Finding the Signal Amidst the Noise: A DoD Subcontractor Case Study

Desperation is a terrible thing…

What we do here at Radio Design Group is very specialized. Not many companies specialize in RF and wireless design, even within the defense community.

We realized the value of an Internet website early on, and our first site went live in the mid-90s. Search engines had us at or near the top of their results for a long time when RF or wireless engineering was the search term. However, by 2000, the proliferation of Internet “radio” (which isn’t “radio” at all), cellular carrier websites, and other similar types of Internet clutter made it very difficult for us to be found by potential clients.

But desperation is a terrible thing, and at times, it results in extreme measures. In the early 2000s, I took a call from a defense contractor about an RF-related project. Would we be interested in quoting the development of an RF distribution unit? After asking some questions about the nature of the project, I told them to send over the requirements.

They Found Us Through the Noise

During the conversation, I casually asked how they found us. They told me they had been searching for someone to do this job without any luck until one of the engineers simply started ratting through Google results, page after page until they found something that looked promising. How many pages did they get to before they found us?  Eighty four! That’s right, some desperate engineer went through eighty-four pages of Google results until they found our website.

Now that’s determination!

But for both the customer and for us, that determination paid off.  It turned out that the customer had contacted several other potential suppliers, and all of them had either turned them down flat or had submitted a quote with “exceptions,” meaning that they would design and build the unit, but without several of the key features that were needed.

However, our willingness to supply the units without the exceptions caused concern with the contractor’s upper management.  The concern was that Radio Design Group, being a small firm, was asserting that we could succeed where other, larger and more well-known companies could not.  To mitigate that concern, they sent a team of engineers to Oregon to find out what our design approach was going to be.

After extensive discussions and a thorough review of the design approach, the engineers recommended that they should go ahead with Radio Design Group.  Later, the head engineer on the team told me that his boss, a vice-president-level executive, told him that if we succeeded, he would get a promotion, but if we failed, they would fire him.  Talk about taking a chance!

During the development process, we maintained close coordination with the customer’s engineering team.  Midway through the development, the customer made a major control system change, requiring an engineering change order.  Their management was surprised that the cost of the change was very reasonable.  More importantly, the schedule was not affected, and we finished the prototype unit ahead of schedule and under budget.

Customer Service and Quality Commitment

The RF distribution unit was the first in a long series of products for that purpose.  Since then, we have produced a total of five different variants, most of which are still in service today, almost twenty years after the program began.  We still offer product support for all of the active units, as well as some related items for the same system made by other suppliers.

Learn more about our RFDUs HERE.

Now that you've found us, we are determined to help you! Contact us to discuss how we can modernize your aging RF systems, boost your existing broadcast setup, or create custom hardware for your business.