worker, and hour.  Small mom and pop retail shops can use the web to not only sell products across the world, but to reach highly defined niche target markets of people most likely to buy their products.

Using technology to make traditional businesses and everyday processes better is where the real innovation exists.  And this is what makes our jobs so rewarding.

Federal Computer Week published an article encouraging government-related websites to quickly adopt six key features:

1. Transparency
2. Collaboration
3. Searchability
4. Engagement
5. Archiving
6. Better Services

Arguably, most websites out there — not just government focused sites — should demonstrate these characteristics. But I think that shift to meet these expectations will be slow, even with aggressive mandates from the Obama Administration.

I think engagement will require a particularly dramatic shift based on my experiences at a recent Open Government Innovations conference I attended. In one session, I found myself rather passionately defending user experience after someone challenged a panel of designers, saying, “Well, it might be prettier. But it’s not compliant, and we can’t have our sites not be compliant.”

“It” in this case was a design composition — a flat image — so it definitely wasn’t compliant at that point … it wasn’t even a website!  Of course, it’s imperative that sites be compliant, but technology today ensures that we can integrate improvements in information architecture and usability to visually represent data in a more engaging way while meeting existing 508 criteria.

And adhering to existing requirements while capitalizing on the engagement promoted by the technology advancements of today’s digital marketplace certainly is one way to bolster user involvement in government online.

After two years, we’ve re-launched Tellenger.com to better highlight the results of our work and the services we provide. Like many businesses, we started heading in one direction, though our successes, clients, and the market have encouraged us to adapt in order to better meet a unique set of needs.

Some of the changes that more accurately describe Tellenger include:

1. No longer focused exclusively on Government clients – We’ve found that our work with the Marine Corps, for example, has led to private sector businesses wanting our advanced coding skills. And our Government clients want to benefit from our leading edge work in the private sector.
2. Increased focus on Business Strategy – While strategy has always been an important part of our process, we were surprised to discover how many competitors fail to put the business strategy of an organization at the forefront of technology consulting. We let the business objectives of our clients drive our exceptional technology engineering and visual design … not the other way around. As a result, we’ve proven exceptionally skilled at building web-based businesses and driving organizational value through technology.
3. Not just complex coding anymore – Tellenger got its start building complex, mission-driven software applications delivered through the web so people could access their apps anywhere, anytime. However, we were missing an important market segment of organizations that needed less complex, though equally important, websites and digital technology solutions. Interestingly, the shift to building web-based businesses and ecommerce sites has actually enhanced our software apps.

While some website re-launches are simply refreshes or updates, Tellenger’s signifies our successes and our growth. We are doing outstanding work for our clients, which is leading to new clients, new requests, and repeat business. The new Tellenger.com site is a marker of the achievements our clients have experienced as a result of our work together.

I’m proud to welcome the new Tellenger.com.

I’m pleased to announce that Tellenger, Inc. has been awarded its GSA Schedule for providing IT services, effectively enabling our firm to bid directly on government contracts.

In almost two years since its founding, Tellenger has served major public and private sector clients such as the Marine Corps, National WWII Memorial, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Health and Human Services, and the Patent and Trademark Office. Our team of accomplished professionals continues to earn client accolades for exceptional service provided on time and on budget.

I’m proud of the strong start we’ve had and look forward to even greater success in the future.