How Privia Makes It Easier to Evolve Your Proposal Process

Privia helps you automate your workflow and provides very useful features, like the ability to deliver written instructions with assignments. While Privia is helpful, it cannot guarantee success. Success lies on the method. If you automate a flawed process, it may help you more quickly discover that your process is flawed. You may even blame the software and not realize that your process is the real problem. The trick is to focus on your process and not on the automation. If you do, a tool like Privia can easily help you implement a good process.

Implementing a process in Privia starts off the same way as implementing a manual process. And it also suffers from similar risks. You must first define the process. It is almost impossible to define everything required for a detailed, mature process on the first attempt, and it usually takes a few cycles to perfect your method. Privia allows you to evolve your processes in the same way you would evolve your manual processes.

When you evolve your process using Privia, you have centralized control over the steps or milestones that define the process. Instead of rolling out changes and having distribution issues, you make the changes online and they go into effect immediately. You can, and probably should, start with the barest minimum of workflow, milestone steps. Then, as your process matures, you can add more layers to your process. When making changes to your process template, you will not have to do anything else to make sure that people are following the most up-to-date version of the workflow. It will go into effect automatically when people start their proposals.

In addition to the basic workflow for the process, you should also define the roles participants will play. Since you are going to evolve your process, you don't want to get consumed with the details and define too many roles. For your initial implementation, just keep it simple. Privia allows you to define roles and then restrict the assignment of activities to only those persons that have the role specified in the process template.

The next step in evolving your process will be to name and assign the process deliverables, such as what documents must be provided with the activity for its successful completion. Privia helps keep it simple by tracking schedules and assignments, and by allowing you to embed deliverables with the actual activity assignment.

If you are evolving your process, then you may not have detailed specifications for the deliverables at first. But once you have lived with the process for a short period of time and better understand your needs, then you can begin to define what content is required for each activity in the process. The easiest way to do this is in the form of checklists that prompt people to make sure their process deliverables include everything they should.

One problem with evolving your process is that you will have an ongoing need to train people in the latest process enhancements. (Even with a mature process you will have an ongoing need to make sure that people working on the proposal are sufficiently familiar with the process.) With Privia you can add your process instructions, such as the checklists mentioned above, to the assignments in the workflow. This way when people receive an assignment, it comes with a document that explains what they have to do to fulfill the assignment.

As your process evolves and you add detail to the deliverables and standardize their formats, you can update the file(s) that people receive with their assignments. This not only ensures that they have the latest guidance, but it also provides you with a vehicle to address lessons-learned. When you review recently completed proposals and identify the things you would like to improve on future proposals, you can update the assignment instruction information to emphasize what you have learned.

Once formats are standardized, the next logical step is to implement templates that people can use to facilitate the completion of process deliverables. When you reach this stage, your users will find it easier to follow the process than not to, because it will deliver everything they need to complete their assignments quickly.

Once you have defined the content and other requirements for your process deliverables, you can add quality validation steps to your workflow. This is especially easy if you define your deliverable specifications by using checklists. You can give the same checklists that you give authors to complete to reviewers to validate that they were followed. By making your review checklist simple and using Privia to automate the logistics of getting the document to people and getting their review comments back, you can increase the quality of your proposals without disrupting the schedule.

If you use Privia to evolve your process, you'll find that in addition to using it as a workflow platform, you'll also be using it as a training or performance enhancement platform. You will also find yourself doing the things you need to do to ensure your process is successful, whether automated or not. However, because Privia allows you to automate your processes, it will make it easier to distribute and update the information. This will increase your chances of a successful implementation.

And when you are done, your process will make everybody's lives so much easier that you'll wonder how people are able to do it any other way!