Winning Federal government business through RFPs and Task Orders is different than winning commercial business. It requires a full business development life-cycle approach and a phased process that produces complex responses to the RFPs and Task Orders. And it all happens within a set of laws and regulations that controls how you do it.
R3 WinCenter® version 4 is a software solution built specifically to meet the needs of mid-sized Federal Government Contractors and the work they do to win Federal business. It supports the full business development lifecycle and incorporates GovCon industry best practices as supported by organizations such as Shipley, APMP, and Lohfeld. It streamlines, automates, and simplifies the work of BD, capture, and proposal development.
Many GovCon companies don’t have a formal, centralized software system to help win business. They use personal productivity tools such as email, spreadsheets, Word, and file shares. Or, they might use an assortment of separate “point” solutions, such as a CRM for opportunities or SharePoint for documents. But, the work is siloed and still mostly manual.
With R3 WinCenter v4, you now have the opportunity to move into a software system that is specifically designed for the work you need to do to win Federal Government business. So, what are the benefits of moving to WinCenter?
The benefits fall into two main categories: 1) Increased Effectiveness, which help you win more often, and 2) Increased Efficiency, which helps you bid more at less cost. In this article, we will drill down into the top 10 benefits in both of these categories.
Increased Effectiveness
By increasing your effectiveness, you are significantly increasing your potential to win more business.
The GovCon industry is loaded with best practices to help you pursue the right opportunities the right way, and consistently win more. WinCenter supports and incorporates many of these best practices. And, by bringing together the work of BD, capture, proposal management, and other cross-organization departments and partners, you’re able to drive greater effectiveness. Since, it is all in one system you can also now have the real-time visibility to empower you to make better decisions and drive actions that have impact.
Here are just a few of the ways WinCenter increases your effectiveness.
- One Place, Same Page, No Mess – WinCenter brings together the information, tools, activity of BD, capture and proposal work. It is all in one place. This makes it very easy for everyone to be on the same page, stay focused and eliminate confusion.
- Drive Consistent GovCon BD process – The system is set up to drive opportunities through the standard phase-based GovCon BD lifecycle process. It supports GovCon business development lifecycle best practices such as Shipley Phases and Steps, Color Reviews, Gate Reviews, Master Calendars, Capture activity scoring, and Proposal Work Assignment. The software guides and drives your people to do the right thing at the right time in the right way.
- Eliminate Gap between BD, Capture and Proposal – Historically, people in these roles used different tools, like a CRM for BD and maybe capture and SharePoint for proposals. It creates a large and consistent gap between the people. WinCenter brings all of the information and work into one system as part of a single, unified process.
- Real-Time, Cross-Pipeline Visibility – Dashboards, Management Displays and Reports provide real-time information, analytics, and metrics across the pipeline. For instance, use a Fiscal Forecast to see revenue spread over time, or, the Proposal Schedule to see proposals in phases across a GANTT style display.
- Reuse Quality Capture and Proposal Assets – Capture and proposal assets, such as templates, boilerplate, past proposals, resumes, and graphics are put at the fingertips of people when and where they are working. This convenience drives reuse, which drives the desire for quality assets. It is a virtuous 360-degree cycle.
- Controlled User Experiences – WinCenter v4 is a role-based system. It enables different people in different roles to see different things and to be able to do different things. This is good for control and security, such as limiting what an external partner can see/do. It also makes it easier for people to learn and use the software.
- Focus on Value-creating Work vs. “Noise” – Manual work creates a lot of busy, admin work – “noise”. WinCenter is streamlined to focus people on the real work that needs to get done to improve the results. It focuses on the important tasks/activities and makes it easier to track and complete. It eliminates distracting administrative tasks.
- Better Pipeline Portfolio Decisions, Less Politics – The information about your portfolio of opportunities is instantly available. We have many ways to evaluate your portfolio, such as Progress Pursuit KPI’s, Phase-Activity Scoring, “Whose got the ball?” displays, Weighted metrics, and PWin analyses. The visibility, transparency, and instant availability of information means internal politics has less influence on decision making.
- Take Action When Needed to Drive Outcomes – By having all of the information in one place and available in real time, you are able to see when you need to do something to improve your results. You can then use our Action Items to drive the tasks and make them visible to drive accountability.
- Better Collaborative Input – WinCenter is a hub, enabling collaboration among team members. This involves simple collaborative threads about activity, color reviews, gate reviews, document writing and reviewing, live co-authoring of documents, approvals, bid decisions, meeting agendas, and notes. It all helps to drive a higher quality output.
- Flexibility to Improve – WinCenter is a uniquely flexible system. Just about everything can be changed using our built in Configuration Wizards. This enables your WinCenter to improve, grow, and change with your organization.
Increased Efficiency
In general, our customers see a 20-30% improvement in efficiency when moving to WinCenter. By efficiency, we mean a reduction in the time it takes to get work done. This is your efficiency “savings”. You can invest your savings in doing more proposals, doing them better, doing other work or in cutting costs or deferring costs. In this section, we will detail some key ways that WinCenter increases your efficiency.
- Consolidate Multiple Systems and Information – WinCenter brings it all together in one tool. This eliminates the need for people to go to different systems, documents, and tools. It brings the information to one page, literally, from many information resources. It even includes master data for accounts and contacts.
- Eliminate Duplication and People Working with Incorrect Information – Whether you’re BD, capture, proposal, a manager, partner, or executive, you are always working with the same set of information. This eliminates mistakes, rework, and people working with old versions of data/information.
- Reduce Need for Manual Reporting – You can now conduct work sessions, such as pipeline reviews and gate reviews directly in the system. There is no need to create reports. The system also provides instant reports of the opportunity portfolio and operations, such as detailed proposal activity. It also calculates KPI’s and activity scoring, saving people the time of doing it manually.
- Eliminate “Tracking” Spreadsheets – WinCenter is your tracking system. You can view status, reports, or activity online at any time. There’s no reason to create and try to maintain spreadsheets. It’s all in the system. Just log in and see it.
- Reduce Email (and Version) Chaos – There’s already too much email. With WinCenter, you use email less. The information and the work assignments are all in the system. No more emailing around asking for status and information. And, you have instant, collaborative threads. When WinCenter does use email, it’s a notification that a task, document, or activity has been modified, etc. So, you’re not emailing around versions of documents. This significantly reduces the time we commonly spend trying to determine which version is the most recent. Just look in the system.
- Streamline and Automate Work – WinCenter is fundamentally a work management system. It has processes, workflows, and actions that streamline and automate work of all types. These features drive the work forward and accomplish tasks for you – doing it consistently and correctly. They even enter information based on the context, and kick off tasks and notifications. You can modify these features using our built in Configuration Wizards. You can even build your own automations.
- SME Participation Is Easier for All – SMEs can get assignments and do their work without having to know much about the system. It makes it easier for them to be on task. They also know their assignments are visible. This drives participation. It also means less follow up is required.
- Less Hunting for and Manipulation of Information – In many ways, WinCenter allows people to just work instead of having to go places to find information. When working on a proposal, the reusable assets are at your fingertips. When doing capture, the next steps are laid out and reusable templates are available. You can do full text searches across the system. You have many types of reports that bring information together, such as a Master Calendar of Events, an Opportunity Portfolio GANTT chart, and Phase-Activity completion scoring. It’s all right there.
- WinCenter at Your Service, 24/7 – At any point, someone can access WinCenter and get the full picture or contribute. It is always on and at your service. People are simply able to do their work at the best time.
- Cross-departmental Efficiency – Using WinCenter Action Items you can drive actions across the organization, such as with Contracts, HR, Legal, and Finance. The action items are visible and tracked. With Contracts, you can also integrate with the R3 Contract Management solution to have pre-set integrations for NDAs and subcontracts.
See the Benefits in Action
To see these benefits come to life, visit the R3 WinCenter visit the product page and see the introductory demo video.