Major corps see value of WBE business

In September 2007, CESCO, Inc. and Xerox Corp. signed
a multiyear national contract agreement with Northrop
Grumman Corp. to supply Xerox equipment, supplies, soft-
ware and services to Northrop.
In this instance, CESCO will provide Xerox equipment to
Northrop. Normally, major corporations do business with
other major corporations, but in this case, it was appealing
for Northrop to do business with a major corporation that
had several affiliations with women- and minority-owned
businesses.

CESCO, a certified women’s business enterprise,
is an authorized dealer for Xerox.
Billie Bryant
is the president and CEO of CESCO, a cer-
tified sales and services provider for Xerox, Xerox Global
Services, Lexmark, HP, Ricoh and Brother. She is also president
and CEO of Technology Interchange Resources and Strategies
& Solutions.
“I’ve known Billie Bryant for years. She supports other
women’s enterprises and she is always active in the local small
business initiatives. That is how I met her,” said Ralph ‘Skip’
Masters, Northrop Grumman small business liaison. “I’ve
always known her to be an upfront person of high integrity
[and] heard nothing but good things about her from others.

I’ve always had a good relationship with her.”
Bryant’s experience and determination to
maintain her business over the last 25 years
makes her an ideal candidate for such a nation-
al contract.
“I am really excited about this deal because it’s
my first big national deal,” Bryant said. “It is an
education process. Many of the major corpora-
tions believe that they can only do business with
a major corporation. And when we are building
strategic alliances out there with major corporations, it is a
major learning process for everybody. It is a lesson particular-
ly for major corporations that we would like to be part of to
understand that we are a value-added entity.“
Last year, Northrop Grumman surpassed its spending goal
of 5 percent with MWBEs reaching a precedent of 7.1 per-
cent of total spending.

“Northrop Grumman, as
a corporation, has support-
ed small business under
the Social Economic Busi-
ness Program or the SEBP.”
Masters explained.“It made
sense under the Northrop
Grumman perspective to
partner with a large corpo-
ration like XEROX that was
going to also support small
businesses. And it made
sense for XEROX [to] iden-
tify CESCO as this region’s
small business partner.”