Becoming a contractor for the Department of Defense is good work if you can get it. With a 2021 budget of well over $700 billion, there is a wealth of opportunities for suppliers to fulfill the seemingly limitless demand for all sort of items. Companies both small and large have found profitable and steady work by landing a DoD contract. But like all good things, there’s a catch.

The Devil’s in the Details

If you’re new to doing business with the government, what might surprise you is the number of regulations involved. Every shipment must be prepared with the correct labels and information, and even the smallest error can cause penalties, delayed payments or refused shipments that can quickly whittle away at your margins. One such regulation, MIL-STD-129, is a common cause of headaches for many government contractors.

MIL-STD-129 establishes a requirement for DoD contractors that ship packaged materials to the government to provide labels with barcodes on interior packages (including unit and intermediate packages) with the correct National Stock Number (NSN) and serial number, as well as on shipping containers. For many suppliers, this requirement for unit-level labeling opens up an unprecedented opportunity for error unlike anything they’ve faced before. Even for large suppliers, with distribution centers across the country capable of delivering products to customers just hours after they place their order, unit-level labeling can pose an enormous challenge.

Find the Right Tool for the Job

Odyssey’s defense commerce solutions were created specifically to remove these challenges for contractors. Our sole business is developing workflow process solutions for DoD suppliers, and we’ve been ensuring unit-level labeling compliance since our founding 15 years ago. We also remove the need for manual data entry and working in multiple, unrelated software applications.

While there is no way around complying with all the regulations that come with a DoD contract, you don’t have to let them affect your profitability. To learn more about how Odyssey can help your business add efficiency to its DoD processes, contact us.