Beatriz (Betty) Manetta, CEO/President of Argent Associates, accepted the Dallas/Fort Worth Minority Supplier Development’s prestigious Supplier of the Year – Class IV award at the Council’s recent E Awards Gala. The event highlights companies and individuals who demonstrate operational excellence and real results related to the engagement and use of certified ethnic minority-owned businesses. As a part of the overall recognition ceremony, four certified ethnic minority-owned businesses were selected by a panel of corporate judges in the Supplier of the Year category.
“I am honored to have achieved this award for both my team and myself,” said Manetta. “To be recognized as an E Awards Class IV Supplier of the Year in such a competitive field of suppliers demonstrates the hard work, innovative thinking and excellent results that can occur when an ethnically diverse team of individuals seek to create and deliver services that help others build a competitive advantage.”
Argent started out as a Logistics and Value Added Reseller (VAR) company and is celebrating its 20th year anniversary. Along the journey, Manetta realized that the Argent workforce of trained engineers and software developers could create new products in fields outside of logistics and supply chain. This outlook is helping Argent transform into a vibrant company creating innovative solutions in the Smart/Resilient/Safe City environment. Argent has been working with municipalities and enterprise customers to introduce tech-driven solutions to boost operational performance. The blended direction allows Argent to continue to utilize its supply chain skills to produce improved GPS tracking for chain of custody reporting, ecommerce portals for MRO equipment and redesigned trouble ticket handling. But, it also allows the company to advance new ideas and products related to drones, Artificial Intelligence and Edge Computing that enrich the overall customer experience. The expanded view is creating more training, development and skilled job opportunities in engineering, testing and new products development.
In addition to being named Supplier of the Year, Argent received a MEGA DEAL award in conjunction with AT&T. MEGA DEAL awards are presented to companies that do more than $25 million annually on a contract with one of the Council’s corporate members. Argent was one of nine minority-owned companies performing work with AT&T on contracts worth more than a $25 million annually.