The Lohfeld WinCenter brings immediate benefit to organizations by consolidating multiple tools and resources into a single integrated system for GovCon business development. It becomes the system of record for capture and proposal information and activity. However, just because it is an integrated system doesn’t mean that it is monolithic (like most other systems of record). In fact, WinCenter is an open, flexible system. This means that you are able to extend it in order to optimize work for a specific role or activity.
In this article, we’ll look at the work of Proposal Development and how it can be optimized to support cross-proposal work using an extension to WinCenter.
Proposal Development Work
In the traditional GovCon phased process, Proposal Development is Phase 4 of the process coming after Pre-Proposal and before Post-Submittal. During this phase of work the assigned proposal team digs in to create and complete the proposal for submittal. It is the phase where the majority of your Bid & Proposal budget is spent.
WinCenter at the Core
Each WinCenter opportunity has a separate, secure working site where the information about each opportunity is captured throughout its lifecycle. This provides all participants with visibility across the lifecycle of the opportunity. If an opportunity has made it to the Proposal Development phase there will be information about previous phases that will be leveraged in the work. For instance, by this time the RFP will have been broken down and the key sections will be known. Various supporting forms and templates will exist. Leveraging the Proposal Asset Libraries of WinCenter, the proposal manager will have started to populate the Proposal Development library with documents to use as templates or boilerplate or supporting information for the proposal development effort.
WinCenter at Work
As the Proposal Development effort gets underway the working document set (Volume, Section, Documents, etc.) gets established and the work of managing the effort begins. WinCenter comes with a set of features that automate the work on a proposal such as driving writer and reviewer assignments, tagging documents for color reviews, and conducting reviews. This feature set is very robust for managing the work on a proposal. For most organizations, this level of productivity is as good it gets for managing a proposal effort.
R3 Proposal Development Console: Extend to Optimize
The fundamental challenge is that proposal development work is always happening across multiple proposals. Some may be complex RFP’s while others are simpler IDIQ Task Orders. Individual contributors are constantly juggling work across multiple proposals. Executives need visibility into the work, activity and workloads across proposals. Proposal Managers may focus on a single proposal for a time, but often they are managing multiple efforts in different stages.
By taking a step back and looking at proposal development work in isolation with a broader cross-proposal perspective, you can see that there are areas that can be optimized. How can you optimize the work for this one activity while still maintaining WinCenter as the system of record?
The answer is to simply extend WinCenter. Working with proposal practitioners and managers we’ve created an add-on called the Proposal Development Console. By Console, we mean a front end to work. It is specifically designed to optimize the work of proposal development participants across a multi-proposal environment. It does a number of things to optimize the work as follows:
- It makes work simpler. It becomes a single place that people can go to to do their work across proposals. The documents and information pertaining to each proposal remain in WinCenter working sites. But, the users go to the Console to get the work done. This means that users no longer have to navigate to separate proposal sites to see what is new, what is happening or what they have to do. The Console brings the information to them.
- It provides visibility. It allows proposal managers to manage each proposal section/document in one place. It lets them see the status and manage down to the specific “turns” as a document iterates towards a Color Review stage or completion status.
- It helps drive the work. It is used to create and track Writer and Reviewer assignments. This allows the Proposal Manager to manage the assignments across documents and across proposals and put “peer” and management pressure on contributors. It becomes the interface to conduct “daily standup meetings” – no need for spreadsheets any more. Updates are all real-time.
- It makes work extra convenient for contributors. Contributors (Writers and Reviewers) can see all of their assignments across proposals in one place. They can do their work from one place. They can easily collaborate with others and see the thread of discussion. They can see the other assignments on a document they are working on.
- It drives metrics. When contributors complete work they can enter hours worked and/or ratings. This data is used by management to manage to proposal needs and across proposals.
- It makes work manageable. Management and executives have access to reports to see things like outstanding assignments across proposals, hours worked, resource allocations, and, quality ratings with each turn of a document.
With the simple addition of this Console, the specific work of proposal development can be optimized across all proposals. It eliminates a tremendous amount of time in manual “tracking and reporting” work. It makes the work convenient for users. It provides visibility needed by management to make informed decisions. This optimization means that people can stay focused on the content which results in a higher quality proposal.
Back at the Core
The Proposal Development Console optimizes the work as described above. But the proposal documents and information always stay securely stored within the WinCenter opportunity sites. The BD process participants are always seeing and working with the current documents and information. WinCenter continues to be the system of record.
Bringing it all together
The approach we have described here allows you to preserve the benefits of the integrated WinCenter system of record while also optimizing the specific work of proposal development participants. It is a flexible “hub and spoke” design enabled by the open system approach of WinCenter.
You can even take it further. For instance, you may have multiple proposal operations that want to manage just their work and perhaps do the job slightly differently. Great just give them their own Consoles. You now have multiple spokes. Or, you can create new Consoles to optimize other work activities such as Production, Graphics, Knowledge Management, Estimating, Contracts or B&P Budget Management. They would also be extensions of WinCenter.
For more information on WinCenter, see the WinCenter product page.
For more information on R3 Proposal Development Console, see its product page. This includes a live demo of the Console in action.