Small Business Provider Study

August 16, 2022

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Overview

 

The 2022 study evaluated the extent to which NASA SEWP supports small business participation in the federal IT, telecommunications, and audiovisual marketplace. Historically, the government has procured more than $72 billion in goods and services through SEWP and issued over 500,000 small business orders. However, OEM/provider‑level data is not systematically tracked for small business impact, prompting further analysis.

 

Key questions addressed:

1. How many OEMs/providers working through SEWP contract holders qualify as small businesses?

2. What amount of revenue flows to these small business OEMs/providers?

3. How many orders are attributable to small business OEMs/providers?

 

Methodology

 

The study used SEWP transactional data for 2021 and 2025.

 

Steps included:

1. Identifying all OEMs/providers whose offerings were procured through SEWP.

2. Randomly sampling from this provider pool (including associated orders and sales).

3. Assigning each provider a NAICS code.

4. Researching revenue or employee count.

5. Determining business size under federal size standards.

6. Running multiple sampling iterations.

7. Comparing sampled provider data against program spend and order volume.

 

Results were consistent across both years, indicating the sampling method’s reliability.

 

Findings

 

1. Provider Composition

• Both the 2021 and 2025 samples showed a 2:1 ratio of small to large OEM/providers.

• Approximately 66% of providers transacting through SEWP are small businesses.

• With an average of 25 new providers added daily, SEWP introduces more than 9,000 small businesses to the federal market annually.

• Over 80% of companies in SEWP’s provider database are small businesses.

2. Revenue Distribution

• Estimated annual revenue to small business OEM/providers totaled $1.1–$1.4B in 2021 and $1.1–$1.3B in 2025.

• When excluding the top 100 large OEMs (e.g., Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon), the small business share of provider revenue increases from roughly 11% to 30–40%.

• These results suggest greater parity between small and large providers when dominant Fortune 500 firms are removed from the calculation.

3. Order Distribution

• Small business OEM/providers received an estimated 17–32% of orders.

• In FY21, this equated to roughly 11,000–20,000 small business orders.

• Fifty‑six percent of all orders were attributable to the top 100 large providers; removing those firms indicates that 50–75% of remaining orders went to small businesses.

• Sample results repeatedly showed 17%, 32%, and 28% of orders going to small providers.

 

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*** These chart reflects the % of order volume that went to small (black) and large (orange) business interests.  Although there is a difference in terms of Provider Order Volume, it shows greater parity absent the top 100 large business providers.

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Conclusions

 

The NASA SEWP program demonstrates a significant and measurable impact on small businesses:

 

1. SEWP actively onboards and supports small business providers across ICT and AV sectors.

2. SEWP adds new providers efficiently, averaging 25 per week and processing new offerings in approximately 52 minutes.

3. The provider base maintains a consistent 2:1 ratio of small to large businesses.

4. SEWP contract holders effectively engage small OEM/providers to meet federal technology requirements.

5. The program’s structure results in broad small business participation beyond contract holders, extending deep into the provider community.

 

Given these findings, any transfer of the program would require assurance that the receiving organization can match SEWP’s demonstrated capacity to support small businesses, manage provider onboarding at scale, and sustain the established level of marketplace access and operational efficiency.

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                                                                                                                                                                           ~ J. Johnson