Two For The Price Of One: Use Your Proposal Software For Project Management

Almost every professional service bid can increase the value-added offered to the customer by including a web-based project management portal. A web-based project portal can offer access control, search and retrieval, knowledge management, improved efficiencies, better oversight, and more to the project team and to the customer. Finding and installing such a web-based project management solution, however, often causes professional service firms much pain. Coincidently, many companies suffer similar pains when searching for and installing a proposal software solution.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could make one selection and solve both problems? As it turns out, the needs of proposals and the needs of projects have a lot of similarities:

• Geographically dispersed teams. Both proposals and project teams can be located at multiple locations, often separated by great distances. Project teams are often split between the customer's location and the company's location. Both proposals and project teams may have a need for people to be able to access information from home as well as work. A web-based portal helps lower travel costs and makes collaboration much more convenient.

• File/folder system. Both proposals and project teams need a place to store their electronic files. Traditionally people have used local area networks but these are not always accessible to remote staff and to the customer. A web-based file/folder system makes it easier for people who are remotely located to access the files, while preserving the familiarity of the file/folder storage system.

• Keyword search. Once you start to accumulate a large collection of files and folders stored where everyone can access them, you need a search and retrieval tool. Nearly all proposal software comes with a keyword search feature and if it's designed right it will be equally beneficial to a project team.

• Workflow system. Both proposals and project teams have a need to route information and files for processing, review, decision making, and approvals. A workflow system can greatly increase efficiency.

• Gantt charts, milestone tracking, and schedule coordination. While proposals have specific deadlines and a flurry of activity that has to be managed in order to meet them, so do some projects. Features that support deadline tracking and coordination of activities can be very useful to project teams.

• Access control. You probably do not want everyone to have full read/write access to your files. This is even more true with a web-based portal --- you definitely do not want the entire world to have access to everything. Your software must provide access control to prevent unauthorized access. Proposals often have multiple types of participants. In addition to proposal specialists there are often other proposal participants and stakeholders within a company. In addition, consultants and subcontractors may be involved. You need to be able to control not only who has access, but how much access each person has. A project team has similar needs, but different groups of people. For example, a project team might need to provide access to its customer, possibly the customer's customers, and other third parties as well as subcontractors.

• Version control. Both proposal and project teams can benefit from having a version control system. A good version control system will not only help with file management, but can serve as the foundation for a configuration management approach that is often needed for large, complex projects to be successful.

The key to making a selection is to look for proposal software that is not exclusively built around a proposal workflow. You could also look for a project or document management platform that could support the proposal process, but the proposal process has particular requirements that a generic platform probably won't support.

One platform that we know of that could do double-duty is Privia® by Synchris®. Privia is a web-based document management, collaboration and workflow platform designed to help manage the entire bid lifecycle, from opportunity tracking to proposal development by distributed teams. Privia's workflow system is very powerful and can easily serve the needs of most projects.

Here are just two examples of how Privia can support both proposal development and project management:

Example #1: Task Order Contract. Prime contractors with task order contracts often have large numbers of subcontractors. Coordinating which subcontractors are going to participate on which task orders and responding to task orders is a challenge for which a web-based portal is particularly well suited. Each task order may spawn a new project, often at different locations. A flexible web-based proposal platform can be used to win the master contract, provide a means to coordinate responses to task orders, and give the prime contractor a tool that facilitates coordination and oversight of multiple task order and project teams.

Example #2: Reports and Deliverables. Most projects require the preparation of deliverables and the submission of reports. While these are usually paper documents, these days electronic documents are also often submitted. Having a web-based portal with file storage not only makes it easy to submit these files, but it also enables you to provide access during draft development and create a searchable resource of documents. If the customer will be collaborating with you to create the deliverables, a web-based portal with file/folder storage and version control can be a tremendous help in executing the project.

Two For The Price Of One

If you are going to pay for proposal software, it may only be a relatively small incremental cost to add seats for the project team. You are, in effect, getting two solutions for one price. When you consider the costs of training and installation, you gain even more due to economies of scale. Your project lead and key staff will probably be involved in the proposal, already have the software installed and be familiar with it when the project starts. If you use the same proposal software for all of your proposals, and all of your projects, then you really start to see economies of scale. When everyone has it and knows how to use it collaboration on any project within your company benefits. Proposal software is an overhead expense that is difficult for many professional services companies to absorb. But a project expense, either direct or indirect, is much easier to approve. When you use one platform for both, it may be easier to account for and recover the cost of the software.