OrangeSlices AI has always been a supporter of small business and when we see a relatively new entity scoring a subcontract spot on a 10-year $141M award with the Department of Veterans Affairs, we look celebrate them and to find out more. Here we sat down with Warren Beck, CEO of RC4Vets and its EVP Vijay Raghavan to discuss this team’s deep VA domain knowledge, its history of success, and its strategic approach to partnerships. Oh, and in case you were wondering, RC4Vets stands for Really Care 4 Veterans.
Emerging but Steeped in Perspective
While Rc4Vets was only formally established in 2019, its team brings to the table intimate and extensive knowledge of VA, its pain points, its promise, and the insights needed to get the job done.
Warren spent more than a decade serving as an IT Program Manager with VA while Vijay brings extensive experience supporting VA, including through TowerStrides Inc, which RC4Vets recently acquired. Additional perspective comes from Ruth Fanning, former VA Director for Integration, Innovation and Change Management and for Veteran and Employee Experience, and from Ruth Comeau, former Program Manager for VRE programs with VA. Both new additions have come out of semi-retirement to help drive this effort forward. Starting to understand how this team won and why they are well suited for the task at hand?
A Veteran himself, Warren also brings personal perspective to the table and a deep desire to improve things for the Veteran community, to provide them with better experiences than he may have had along the way. “We bring to the table experience, expertise, and a commitment to help our Prime (GovCIO) be successful.”
Quick wins Built Upon Success in the Trenches
Leveraging the team’s experience from inside of VA, and perspective gained solving challenges and evolving several key VA systems, it is no surprise this team saw quick wins, starting in 2021 with its first subcontract to ProSphere (now part of PSI), and a subcontract with Customer Value Partners (CVP). Following this was a subcontract on an award to ACS (American Communication Solutions) who held the needed spot on T4NG, and now its spot as a subcontractor on this significant award to GovCIO.
VA Needs Innovation
The VA has some big challenges to tackle and an important population they are supporting. “Anyone can say they do cloud, that they can create a case management system, but what VA really needs is innovation, better ways of doing these things so they can move to the next level. We are working with a company now that does 3D animation rendering at a fraction of the cost and time and using far fewer steps and resources.”
Taking this kind of innovative and proven system, using it as a base to work faster and better can make significant strides in the healthcare space.
Along with seeking out new partners like this, RC4Vets is expanding its other partnerships, adding Salesforce and Appian to continue to evolve its capabilities, and the skills and assets it can offer.
Beyond the Task Order
Driving this team forward in its mission to serve Veterans is consensus acknowledging that the bottom line is just that. What this team is focused on is serving the VA, its Veterans, and taxpayers by finding real solutions, by pausing when something is not working to find a better way forward, by admitting when something needs to change instead of moving ahead just for the sake of completion. “VA is in a great place in terms of its agile maturity, in terms of its goals and the innovation it has invested in. While other agencies may be just starting on this path, VA has been working towards this for a while.”
Selective Strategic Partners
Relying on maintaining a few strategic partnerships, RC4Vets avoids the model that says you must fish in many ponds to catch something, anything. “We carefully choose our partners and look for those who value what we bring. There are many opportunities all around us so we focus on doing our due diligence, understand who the key people are, the process, and how we can help.”
Noting that with the TowerStrides acquisition the company has grown, in its customer relationships, in its business development, the team says they will continuously look for opportunities within agencies in which they can offer smart solutions that support those missions and objective, but that they will continue to move forward thoughtfully and strategically. “We could have already grown to be much bigger, but we are happy for now where we are, are happy to deliver what we can and we’ll continue to be careful in how we grow, what we pursue, and who we partner with. We want people to respect what we do, ensure we are doing quality work, and stand out from the crowd for those reasons.”
About RC4Vets
RC4Vets is guided by an executive team with over 75 combined years of experience supporting and providing real-time solutions in IT over a diverse background that includes system and application coding, system administrators, project and program managers, solutions architect, and program design, as well as business relationship management just to name a few. The company specializes in Low code/No code solutions like ServiceNow and Sales Force, Enterprise BPM tools like Appian, Enterprise Analytics like MicroStrategy.
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Team RC4Vets thanks Orange slices for the recognition.