The Problem: With the tragedy of Sept. 11, it became clear Nexidia’s technology could be used by government intelligence agencies to translate their large amounts of audio data into actionable intelligence. With a shortage of native speaking linguists, much of the data captured by our Intel agencies took too long to manually translate, and adapting Nexidia’s technology to translate to languages other than English and Spanish would be expensive.
With the recent mandate to quickly and accurately translate and evaluate thousands of hours of communications in several Arabic languages, the Army had two urgent requirements. First, identify commercial technologies that meet the requirements and, second, once identified, seek alternative funding sources since the Army had not included funding in their budget preparation.
Strategic Recommendation: Nexidia recognized the potentially important applications for the Department of Defense and other government agencies, but they did not have the resources or practice area discipline to “go to market” and get the support of appropriate government officials. Nexidia hired Dutko Worldwide’s Government Markets team to develop a launch strategy, help raise awareness of their product, create new business opportunities and seek government funding.
Program Elements: • Worked with officials Department of Defense (DoD) Battle Command Battle Lab at Ft. Huachuca, AZ to develop an appropriations request that would open up a new funding source. Ft. Huachua was responsible for language interpretation and translation devices and directed to investigate and develop new technologies.
• Identified key members of Congress who would have the most influence over DoD funding request.
• Conducted outreach to targeted members of Congress, including developing messages and arranging meetings, to gain support for appropriations request.
• Because Nexidia is based in Georgia, Dutko worked closely with the Georgia congressional delegation to obtain an appropriations request.
• After funding was approved, worked closely with members of Congress and federal decision makers to ensure Nexidia was awarded government contract.
Results: Dutko Worldwide was successful in getting appropriations funds and developing business opportunities for Nexidia, along with generally raising the company’s profile among key government decision makers.
Dutko Worldwide’s work resulted in a $1.5 million appropriation – Nexidia’s largest contract award in FY04. As part of this funding, a pilot program was identified in which Nexidia’s technology could be used to advance an important national security initiative. DoD was able to purchase Nexidia technology to meet their software needs to conduct machine aided, real time monitoring of communications and word spotting or audio mining in Arabic languages. Successful completion of the pilot program gave Nexidia the opportunity to demonstrate the value of its technology and position itself for other mission-critical government applications. In FY05, Nexidia received an additional $1.0 million appropriation to include further enhancements to their software.
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