The roster of companies holding Networx contracts is well-known by now, months after the General Services Administration awarded the two contracts to a total of five telecommunications companies.

Less visible are the partners that each of the prime contractors will bring to individual engagements under the multibillion-dollar program. The partner companies have specific skills and relationships, but unlike the prime contract holders, they are not steering the ship.

Making the most of the Networx opportunity requires companies to be aggressive, creative and accessible. Partner companies have to know what task orders are in the pipeline that the prime contractors might bid on and at the same time ensure that their primes remember what talents and domain knowledge the partners have. NetStar-1 LLC, for example, an information technology services company based in Rockville, Md., decided to treat the Networx prime it works under, Qwest Communications International Inc., like a customer.

Qwest is “a partner, like a typical vendorpartner relationship but also like a vendor- customer relationship,” said Les Rosenthal, executive vice president of sales and operations at NetStar-1. “We decided to market to Qwest the way we would market to a customer with great potential.”

That means NetStar-1 leaders meet regularly with Qwest officials to discuss customer requirements, company capabilities and potential opportunities. NetStar-1’s director of sales talks to counterparts at Qwest weekly, and the two companies’ technical experts talk a couple of times a month. Those phone calls will become more frequent as agencies moving to Networx from FTS 2001 kick transition efforts into high gear next year, he said.

Another key for NetStar-1, Rosenthal said, is to keep the emphasis on what his company can do rather than what it wants. To make that more than words, NetStar-1 has helped Qwest get involved in one or two federal opportunities, he said.

“We clearly do not want to be looked at with our hands outstretched, saying, ‘What can you bring to me, Qwest?’ ” he said. “We want to be saying, ‘This is what we can bring to you.’”

GIVING BACK
Some of that value comes from narrow domain knowledge. The prime contractors are large companies competing against other large companies, and that means they may not have the in-depth knowledge of specific agencies that their smaller partners sometimes do, Rosenthal said.

“As a small company, we don’t have the sales footprint that Qwest has,” he said. “But we may have a level of relationship and understanding [within a particular agency] that they don’t have today.”

The two companies had not worked together before the Networx program, but Qwest added NetStar-1 to its team early in the bidding process, Rosenthal said. The company tried from the start to manage the relationship at a staff level but quickly found that it needed high-level executive involvement to flourish.

Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure Inc., a partner to AT&T Inc. on Networx, had a similar situation. Although the two companies had worked side-by-side on many commercial projects, “I was not surprised to find that AT&T Federal didn’t know that much about us,” said James Payne, president of the Federal Telecoms division at Bechtel.

To remedy that, Bechtel officials had some informational meetings with AT&T Federal leaders and took part in customer meetings. Those meetings have recently become more frequent. They are usually meetings of peers: sales, technology and business development specialists in one company meet their counterparts in the other.

Bechtel, which specializes in building infrastructure, has experience in disaster recovery and network redundancy. “I think Bechtel is uniquely positioned on this team,” Payne said. “I don’t believe anyone else has a large engineering construction company on their team.”

THE RIGHT CONTACTS
Networx has opened opportunities for companies that have long track records in federal network services and also for newcomers. Companies with some history do have advantages, though, partially because they know the other long-timers in the field.

Hughes Network Systems LLC wanted to become a subcontractor to several of the Networx primes, and it succeeded with three of them partly because of its history, said Tony Bardo, assistant vice president of government solutions at Hughes.

“I knew many of the right contacts because these had been both friends and competitors over the years,” he said. On Networx Universal, Hughes subcontracts to AT&T and Qwest. On Networx Enterprise, it is also a partner to Sprint. Hughes also won a spot on SATCOM II, GSA’s contract specifically for satellite communications services. The strategy was to offer agencies the broadest possible range of routes to buy Hughes’ services.

“A number of agencies, I believe, will turn to the Networx provider and say, ‘Get me everything I need,’ ” he said. But some will use the more specialized vehicle for satellite communications.

Hughes meets directly with potential customers, Bardo said. “We make sure we let the customers know we’re a definite player on Networx. Customers want to know that. That’s a question they ask.”

Hughes has a less common problem in subcontracting to multiple primes. “You have to make sure you firewall discussions,” Bardo said. “We have to make sure to keep the details of the bids proprietary.” When Hughes is angling for work that could go to more than one of the prime contractors it works for, Bardo will assign different teams to ensure people do not inappropriately share information about each company’s bid, he said.

Viack Corp., a subcontractor to Verizon Inc. on Networx, provides collaborative services, primarily instant messaging and related audio and video services. Senior Vice President Amy Fadida said one side benefit of being part of a Networx team is that other opportunities for teaming come to light.

Although the first priority is the Networx program, Fadida said that in talking to some other companies on the team, “we’ve been able to start discussions about how we might work together outside of Networx. This has been with Verizon’s encouragement,” she said.

TOP-DOWN SHARING
The interaction between prime contractors and their partners flows two ways, said Susan Zeleniak, vice president of Verizon Federal.

“Whenever we have a statement of work from one of the agencies, we share that with our partners so they can determine if there’s an opportunity for them,” she said. “We have our partners work our proposals with us. We sometimes have the partner come to us and say, ‘We’d like to talk to an agency,’ and then we can get them in the door.”

The teams will not remain fixed. New companies are already asking for appointments to try to get on the teams, and that will continue through the life of the Networx program, she said.

“We’re finding that we didn’t think of every hole we have, so we need some new players to come and join us,” said Diana Gowen, executive vice president and general manager for government services at Qwest. “But then, we’ve also found that there are lots of systems integrators that didn’t join a team, and they’re now out trying to figure what team they’re going to position themselves with.”

Any company seeking to join a Networx team should be prepared for a thorough examination, Gowen and Zeleniak said. The prime contractors will look at a company’s financial soundness, past performance record, skills, technologies and also the potential clashes with other companies already on the team before signing a teaming agreement.

The prime contractors will always need the subcontractors, said Jeff Mohan, AT&T’s director of business development for Networx.

“Small companies in many cases are more nimble than large companies,” he said. “They’re able to do things that a large company can’t do cost-effectively. If we need someone with a security clearance to go to a site, and it needs to be done by the end of the day and I just found out about it 10 minutes ago, we have a couple of companies that can do that.”