Proposal Management Best Practices, Part 9: A Word On Proposal Process

When it comes to proposal management, there are a lot of moving pieces to manage, and organization shouldn’t be the thing that keeps your proposal from winning the bid. 

Having a proposal process in place is critical; process helps the team know what to expect and when to act. Process repetition lends itself to improvements that drive greater efficiency. 

But too much process can quickly cause a backlash; teams "check-out" because they feel the process is over-complicated. The key is getting the right balance of process to work for you and your team. 

Make your proposal process collaborative. Giving your team an easy and secure feedback loop throughout the process will help them focus on the quality today’s evaluators crave for the win rather than the process. 

• Establish a real-time, online feedback loop for writing and reviewing, as well as revising, for documents and graphics. 
• Amendments happen. Make sure your process is flexible enough to handle anytime change happens mid-proposal and quickly communicate change with the team. 
• Process should free up your time as well. Establishing automatic notifications that provide reminders and enforce details will free up your time for your work on the proposal, like resumes and past performance. 
• It should be scalable. Large businesses take on larger opportunities, so they deploy more process steps and milestones, for example more review cycles. Smaller opportunities typically require fewer steps, but as they grow, the process should grow to respond to the size of the opportunity with the appropriately sized process. 

As teleworking continues to trend up, companies who establish a process that embraces a remote work culture will position for success. Organizations that do not encourage this modern approach will inevitably fall behind. 

Tip: Wearing too many proposal management hats? Automating your proposal process workflow will save time you can invest in compliance and quality. It will also deliver the flexibility you need to scale the process to larger opportunities as you grow.

Bottom Line 

This concludes our series on best practices in proposal management. When it comes to proposal management, there are a lot of moving pieces to manage, and organization shouldn’t be the thing that keeps your proposal from winning the bid. 

We hope our tips and advice help you plan for and optimize each item in your quest to collaborate and win.