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Proposal software and the 80/20 rule
Several different types of software are relevant to developing proposals. Some of it is generic COTS, some of it specialized for proposals, and you can always have something custom developed. Deciding which approach to take is not easy, and is made more difficult by there being more than one type of proposal. What works for one company, may be totally wrong for you. There is no “one-size fits” all proposal software solution.
The 80/20 rule also applies to proposal software. You can get 80% of the functionality you need for 20% of the cost. If you want that last 20% of functionality to make a total solution, it’s going to drive the price up 80%. This rule applies so well to proposal software, that you may want to think of it as the 90/10 rule.
The most important thing to remember in looking for proposal software is that your proposals are different from everybody else’s. First, there are different types of proposals, for example, Federal RFP based, commercial, product, service, etc. Second, there are different types of companies — different sizes, some centralized, some decentralized, some with sales people, some with proposal groups, etc. Then there are different types of internal resources and infrastructures — LANs, WANs, software suites, proposal libraries (online and off), operating systems, platforms, etc. When you get down to the level where you are comparing processes and cultures, it’s pretty clear that even companies within the same general categories and sharing a number of similarities will also have some key differences in how they do proposals.
Finding the approach that best fits you will not be easy. You may have to break down your needs for proposal automation into components. You may face trade-offs. And all through this will run the 80/20 rule. You can do some things quite easily. Other things will be more difficult, and therefor more costly. If you can get by with an 80% solution, you can probably do it quite cost effectively. But if you have to have a 100% solution, you’re going to see the cost skyrocket. That’s nobody’s fault — it’s the nature of the 80/20 rule. If you have to blame some body, blame Murphy, because the 80/20 rule is a corollary of Murphy’s Law.
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