← The Digital Executive
The Digital Executive
Aaron Tate on Future-Proofing GovCon with Secure, Scalable AI Solutions | Ep 1080
00:15:27
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Aaron Tate. Aaron Tate is a Senior Vice President and CIO at Technomile, a leading provider of transformative AI enabled cloud solutions that help government contractors transform and mature their business processes and harness the power of data. Aaron is responsible for the engineering architecture and operations of Technomile, ensuring the delivery of innovative, scalable and secure solutions that enhance customer value and the user experience. Aaron is an experienced and accomplished technology leader with over 15 years of experience in the GovCon and aerospace and defense industries. Prior to Technomile, he served in solution engineering, technical consulting and project management leadership roles at Upskill, BTS and Versar. Well, good afternoon Aaron. Welcome to the show.
- [00:57]
B
Thank you very much, Brian. Nice to talk to you.
- [01:00]
A
Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it and making the time you're in the East Coast, Virginia, D.C. area. Appreciate that. I'm in Kansas City, we're an hour apart, but I do like to traverse the globe on a daily basis, so I appreciate you making that time. And Aaron, jumping into your first question, you've held leadership roles across engineering consulting and project management. How have those diverse experiences shaped your approach? And as CIO at Technomile.
- [01:26]
B
Yeah, thanks Brian. What I found is that here at Technomile and we support government contractors for, for the, in the US and from the roles that I've held previously, as you mentioned, across engineering consulting and project management, what I've found is that there's a commonality for adaptability that I've been really able to, to see across all the different roles. So I started off in working government contracting for a company called Versaar. And as I came into that role I was doing project management for construction. And what I got to experience was a lot of different nuances to the government contracting experience, from proposal writing to contract management, to actually printing out binders and binders of these huge proposals for environmental engineering projects and got a real appreciation for a lot of the what has to go into actually winning an opportunity for a government contractor. From that I went in to a company called Battlefield Telecommunication Systems, bts and what we were doing there is really building products for the soldiers and people that were deployed forward in the army and, you know, other deployed forces and actually had the opportunity to build a product from the ground up with the teams from we were working cellular base stations and things that could help support biometrics and the warfighter at the, at the edge, at the tip of the spear and actually had the Opportunity to take that from not only writing the proposal, but building the product, deploying the product forward. I even deployed to Afghanistan for months to actually take that product and, and work side by side with soldiers and then finally at upskill, helping to create products for augmented reality, heads up, display complex work instructions. And what I found there is got to learn a lot about how this is deployed not only to government contracting but also to commercial applications. And that really gave me the perspective of there's a lot of the challenges that happen for the end users and a real appreciation and being able to put myself into the shoes of end users of different types of products, whether it's hardware, applications, software applications and integrating into really complex environments. So I bring that to here as the IO at Technomile because it's really helped me to shape my curiosity, my flexibility and my adaptability as we go into and see new technologies that are, that are coming here and currently. And that also helps to make sure that I can help my customers see and want to understand how they can deploy these new types of technologies to, into their environments for their digital transformations, to find the right opportunities and to execute on their contracts.
- [04:30]
A
Thank you. I appreciate that. You really covered a broad space there which is exciting and interesting. You've obviously had various roles that brought, as you said, commonality and adaptability to your current role. But much of that has made you successful across those various roles and projects from building, deploying, managing these technologies to support our government contractors, but the military as well, which is really cool and I like what I really took away here is you've taken a perspective being in the customer's shoes, which is always important. Right. So I appreciate that. And Aaron, Technomile focuses on helping government contractors transform with AI enabled solutions. What unique challenges do GovCon companies face in digital transformation compared to commercial sectors?
- [05:12]
B
Yeah, what's really unique here and I don't know that a lot of people really understand the scope and the breadth the U.S. government takes on. And you know, we say GovCon and that has a connotation but the government is one of the largest purchasers of services goods, parts across the globe. One of the largest employers here in the U.S. and what's interesting is the industry, the GovCon industry that supports the U.S. government, there's a wide breadth of different types and sizes and scales of companies. Everyone from small businesses that are certain types of small businesses that can help to support the government all the way up to Fortune 500 companies. And so what's interesting is that there are a lot of commonalities between those businesses in trying to find the right opportunities and trying to find that needle in the haystack. So what's interesting is that from a commercial perspective, you see commercial companies who, especially today with AI and a lot of the transformation that that's bringing about. We've seen that the business models of companies in the commercial sector are starting to be challenged. And a lot of companies are feeling the pressure in how they can remain competitive in a space where they may be hiring AI agents as workers and these types of technologies. And I think that government contracting is very similar in many regards. We see companies that are facing many of the same challenges as these businesses. How to find the right opportunities, how to win them and how to deliver on them to get paid right? How do they deliver the value? And so we see that these companies and getting successful contracts in government contracting space is delivering value to the right entity or agency at the right time and then winning that business and then having that contract be completed properly so that they get past performance so that they can get morbid. So, so being able to identify those opportunities quickly is one thing that's very unique in a regulated industry. You have highly secure requirements, you have regulations that dictate how you can get these opportunities and what you can pursue in. And so I think that we're going to see a lot more transformation in this space and adaptability. I guess that that's another point from, you know, that I'd like to say is like companies being adaptable really helps know to make sure that they're competitive going forward. One example, especially in government contracting is the Fedramp program. And the board has been aggressively moving towards digital transformation and how that they are accepting companies, businesses through their process of compliance in their 20x program. And so you're seeing a new perspective on automation in how these secure and compliance processes move forward. And I feel like that that's going to be. You're going to see that a lot more going forward with the government, particularly around, you know, how like consolidations that are happening in IT services and then also you know, how companies remain competitive. So I think that they have to understand their competencies and help turn that into value for the government.
- [08:24]
A
Thank you. Really do appreciate that and you helped us understand the audience here. We all know government is probably the largest employer in the US certainly one of the largest purchasers. But of course the government supported by private companies of all sizes as you mentioned today many companies and they've always been looking to be more competitive and more adaptive but with the advent of AI, people are even more trying to get on that bandwagon because they know if they're not adopting AI they could lose their competitive edge. Again, delivering that value to that agency at the right time, as you mentioned, and always looking to identify the opportunities is important for those. And I know Technomile helps these companies be more competitive. I appreciate the share. And Aaron, my third question. How does Technomile's cloud architecture stand apart in terms of performance, reliability or customization for public sector focused organizations?
- [09:16]
B
What's really unique about Technomile is that we started off as a public sector govcon first company and you'll see that a lot of other businesses, they'll start off and they, they focus on the commercial sector or you know, other companies trying to help them support them. And we've, we've stayed really focused on helping to support this set of companies that there's a lot of challenges in how they can go to market. And so we've really focused on helping federal contractors find those opportunities. As I mentioned, how do they find the right AI curated leads that are tailored to their specific competencies, maybe even the places where they want to go. Like they are comparing themselves to companies that where they want to, where they want to be right and strategically where they want to go. So a tool called GovSearch AI and notices IQ and we have a couple of other ones that will help companies. GovSearch AI helps those companies identify those opportunities. It helps them to find the recompete opportunities, the new solicitations and then also what are the potential teaming opportunities that allow them to not only go to market themselves, but also to find the right partnerships to be able to perform those opportunities together. Notices IQ is a way that they can find the opportunities across a wide range of different contracting vehicles that they may be on. Because there's a lot of these rapid turn opportunities that are coming out where they have to respond within a matter of weeks providing large proposals and have to make quick decisions. And so Notices IQ helps them identify those, minimize the kind of the chaos that happens when a new task order is released and then also to, to manage those contracts once they win. We have a contract management tool that also allows them to understand what obligations that are coming from the contracts that they've accepted, how do they remain compliant, how they perform and then how do they get paid for that work so that they can go on to the next opportunity.
- [11:25]
A
Thank you. I appreciate you highlighting some of that in the background for Technobile. Obviously you started out in that public sector GovCon business. But you remain focused supporting these GovCon businesses, a platform that you mentioned. And I'm just going to highlight real quick before the next question is that gov search AI which helps those businesses to find great opportunities and also partnerships. If they do obviously get a bid on or a bid, but they actually get awarded a job or a project, they have an opportunity to find partners to help them support that work. So I appreciate it. And Aaron, last question of the day. Looking ahead, what emerging technologies or priorities do you believe will most influence the future of government contracting over the next three to five years?
- [12:10]
B
Absolutely. And I think this is where a lot of the things that I talked a little bit about earlier about the adaptability and about where the, how do you skate to where the puck is going right in terms of strategically. And I think that we can look to industry and look to the commercial sector to see there's a lot of really fast acceleration towards these AI agents or agentic AI model, context, protocol, complex reasoning, non deterministic process. There's a lot of terminology that's there. But what I think is really interesting is when for our platform we've built on top of a secure Fedramp infrastructure and we're undergoing a Fedramp moderate equivalency audits. So having that secure foundation to really help to build on top of and expanding on with these, these types of technologies like agentic AI. I think that over the next three to five years it's going to be really interesting to see how a lot of companies adapt to the, to these new structures of of not it's not just algorithms anymore, it's how do you set your foundational data, model your architecture and then also hire agents into your processes to really help to support business going forward into the future. So I think that the adaptability again is one of the big things that I want to highlight there. We're building AI agents and agentic AI and teams of agents that are helping to support companies find those right opportunities today. Tomorrow it could be those agents, teams or even groups of AI agents. You know, if we look three to five years down the road, you may even have cooperative agents that help to write full proposals or to respond. It's really exciting to see where this industry's going to go. And I think that as we've started to see over the past six months of the new administration, I think there's going to be a lot of regulation changes and I think there's a lot of ways that this industry is going to start to adopt new technologies. And I think as long as businesses are these govcon, businesses are willing to be adaptable and to accept these new technologies, I see that there's a lot of, a lot of strategic opportunities for companies to, to take and to actually to build new businesses over the next three to five years in GovCon.
- [14:36]
A
Thank you, Aaron. I appreciate that. I really like how you highlighted the way you're looking forward. You know, that vision, you know, how do you easily and quickly move to that target, right? Be more competitive, adaptable, deploying smarter solutions and continuing obviously to provide that secure environment that we work in, but adopt technologies like agentic AI. And what I took away from the conversation, especially here in the last part of our podcast, is that adaptability. And I think that's so important, I think, especially as we move forward and adopt more emerging technologies. So I appreciate that. And Aaron, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [15:14]
B
Yeah, thank you very much, Brian, for inviting me to the show and I appreciate your time.
- [15:19]
A
Bye for now.