(Published 1/16/2018, updated 1/17/2020).
This 200+ person Defense Contractor had a history as a reseller of advanced computer and communications equipment. Over the last few years they worked to develop their solution business. Using R3 WinCenter they have created an integrated capture and proposal management system to support their GovCon business development process. This system has improved their productivity and driven up win rates based upon the quality of proposals and increased participation across the organization.
The Challenge
This Defense Contractor had built its core business as a reseller of computer and communications equipment. Over the years they moved up the stack in sophistication to avoid commoditization. However, over the last five years they began to invest in building their solutions/services business as an additional hedge and as a growth business.
As a reseller their standard way of winning business was similar to the way that commercial sales organizations work. It involved simple proposals – really just quotes. In fact, they use Salesforce for this part of the business.
However, for their solutions business they needed a different approach. This business development would involve influencing and then responding to RFPs. Each response would be unique. The responses would be worked on and brought together by working on documents and sections through a process.
In addition, they wanted to adopt the standard GovCon industry approach of a phase-based Business Development lifecycle. This involves multiple phases and integrated, defined capture and proposal development activities along the way. Their Director of Capture Management and their Director of Proposal Management were both experienced in the GovCon Business Development Lifecycle. They wanted a way to be able to drive a consistent process and streamline the work. This would help them increase the participation and adoption across the organization.
They had historically used Microsoft SharePoint internally for basic RFP proposal document management. They tracked other capture information in spreadsheets or other systems like Salesforce. This approach was all manual. The information was in different places. The result is that it required a lot of manual work. It was unproductive and put things at risk of falling into the cracks. It also was not practically possible to drive a consistent process using a manual system such as this. They needed a better way.
The Solution
To support this need they selected R3 WinCenter. This software solution is designed to provide Federal Government Contractors with an integrated capture and proposal development system. This one system is designed to support the full GovCon BD lifecycle and the best practices that have developed over the years.
With the deployment of WinCenter, the capture and proposal teams were immediately brought together to work in a single work environment. The silos were gone. They had visibility. They then implemented their “flavor” of the BD process phases and set of capture & proposal activities. WinCenter allows customers to customize their process and also to customize how the work gets done.
They then set about using WinCenter to drive the work. They used it to drive reuse of proposal assets. They used it to drive writer and reviewer work assignments. They used it to collaborate. They used it for color reviews and gate reviews. They leveraged it to automatically track and manage the opportunities and the status of all of the work. They relied on it to keep everyone informed with real time information.
The Result
The system was used with the core team on initial proposals. It was then rolled out to extend the participation across the organization in the capture and proposal work. Many people in the organization had never had training in this type of business development work. However, with WinCenter the process is embedded in the software. And, the software is designed to drive people to do the right things at the right time. So, over time participants naturally started to understand and work within the desired BD process.
The organization estimates that the use of WinCenter eliminated about 30% of the time and effort of the manual and administrative work that they were doing before. It just evaporated as the system took over the work. They also were able to increase their win rates because they invested their time savings in better quality capture and proposal work. The tradeoff for this customer is to eliminate manual work (and distractions), in order to, invest in the quality of the output to drive higher win rates.
The success of this system was recognized across the organization. In fact, the person that had championed the system and drove its adoption was rewarded as “Employee of the Year” across the whole company.
The Long Term Result (January 2020, 3 Years from Adoption)
Its been 2 years since this case study was originally published. Over the last 3 years, this company has averaged a 50% win rate. They are smart about which opportunities they pursue and leverage WinCenter to support proper capture work and proposal development. During this period they did have some spikey periods with high volume where they brought in some outside consultants. However, they spent about half of what they would normally spend to support this volume.
In addition, given there success with WinCenter they invested in R3 Contract Management which was implemented 2 years ago to support all of their contracts including the reseller side of the business.
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