Many people have spent many years government contracting and there has always been some sort of government tracking system for federal contractors. A long time ago it was ORCA and then CCR and finally they combined the two to form the System for Award Management. If you are interested in working any federal U.S. Government contracts then you must be registered in SAM. IN order to register in SAM you must first obtain and DUNS Number:
https://iupdate.dnb.com/iUpdate/companylookup.htm
A DUNS registration and SAM registration is free you should never pay anyone to perform this service for you. There are many companies out there that charge as much as $1,500.00 to complete a SAM registration for your company and it’s not worth it. If you are knowledgeable about your company or have your business registrations, these two processes take a total of 40 minutes to complete. The only time you should ever considering outsourcing this service is if you have attempted the registration yourself and the government is telling you there are errors that need to be fixed.
What does SAM do for my company besides allowing all these unscrupulous government contracting business access to my information. You need to be really careful about what you put in SAM as this Information needs to be correct! SAM will store your bank account information and this will allow government agencies to pay you by direct deposit if you win an opportunity. SAM will also verify the information you are giving them to ensure that you are who you say you are. SAM even has a spot where you can enter Past Performance Information to show your experience contracting on a federal level.
Make sure as you are filling out this registration, that you write down all usernames, passwords and especially your MPIN. All of this information is very important to have on hand if you need to make changes to your registration.
If you need to make changes on your GSA Elibrary information such as Duns Number, address, phone number, business name then you need to start with Dun and Bradstreet. Once this registration is updated then you will have to update the System for Award Management registration. Many times they will require additional information such as updated Secretary of State registration. Once you send this back to them, make sure you follow up on this as many times they will lose or forget to process it. Once your SAM registration is completely updated then the GSA will pull this information and automatically create an update modification. If this doesn’t happen within a week or two of SAM update then make sure you contact your Contracting Officer to move the process along.
Schemtosh Consulting would be happy to walk you through the process of updating this information for free, just shoot us an email or give us a call and let us know what you are having problems with.
steve@schemtoshconsulting.com
(740)525-8664
NOV
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