Enhanced Digital Certification is not only a fast, easy certification attesting to your diverse status as a business owner; EDC is a powerful tool in your business toolkit that shows your potential customers that your business could be an ideal supplier.
How does Enhanced Digital Certification do that? By connecting potential buyers with the suppliers they’re looking for.
Take Perspectivity International, for instance. Perspectivity is a leadership development firm that helps Fortune 500 companies equip their leaders in four key areas—presentation and communication skills, sales presentation skills, emotional intelligence, and change readiness. Their most recent Fortune 500 client found them because of their EDC certification and SupplierGateway’s supplier database.
Brian Williams, co-founder of Perspectivity, told us, “I didn’t understand what benefits being diversity-certified brought to the business itself. I know I’m Black. Before George Floyd and 2020, companies didn’t care that I was Black—they cared that Perspectivity could get the job done and done well. My old certification had so much paperwork and took so much time to renew that I let it expire. Now, so many companies have diversity initiatives, and that’s why our most recent Fortune 500 client contacted us.”
Perspectivity’s success didn’t happen overnight, though. Like many entrepreneurs, Brian encountered and overcame struggles to get to where he is today.
“I know I’m going to get flack for this, but when I was a kid, I was placed in what the school system called classes for ‘the mentally retarded’ because I didn’t talk— like, at all. Eventually, I skipped ahead several grades. While I still didn’t talk much, I excelled academically. I graduated with a degree in Computer Science, and I realized that successful people were great communicators.”
Brian ended up in Silicon Valley, where he quickly identified that leadership training was unengaging, boring, and often not even implemented.
“I wanted to be a great communicator, so I began studying presentation skills and qualified for Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking!”
With his unique passion for public speaking, presentation skills, and technical know-how, Brian knew there was a better way to train leaders. He left his job and started Perspectivity with his wife, Tasha.
Brian and Tasha had only been part of the SupplierGateway database briefly when a major client contacted them through the SupplierGateway portal.
“I honestly forgot I’d even registered in this business portal until I got a phone call out of the blue. They were looking for diverse companies for a specific project. We are EDC certified, so they could see our diversity status immediately, so we were invited to do an RFP.”
Of course, Perspectivity won their RFP. Now, they consult regularly with this particular Fortune 500 company for ongoing leadership training.
Brian said, “We would have never connected with this particular Fortune 500 company if it hadn’t been for the SupplierGateway platform and our Enhanced Digital Certification.”
It only took fifteen minutes for Perspectivity to start its journey to become an Enhanced Digital Certification success story. Take that same fifteen minutes and see what happens when EDC becomes part of your story.