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The Impact of Proposal Software on Real World Proposals
I’ve written a fair number of articles exploring the capabilities of a proposal software platform called Privia. I recently discovered that one of my conclusions about it was wrong. Privia has the most features and the most power under the hood than any other proposal software package that I have ever seen. So I hope you can understand why I would conclude that to get the most out of it you should do a lot of preparation and think through how to best automate your process before you implement it.
When you think of automating a process, it sort of implies that you have a mature, well documented process in place before you try to automate it. However, proposals in the real world often get messy. Even those with detailed processes generally don’t follow them with machine-like precision. When you do things differently on every proposal, it’s hard to think about implementing software. Even if the software doesn’t tie your hands or limit your options, the thought of having to prepare yourself to take advantage of it and then somehow find the time to configure it and learn how to use it can seem like an insurmountable burden.
If you have your process down to a science, then automating it is straightforward and you can expect an incremental improvement. But it turns out that if your proposals are total chaos and you do things differently every time, you may actually have more to gain. The right software can present you with more options instead of tying your hands. And it will make some things so much easier that instead of being a burden, it will be a net benefit.
As it turns out, the people who get the biggest return on investment out of Privia are the ones who aren’t prepared and have little or no process in place. Consider the following scenario.
A company finds out about an opportunity after RFP release and decides to go for it even though all the best practices say that your odds of winning are higher if you start your pursuit before RFP release. The Proposal Manager needs to get the RFP and the outline/cross-reference into people’s hands quickly.
If you are prepared in advance, you do this at the kick-off meeting. But it can take a few days to pull together a meeting if you’ve got remote staff or subcontractors. With Privia, you don’t have to wait for a face-to-face meeting or a teleconference. You set up your Privia workspace and then call participants and walk them through the steps until they have access to it.
Then you start posting things like the RFP, outline, assignments, list of questions to submit to the customer, section templates, etc., just as quickly as they are prepared. With each post, you send an instant message to the relevant participants. When you want someone to work on something or report their status, a notification goes out immediately. All of the files they need are right there.
When an author completes a submission, you can send it right back out to someone for review. It doesn’t matter what your approach to proposal reviews is going to be. If you are having color team reviews, doing proposal validation according to the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process, or making it up as you go along, each reviewer gets notified in real time and gets the files needed to perform the review.
If you really want to speed up the reviews, they can be done inside Privia with all comments made online. There is no delay while distributing paper, no spending time around a table or desk reading comments because someone has bad hand writing, and no transcription. Not only does it not matter where the reviewer is physically located or what time of day (or night) they perform the review, but it doesn’t matter where or when the comments are received. You don’t have to stop for a sit-around-the-table review if you don’t want to. You can pick up and process the comments when you are ready for them.
Handoffs, issues, sign-offs, and approvals can all be done by instant messenger. You can keep people chained to their desk and focused on the document until they wilt from lack of sunlight. As bad as that sounds consider how much better it is then the typical dysfunctional proposal review that does more harm through disruption than any benefit it could provide. Or how much time is saved by not reading and entering handwritten changes. Think of all the process steps that you should be following, but that you either skip completely or give mere lip service to in order to complete the proposal on time. Now imagine actually being able to involve all the right subject matter experts, reviewers, and resources and to do it with a chain of notifications and documented assignments and approvals. Not only can you do them for real, but you can do them faster than when you were only going through the motions and pretending to do reviews.
If you already have an effective process, Privia saves you some time, which is valuable. But if your process is chaotic, Privia not only buys you time, but it makes it possible to actually do many of the things you know you should be doing properly instead of just barely scraping by.
And after doing a few proposals in Privia, you’ll find those notifications, reviews, and approvals becoming routine. It may even start to seem like your process is almost repeatable. You could even start thinking about implementing some of those workflow features you heard about when the software was installed but you never got around to playing with. What do you think the impact will be on your win rate when your process becomes more stable and you can make improvements that carry over from one proposal to the next?
People with little or no process can achieve an even higher ROI because they’ll benefit not only from the time savings, but also from the better quality practices that Privia’s features make possible, the stabilizing effect it has on your process, and ultimately by a higher win rate. And the best part is you can get all those benefits without having to change your corporate culture or learn all of the advanced features of the software (at least at the beginning).
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