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How to reclaim your work-life balance

How to reclaim your work-life balance

Product & Best Practices

A skilled proposal manager is invaluable to their organization. They are as persuasive as the best salespeople. They are as […]

Category: Product & Best Practices

How to reclaim your work-life balance

How to reclaim your work-life balance

Product & Best Practices

A skilled proposal manager is invaluable to their organization. They are as persuasive as the best salespeople. They are as precise as anyone in legal or finance. They nearly match their CEOs in company knowledge. They can wrangle stakeholders with techniques that rival horse herders — sans lassos. And they can turn a phrase as elegantly as Shakespeare.

That last one might be a slight exaggeration, but the ability to craft a compelling story is vital to a proposal professional’s skill set. It’s not an exaggeration to say that proposal managers are exceptionally hardworking. In fact, APMP reports that the more experienced they are, the more hours they find themselves at their office, remote or not. 

Where does that leave a proposal professional who also has (or wants) a life? How does an insanely busy proposal professional reclaim work-life balance? 

Table of contents

How the work world is out of balance

  • According to a recent McKinsey study, most people spend 20 percent of their time searching for content. Proposal teams and SMEs likely spend even more.
  • Many proposal teams still use manual processes and cannot reuse content.
  • Organizations cut costs in a down economy by freezing or reducing headcount.
  • All the while, proposal requests are more frequent and complex.

What the work world looks like when it’s in balance

  • Employees work normal hours
  • There’s more time to ensure quality, including doing QA, thoroughly checking responsiveness, discriminators, and so on, before submitting proposals.
  • There’s time to collaborate and work across organizations to ensure we’re putting our best foot forward.
  • We have time to use escalation matrices and responsibility matrices to keep everyone accountable and on track.
  • We’re able to gain recognition, both from the deals we win and internally from our business partners.
  • More significantly, we’re building our careers because we have time to be great at our jobs.

How to reclaim your work-life balance

External forces, such as the economy and a faster flow of more complex proposal requests, are generally out of your control. However, efficient and repeatable processes can help you free the time to manage an increased workload without working weekends.

Content management

I am passionate about content management because I believe gold-standard content makes every part of the proposal process successful. Without that, you are just running in circles. 

Incorporate these four steps into your content management process to prevent having to spend more than 20 percent of your time searching for information, and instead repurposing that time to write compelling responses — and perhaps log off at 5 p.m.

  • Designate a champion – A champion is a decision-maker, typically an executive or proposal manager.
  • Clean out ROT –ROT refers to content that’s redundant (duplicate or similar content), outdated (expired or sunsetted) or trivial (deal- or client-specific). Content library software helps ensure your library of answers is ROT-free. 
  • Respect SMEs’ time – Subject matter experts are in demand, and there’s nothing that will make them more reluctant to work with you than having to repeat themselves time and time again. An up-to-date content library lets them simply review their previous answers.
  • Automate processes – When you automate lower-value processes, it frees humans to be more productive and create more winning responses. 

Pro tip: Style your content from the very beginning using Microsoft Word. When you’re ready to use that content, it will seamlessly export to the brandable, customizable response template of your choice, as long as the style has the same naming convention. The result is an elegant document that demonstrates polish and professionalism. 

If you keep your naming conventions consistent throughout your organization, any department can import content to their preferred templates.

Content analytics

Sophisticated, customizable reporting capabilities with digestible charts and graphs provide the insights needed to improve work processes, demonstrate value, even when you regularly sign off at 5 p.m., and help craft a path for an impressive ROI. 

  • Identify/prioritize gold-standard content – Use data to holistically audit your library of content to ensure accuracy, timeliness and relevance. 
  • Measure time – Are team members using the library? Are they spending too much time searching for content?
  • Demonstrate value – Gain executive and SME buy-in by producing data that shows less time spent on crafting and recrafting faster, risk-averse responses.
  • Craft ROI path – Analyze trends to see how your current project compares to others and compares manual responses to those using stored answers that can be automated.

Building a business case for content reviews

Reclaiming work-life balance is all about prioritizing high-value activities, delegating to the right people, creating processes that work and proving that you don’t have to work 50+ hours a week to accomplish your KPIs. 

However, in austere times, organizations expect more productivity using fewer, or at least value-proven, resources. That means that their own time considerations might make SMEs deprioritize regular content audits and RFX responses, especially since response management is not their full-time job. 

Gain executive and SME buy-in, and create champions to advocate for you, through your content review processes. 

  • Choose a review cycle cadence – Work with SMEs to determine whether to review your content monthly, quarterly or annually. It usually depends on the type of content. Corporate content changes quickly, so you might schedule quarterly reviews. Review product content every 6-12 months or when there’s a new product release. Review evergreen content every 12-24 months, because even it can change.
  • Implicate risk – Communicate and implicate the risk of outdated content through content reviews. For example, using content that was customized with another customer’s name shows a lack of professionalism. Outdated or incorrect content may even present a litigation risk. 
  • Run POC with a single team/group – Rather than lobby for an organization-wide content review, start with a single team or group.
  • Demonstrate potential value – Demonstrate to SMEs that their work matters by showing how often and successfully you rely on their content.
  • AI Assistant – SMEs wear a lot of hats but they are generally not writers. Capabilities like the RFPIO AI Assistant help polish and perfect responses by:
    • Offering suggestions to help break through writer’s block
    • Elaborating on existing content as needed
    • Creating more concise responses
    • Optimizing content readability
    • Changing verbs from passive to active
    • Writing in plain language
    • Organizing content under headings 

Note that AI Assistant trains on your content library and your information will remain private within your organization. 

Collaboration and process

A rising tide lifts all ships. By bringing your team in, including SMEs, some of your salespeople, and so on, you’re building a community to successfully work within the RFPIO platform. 

  • Unify and automate – Your content library is a single source of truth, and as it continues to evolve, you build more trust from SMEs and other stakeholders. It’s a foundation for responses of all sorts throughout the organization.
  • Breakdown silos – Having a repository like the RFPIO Content Library is a company asset and valuable in every department. 
  • Achieve partnership goals – Lean into relationships and the opportunities created by those relationships.
  • Share the proposal content (by definition, your best content) love – Keep content creators happy by letting them know that their content was a key component of a response — preferably one you’ve won.

Conclusion

When usable content is not available to those who might need it, you erode trust and risk that content that hasn’t passed an audit process may be sent to prospects or others within your organization. 

With a platform like RFPIO, clean, accurate proposals presented on time and in a professional, branded format build trust and demonstrate competency. A well-curated RFPIO Content Library lets you forge and maintain relationships inside and outside of your organization. It proves your value to SMEs, executives and anyone who might need to access company information. 

And more on point, AI Assistant and a well-curated content library will help you fulfill executives’ goal of accomplishing more with less, without sacrificing your work-life balance. 

Your RFPIO Content Library is about so much more than just a resource of Q&As. It helps maintain compliance, optimize productivity, generate revenue, and gives time back to you. We invite you to request a customized demo to see how.

RFP project management: Bring order to your proposal process

RFP project management: Bring order to your proposal process

Product & Best Practices

If you’ve ever responded to a request for proposal (RFP), you know the feeling of relief that comes when you finally submit the finished proposal. After all, your response is likely the product of hours of hard work spent writing, revising, designing and reviewing. And, depending on your RFP project management approach (or lack thereof), the path to creating the final proposal may have been anything but clear. Unfortunately, this is the case for many proposal teams.

Without a clear RFP project management approach, responding to RFPs is chaotic, unclear and frustrating. Even worse, the lack of organization often results in unsuccessful bids, rendering the time you invested a total waste.

RFP project management brings order to the information, tasks and people involved in the RFP response process. Furthermore, it lays the groundwork for executing a faster, easier and more effective process.

If you’re looking for an organized approach to RFP responses, look no further. This post will explore the ins and outs of RFP project management. To start, you’ll learn key definitions, why project management works well for the proposal process and common approaches to try. Then, I’ll share key steps to implementing an RFP project management strategy. Finally, I’ll provide tips and resources to ensure success.

RFP project management basics

Project management is one of the three key skills required for successful proposal management. Indeed, it is the strategy for executing the proposal process.

Project management definition

Project management, sometimes abbreviated as PM, is the practice of planning and executing defined processes that organize the actions, tools, roles and knowledge required to accomplish a specific goal.

Typically, each project has a unique goal and a set ending point. Ultimately, the purpose of project management is to improve efficiency, consistency and outcomes.

What is an RFP in project management?

In project management, RFP stands for request for proposal. An RFP is a formal request sent from a buyer to potential vendors seeking a product, service or solution. 

The RFP document asks all vendors the same questions. Then, interested vendors submit their answers in a proposal document for consideration. This approach promotes transparency and fairness while enabling buyers to make data-driven purchasing decisions using consistent criteria.

How project management principles apply to RFPs?

There’s no way around it, RFPs are notoriously difficult to manage. There are dozens of elements to organize. And, they are a key element of business growth. Despite their importance, the same challenges arise over and over again. Typically, the core of the problem is a lack of communication and accountability, making project management and RFPs a natural match. 

Requests for proposals are projects with a set beginning and end. In addition, the many tools, people and actions required to accomplish the end goal must come together in the right order at the right time. Consequently, project management creates a helpful framework for organizing the RFP response process.

What does an RFP project manager do?

Many most successful proposal coordinators share similar duties and skill sets that make them particularly effective at proposal management.

Effective RFP project managers are:

  • Team leaders
  • Highly organized
  • Critical thinkers
  • Detail oriented
  • Collaborative
  • Creative problem solvers
  • Patient
  • Communicative
  • Strategy focused

Proposal project manager responsibilities

Within the RFP response project, the proposal manager acts as the project manager. Consequently, they are ultimately responsible for the completion and on-time delivery of the proposal. However, there are a number of other responsibilities that they perform. 

Proposal project manager duties

  • Act as an advocate for the organization – If, at any point, the desired outcome is no longer achievable, it’s the PM’s responsibility to cut losses and move on or escalate the problem to executive management.
  • Gather and aggregate intelligence – From summarizing the capture management plan to collecting and inserting answers from subject matter experts (SMEs), the proposal manager brings it all together.
  • Facilitate team meetings – The project manager schedules meetings and creates the agenda. For example, they run the kick off, update, review and debrief meetings.
  • Establish and communicate expectations – The RFP response timeline is created and enforced by the proposal project manager. For instance, they set touch points and milestones to ensure on-time final proposal delivery.
  • Solve problems that arise – As the project manager, they are responsible for clearing roadblocks, managing bottlenecks, bridging communication gaps and correcting blindspots. Essentially, they do whatever it takes to keep the project moving forward.
  • Facilitate communication between steps – The proposal project manager ensures that tasks with chronological dependencies move forward to the next person promptly. If your process is manual, that may be an email notification. Alternatively if you use RFP response software, those task notifications are managed by proposal automation.
  • Act as the buyer’s point of contact – To centralize communications between your organization and the buyer, the proposal manager acts as the primary point of contact. As such, they ask which elements of the RFP are most important to the evaluators, request scoring and evaluation information, seek feedback about lost opportunities and request evaluation scoring information.
  • Verify the proposal is compliant – The project manager is responsible for ensuring that the proposal meets the RFP evaluation criteria and requirements before approving the final draft.

Benefits of RFP project management and common approaches

Project management defines the goal, and provides a step-by-step guide plan to reach that goal. Because it breaks down the project into individual tasks, deliverables and workflows, it’s much easier to manage. But, these aren’t the only benefits of RFP project management.

How project management improves the proposal process

  • Ensures team alignment and defines objectives
  • Improves process predictability
  • Enhances clarity between teams by defining RFP terminology
  • Provides quick updates for inquiring executive leaders
  • Promotes consistency that enables data capture and optimization
  • Creates an organized approach, making responding to unknown factors easier
  • Enables fast adaptation to challenges by identifying impacted parties
  • Reduces the risk of including inaccurate, unapproved or unreviewed responses
  • Improves understanding of the meaning and intent of RFP questions

Common RFP project management strategies

Project management practices evolved over the years as business strategies and technology advanced. If finding the right approach for your team feels overwhelming, consider asking your proposal colleagues and fellow project managers for insight on the strategies they prefer. Alternatively, you can start by exploring three of the most popular approaches for RFPs below.

RACI Matrix

A good choice for teams that struggle to know who is doing what.

An RFP RACI matrix focuses on identifying the roles required to complete each task within the project. Indeed, the RACI acronym represents each of the roles and stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. For example, when answering new questions in an RFP, the proposal manager is often the person responsible, a subject matter expert would be accountable, a stakeholder or sales person may be consulted and an executive would be informed.

Proposal timeline/Gantt chart

A good choice for teams that struggle with deadlines.

The proposal timeline and Gantt chart approach illustrates the order and timing of tasks at a glance. Generally, the proposal timeline gives an overview of the process and remains the same through the completion of the project. On the other hand, a Gantt chart details the timing and progress of individual tasks. Consequently, many teams use both tools in tandem.

Project implementation plan

A good choice for proposal teams that frequently include members new to RFPs.

The detail included in a proposal project implementation plan helps new stakeholders and subject matter experts navigate the process. This RFP project management approach focuses on providing context, detail and instructions for success. Furthermore, it guides contributors through the process and offers more background information than other approaches.

Additional project management approaches

Here are three more project management approaches that you may have heard of and could adapt to RFP responses. The Digital Project Manager has a helpful overview article with information on each.

  • Agile – For an experienced team of doers, focuses on final outcomes, collaboration and flexibility
  • Scrum – For teams with several strong leaders and well-defined areas of expertise within the proposal process
  • Kanban – For teams that work best with visuals, focuses on individual task progress

How to improve your proposal process with project management

There are a few things that remain the same regardless of which project management approach you select. Here’s the steps that will make your new process successful.

1. Identify the goal of the project

Generally, this part is fairly straightforward. Clearly, you want to win an RFP opportunity. However, it’s important to think beyond that and define why this RFP is a good fit as well as the projected impact on the business if you win. In this situation, it is often helpful to refer back to your discussions to bid or not bid.

2. Define the project tasks

After you’ve identified your goal, you must clearly state the tasks that your team must accomplish for success. For example, your list might look like this:

  • Create your project brief 
  • Identify tasks that can be accomplished concurrently
  • Schedule and facilitate a kickoff meeting
  • Collect and submit follow up questions for the buyer
  • Review your knowledge library for reusable answers
  • Customize reusable answers for this opportunity
  • Assign new questions to subject matter experts
  • Write and review new answers
  • Set proposal pricing
  • Compose proposal document
  • Review for answer consistency and accuracy
  • Format proposal
  • Design and add visual elements
  • Ensure that each of the RFP business requirements are met
  • Final review by marketing and sales
  • Executive review and approval of proposal
  • Final proposal submission
  • Request feedback on final result
  • Hold debrief meeting for feedback
  • Optimize processes and update knowledge library

3. Build your proposal team

Now, review your task list. Who is best suited to accomplish each item? Will they need help, input or review from others? Match people with the tasks they will be assigned and the role they will play in the process. Your list will likely include stakeholders, support staff, SMEs, department heads and executive leaders.

4. Explore information and tools needed

Next, you need to ensure that your team has the information and tools they need to successfully accomplish the tasks you’ve provided. For instance, do your subject matter experts all have access to your knowledge library, centralized proposal or better yet, RFP software? Do you have the performance data and customer references the buyer asked for? Has your capture management team provided their research, win themes and customer insights? Avoid delays and roadblocks in your process by verifying the necessary resources are available before the project begins.

5. Create a project brief

Bring it all together in a project brief. Start with your project goal. Then, share the key milestones in the project. For example, you might include when follow up questions are due, when SME answers are due and the proposal submission deadline. Next, provide the project tasks matched with the assigned staff. Finally, provide the information that contributors will need to complete their tasks.

6. Get started

Now, you’re ready to execute your project. At the kickoff meeting, ensure everyone is aware of the RFP project management approach and how to use it. Then, it’s up to you as the project manager to keep the process on track.

7. Track and save key data

One of the biggest benefits of proposal project management is the opportunity to gather RFP data. Indeed, thanks to the consistency of your process, you can track response cost, time spent, answer quality and final outcome. Once you’ve collected enough data, review for patterns, roadblocks and opportunities for improvement.

RFP project management tips

Take charge

When your proposal team gathers for meetings, remember your intent and purpose. You’re not asking for opinions. You are dealing in facts. Are the contributors’ workloads manageable? Is the project progressing as expected? Are the required resources and information available? Is the plan feasible? 

Essentially, you’re asking the team for insight on any potential gaps or blind spots. However, you are NOT asking for input about the project management style, responsibilities or reviews. We all have that team member that always has something negative to say. Don’t let anyone derail your project with uncertainty.

Adjust as needed

While consistency is an essential element to reap the full benefits of project management, not every RFP needs the full treatment. For instance, if a proposal is brief and requires input from two people, you can abbreviate your process and accelerate your timeline. In addition, if you’re the incumbent vendor and the RFP is a formality, the approach should change. 

Remember, generally these methodologies are best used to manage big projects. So, if an informal process is significantly more efficient to achieve the end goal, then do it and spend the time you saved tackling something else.

Seek executive support

Inevitably, you’ll encounter roadblocks and challenges. If they’re caused by someone outside of your chain of command, you may fe

el uncomfortable addressing the issue. This is why it’s so important to have executive support. When your team sees visible support from executives, you’ll benefit from an improved position in workload prioritization, mediation if needed, enhanced responsiveness and a higher awareness of the value of your work.

Centralize the process

Many proposal teams struggle with miscommunications and a lack of clarity around the proposal process. By centralizing everything, each team member has access to all the information they need to make informed decisions and carry out their next steps. 

While shared drives help, the most effective way to centralize the proposal process while improving efficiency at every step is RFP software. Your RFP response solution should feature workflows and collaboration, knowledge management, automation and integrations. 

Don’t change your process to solve temporary problems

As a project manager, it’s important to identify the cause of challenges that arise. For instance, you may encounter unusual circumstances, unique barriers or uncooperative people. Certainly, it is tempting to alter the process immediately to try and solve the problem. However, resist this urge.

Unique circumstances are bound to come up from time to time. And, resistance to change is natural.  But, rather than immediately solving perceived problems with process changes, focus on identifying the likelihood of the issue coming up again as well as improving buy-in and accountability with individuals. In short, don’t permanently alter your RFP project management approach to overcome temporary challenges. 

Give it time

Unfortunately, you’re probably not going to have a seamless process the very first time you use your new RFP project management strategy. In fact, it’s possible that the first time you use a new process may be less efficient. However, persevere! As you and your team become more familiar with the proactive RFP management process and expectations, you’ll see remarkable (and measurable) improvements. Remember, reverting back to a reactive process will keep you from reaching your full potential. 

Ultimately, the purpose of RFP project management is to reduce the number of hours it takes to create a proposal while also improving the likelihood of success. 

As we all know, the hours you put into a proposal aren’t free. Not only does a more efficient RFP process save your company money, but it also gives you more time to answer additional RFPs with the potential to further grow your business. The result? A compounded impact that any proposal team can achieve with the right knowledge, process and tools.

RFP project management tips

Take charge

When your proposal team gathers for meetings, remember your intent and purpose. You’re not asking for opinions. You are dealing in facts. Are the contributors’ workloads manageable? Is the project progressing as expected? Are the required resources and information available? Is the plan feasible? 

Essentially, you’re asking the team for insight on any potential gaps or blind spots. However, you are NOT asking for input about the project management style, responsibilities or reviews. We all have that team member that always has something negative to say. Don’t let anyone derail your project with uncertainty.

Adjust as needed

While consistency is an essential element to reap the full benefits of project management, not every RFP needs the full treatment. For instance, if a proposal is brief and requires input from two people, you can abbreviate your process and accelerate your timeline. In addition, if you’re the incumbent vendor and the RFP is a formality, the approach should change. 

Remember, generally these methodologies are best used to manage big projects. So, if an informal process is significantly more efficient to achieve the end goal, then do it and spend the time you saved tackling something else.

Seek executive support

Inevitably, you’ll encounter roadblocks and challenges. If they’re caused by someone outside of your chain of command, you may feel uncomfortable addressing the issue. This is why it’s so important to have executive support. When your team sees visible support from executives, you’ll benefit from an improved position in workload prioritization, mediation if needed, enhanced responsiveness and a higher awareness of the value of your work.

Centralize the process

Many proposal teams struggle with miscommunications and a lack of clarity around the proposal process. By centralizing everything, each team member has access to all the information they need to make informed decisions and carry out their next steps. 

While shared drives help, the most effective way to centralize the proposal process while improving efficiency at every step is RFP software. Your RFP response solution should feature workflows and collaboration, knowledge management, automation and integrations. 

Don’t change your process to solve temporary problems

As a project manager, it’s important to identify the cause of challenges that arise. For instance, you may encounter unusual circumstances, unique barriers or uncooperative people. Certainly, it is tempting to alter the process immediately to try and solve the problem. However, resist this urge.

Unique circumstances are bound to come up from time to time. And, resistance to change is natural.  But, rather than immediately solving perceived problems with process changes, focus on identifying the likelihood of the issue coming up again as well as improving buy-in and accountability with individuals. In short, don’t permanently alter your RFP project management approach to overcome temporary challenges. 

Give it time

Unfortunately, you’re probably not going to have a seamless process the very first time you use your new RFP project management strategy. In fact, it’s possible that the first time you use a new process may be less efficient. However, persevere! As you and your team become more familiar with the proactive RFP management process and expectations, you’ll see remarkable (and measurable) improvements. Remember, reverting back to a reactive process will keep you from reaching your full potential. 

Ultimately, the purpose of RFP project management is to reduce the number of hours it takes to create a proposal while also improving the likelihood of success. 

As we all know, the hours you put into a proposal aren’t free. Not only does a more efficient RFP process save your company money, but it also gives you more time to answer additional RFPs with the potential to further grow your business. The result? A compounded impact that any proposal team can achieve with the right knowledge, process and tools.

6 easy tips to write a killer RFP cover letter

6 easy tips to write a killer RFP cover letter

Product & Best Practices

After weeks of work, you’ve finally put the finishing touches on your request for proposal (RFP) response. The proposal is a product of the hours you invested customizing past content, collaborating with subject matter experts, and refining your messaging.

Because of your efforts, the proposal is a masterpiece ⁠— creative, comprehensive and compelling. Consequently, you’re feeling confident. After all, your company should win this business — you’ve earned it. Now, there’s only one thing left to do … slap a proposal cover letter on top, submit it and move on to the next RFP.

But wait. Not so fast! When was the last time you read your boilerplate RFP cover letter? Like, actually read it. If you’re like many others, it’s been a while. Unfortunately, that means you might not be putting your best foot forward.

So, before you send off that RFP response, let’s take a closer look at your proposal cover letter and be sure it accurately represents your proposal. With a couple easy tips and a quick review, your cover letter will send just the right message.

In this post, we’ll explore what a proposal cover sheet is and why it matters. Then, I’ll explain what a cover letter includes, how to write a proposal cover letter, and a few sample RFP cover letters. Finally, I’ll share a proposal cover letter template you can download and customize to get a head start.

Get the RFP cover letter template now.

What is a proposal cover letter?

A proposal cover letter is a single-page letter addressed to a prospective customer containing high-level information from a prospective vendor. The letter precedes an accompanying RFP response or business proposal.

Alternative names for the proposal cover letter include RFP response cover letter, bid proposal cover letter, RFP cover page, cover page for business proposal, and other similar variations. No matter what it’s called, the cover letter is your chance to introduce your business and offer to a potential new customer. As such, you need to make it count.

Why a well-written cover letter matters

You spend hours working through the proposal process, so why should you spend even more time crafting an RFP response cover letter? The proposal cover letter is an oft-overlooked sales tool. Indeed, it’s a zero-cost way to get your message directly to the people who decide whether or not your proposal wins. Furthermore, the RFP cover letter takes very little time to compose and offers you one more way to stand out from your competitors.

If you’re like most businesses, your cover letter can probably be summarized like this: “Dear Mr. or Ms. Company ⁠— Thank you so much for this opportunity. Included in this proposal you will find our answers that meet the requested specifications. Thank you for your consideration.” 

While common, this isn’t a terribly compelling way to introduce yourself to a new customer that could help you grow your business. Your RFP cover letter provides a first impression to the proposal evaluators and decision makers reviewing your proposal.

Think of it this way: If you were going to present your proposal in person, how would you greet the buyer? You’d probably wear your best suit, walk confidently, put on a warm smile and share a confident handshake to make a memorable introduction. It should be the same with your proposal cover letter. Unfortunately, if your letter is anything like the example above, it’s like showing up in sweatpants and offering an unenthusiastic, mumbled greeting.

The RFP cover letter can also be used to:

  • Create or deepen the connection between you and your buyer
  • Reinforce your brand, values and expertise
  • Promote your key differentiators
  • Establish primary points of contact

No matter how you use the RFP cover letter and what you put in it, remember that the person receiving it is just that ⁠— a person. The quality of your bid proposal cover letter determines whether they read it carefully, skim it quickly, or ignore it completely. Generally, proposal cover letters are memorable either because they are embarrassingly bad or extraordinarily good. Make your cover letter memorable for the right reasons.

Proposal cover letter basics

The RFP cover letter should be included as a normal part of every proposal, but it’s just one component. Indeed, most proposals also include a number of other elements that will generally appear in a specific order.

Parts of a proposal

  1. Cover letter
  2. Executive summary
  3. Proposal
  4. Addendums
  5. Terms and conditions
  6. Supporting documentation (case studies, references and additional data)

If your left temple is throbbing just looking at that list, take comfort in the fact that your well-curated and maintained content library can do up to 80 percent of the work for you. 

Components of a cover letter

As the first element of your proposal, the cover letter is bound to be seen by a lot of people. So, it’s important to make sure it is the best possible representation of your company. But, how do you decide what to say? One of the biggest challenges when writing an RFP response letter is how to keep it short while also making an impact ⁠— remember, your cover letter should fit on a single page. To help you craft your message, focus on these five elements.

  1. Addressees
  2. Greeting and introduction
  3. Summary of RFP needs
  4. Your broad qualifications and differentiators
  5. Thank you and closing

Your RFP cover letter should:

  • Be the first page of your RFP response followed by your executive summary and proposal
  • Introduce your company to the buyer’s key decision-makers and any others reviewing or scoring your bid
  • Be conversational, genuine and confident ⁠— but it shouldn’t be an overt sales pitch
  • Offer an overview of your understanding of the company’s needs
  • Clearly state why your business is uniquely qualified to win the RFP opportunity
  • If possible, express your vision for the future partnership and how you can help the business reach its goals
  • Follow the customer’s instructions if they ask you to include specific information in the cover letter

What’s the difference between a cover letter and an executive summary?

When building formal RFP responses, this question comes up a lot. What is the difference between a cover letter and an executive summary? The confusion is understandable as the two documents share a lot of similarities. They are both short, introductory documents that precede your proposal. 

The primary distinction is that a proposal cover letter is an introduction to your company while the executive summary is an overview of your offer for a specific project. In addition, the cover letter should almost always fit on a single page while the executive summary may be two or three pages if necessary. Admittedly, the difference is subtle. While the contents may seem to naturally overlap, try to avoid repetition and ensure that each document provides unique information.

Beyond the basics: Six tips to writing a better RFP cover letter

1. Address it to the right people

Who is going to review your proposal? If you don’t already know, find out. Get in touch with the RFP contact and ask for the names of the key contacts who will weigh in on the decision. This may be a committee of people or a combination of procurement professionals, stakeholders and executives. 

If you start your RFP response letter with the standard “To whom it may concern” salutation, you’re blending in and sending a message. Unfortunately, this approach communicates that you couldn’t be bothered to update your cover letter template, didn’t do your homework, and don’t really care that much about winning the business. It certainly doesn’t reflect the hours of time you’ve likely invested creating the proposal that follows.

By specifically addressing the proposal cover letter to the key contacts, you make a quick connection and instantly improve the chances that they’ll actually read the bid proposal cover letter and your subsequent proposal. This attention to detail reinforces the idea that not only are you a good fit based on your qualifications, but you’re also invested in developing deeper relationships. You’re in it to be a strategic partner, not just another vendor. 

2. Keep it fresh and be human

Put yourself in your recipient’s shoes ⁠— You’ve just received dozens of proposals from vendors who more or less provide the same type of services. You are starting to sift through RFP responses that are admittedly, probably pretty dry. The initial review checking for proposal compliance is time-consuming, highly repetitive and gets old quick. 

So, if a cover letter starts with something like, “Thank you for the opportunity to earn your business,” it’s just adding to the tedium. It’s a classic and well-worn opening line. While it’s good to be humble and grateful, it’s far better to be unique and memorable. A post featured in APMP’s Winning the Business said, 

“… never start a cover letter with ‘thank you.’ It’s boring, and almost everyone does it. This seemingly respectful thank you does not help your organization to stand out or inspire your reader to keep reading.” 

The article goes on to recommend starting with something specific and complimentary about the business. This opener accomplishes two things; it quickly shows that this is no ordinary copy-and-paste proposal cover letter while reinforcing that you did your homework and recognize the business’s goals.

In an increasingly automated and efficient world, it’s easy to forget about the people behind the process. Even if you use RFP software to quickly complete the RFP itself, the RFP cover letter offers a rare opportunity to be human and genuine. 

3. Use formatting to catch their eye

Your cover letter only helps you win the business if it actually gets read by the right people. Just like using the perfect proposal format, the right cover letter format invites the reader to engage. So, make sure your cover letter is clean, visually appealing, approachable and not too dense. Remember that you’re trying to make an impression, not dive into every detail of your proposal.

Because your cover letter only uses one page, you have to be smart about how you use the space. There are three main places where you have the best chance to hook the reader: the first sentence, the center of the page and the closing. 

Opening
Nothing catches your eye like your own name. So, as suggested above, address the letter directly to the evaluator(s). Then, include the buyer’s company name in a unique and impactful opening sentence. 

Center
Make the most of the center of your RFP response letter using bullet points. Draw the eye directly to your biggest differentiators without specifically calling out your competitors. Include what you excel at like customer support, on-time delivery, cutting-edge features, value adds, scalability, customer growth and so on.

Closing
Use the final line to move the deal forward. Offer the prospect a clear and direct call to action (see tip six for more information and an example). For example, provide details about how they can move forward with you, request the information you need to speed up contracting, or share what comes next in the process. 

If you can engage a reader in any one of these areas, they are far more likely to take the time to read your entire cover letter. Ideally, it’s intriguing enough that they continue on to check out your executive summary and proposal as well.

4. Tell a tale and express your understanding

Have a success story with a similar client that could boost your credibility? Tell it, but be brief. Share how a partnership has been mutually rewarding, how you’ve delivered a great customer experience or how you’ve been able to proactively solve problems. This reinforces your understanding of their business and goals.

In addition to telling a story, you can use your proposal cover letter to express your understanding of their pain. Every RFP starts with a need, and you received the RFP because the company believes you can meet that need. So, consider building on that foundation.

The relationship between buyers and sellers is evolving. More and more, businesses are looking for a long-term partner, someone who will actively find opportunities to create wins for both parties. RFP issuers want value but they also want a vendor that is invested in their success.

5. Stay true to your brand

Your company was included in the bid process for a reason, so stay true to the persona, culture, values and tone of your brand. Just because the RFP process is formal, doesn’t mean your RFP cover letter has to be. If your company prides itself on being down-to-earth, use that style in all of your communications. 

A cover letter shouldn’t be a lengthy essay, but it should demonstrate that you understand the prospect and their needs. Include “we” statements that hint at common goals. For example, “We believe our XYZ application will play an instrumental role in partnering with you to implement phase two of automating routine customer service processes, freeing your team to focus on reducing churn rates.”

Make sure that the tone of your cover letter accurately represents your brand and builds on the relationship you’ve cultivated. Don’t confuse your prospect by approaching them as if they were a stranger or in an unrecognizable style.

6. Close with a call to action, contact information and an actual signature

While the cover letter should be friendly, relatable and genuine; it’s also still a part of the sale. As with any good sales communication, state what you want them to do next and who they can contact to follow up. 

Wrap up your RFP cover letter with a call to action like:

  • Please reach out with any questions you may have
  • We’re eager to show you more ⁠— when we can schedule a demo with your team?
  • Let me know if I can put you in touch with another customer for a reference
  • To accelerate the contracting process, please send your standard terms and conditions

And the final element in a winning RFP cover letter is an actual signature (either handwritten or digital). It may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a nice touch and one last way to show your investment in winning the RFP opportunity.

Who signs the proposal cover letter?

Notice I didn’t title this section, “Who writes the proposal cover letter?” The person who writes it and the person who signs it may not be one and the same.

If your proposal team is fortunate enough to have a dedicated writer, then have them write the letter based on input from the frontline sales rep. Whoever writes the letter must be fully informed of response strategy and have intimate knowledge of the proposal and executive summary. Strategy, voice and style need to be consistent across all documents (cover letter, executive summary and proposal).

Who signs it depends on a variety of factors. In most cases, the frontline sales rep will sign the proposal cover letter. They have the relationship, own the strategy, and likely conducted the discovery that informed the proposal. However, it’s not uncommon for an executive sponsor such as a VP of sales to sign. The thinking being that executive reviewers may appreciate seeing a proposal that’s been vetted by a fellow executive.

There are also those cases when the executive of executives, the CEO, signs the letter. There are two common scenarios for this play. One, the RFP may be large enough to represent a significant percentage of a respondent’s annual revenue. Two, the responding organization is concerned with appearing relatively small, and in an effort to improve its stature, seals the proposal with a CEO’s signature.

There’s definitely some gamesmanship at play here. Even so, the name on the letter will never overshadow the content of the proposal.

3 common mistakes to avoid

Beyond the mistakes of not including a proposal cover letter at all or writing one that’s too long, proofread your next letter for the following mistakes before sending it.

  1. Avoid repeating anything from the executive summary or proposal. Those documents need to live on their own, just like the proposal cover letter.
  2. Don’t waste space with your resume. Something like this … RFPIO’s growing list of 1,800+ clients, including 65+ Fortune 500 organizations, continue to take advantage of our one-of-a-kind unlimited user licensing model, expanding their usage on the platform to scale organizational success. With RFPIO as their team’s support system, every day they break down silos by facilitating collaboration and efficiency in their RFX response process … is boilerplate that can appear elsewhere in the proposal or not at all, given that it’s likely available to the issuer on your corporate website.
  3. If a broker is involved, thank them too. The proposal cover letter is also an opportunity to directly address the issuer. This can be particularly valuable when a broker is involved. Some issuers rely on RFP brokers to sift through responses to make sure only the best possible solutions get serious consideration. Ignore these brokers at your peril. While the response and executive summary will address the issuer and the problem at hand, the cover letter is where you can give a nod to the broker.

Acknowledging their involvement in the process and thanking them for the opportunity as well will at the very least alert all reviewers that you paid close attention to the RFP requirements.

RFP cover letter template

Even for seasoned proposal professionals, it’s a challenge to start a brand new bid proposal cover letter from scratch, so below you’ll find an example. Hopefully, it will give you a head start on your next great RFP response. 

RFP cover letter template example | Blog image

Ready to start crafting your own RFP cover letter in this style? Check out this RFP cover letter template that follows all the best practices covered above. You’ll also find helpful instructions in the template so you can quickly customize it to meet your needs.

Proposal cover letter examples

Sample proposal letter – FedEx to State of Utah

If you only look at one other RFP cover letter sample, make it this one. This sample cover letter and accompanying proposal from FedEx is one of our favorites. Indeed, this request for proposal cover letter follows all the best practices. It includes:

  • A specific addressee
  • An engaging opening line
  • Excellent formatting and bullet points
  • A statement of experience
  • Simple, but recognizable branding
  • A real signature

Sample proposal cover letter – Insight Public Sector to Education Service Center (ESCO)

This proposal cover letter example introduces Insight Public Sector’s response to ESCO’s RFP for technology software, equipment, services and solutions. The letter fits on a single page, reaffirms the company’s qualifications, and uses colorful bullet points to draw the eye to the company’s primary differentiators.

Proposal transmittal letter example – SunPower/GSRP for Town of Nantucket

The RFP response letter focuses on the experience and financial stability of the two vendors partnering to win the business. In addition, the letter confirms the company’s ability to meet the specific qualifications set forth in the RFP for solar PV development for onsite energy generation.

RFP response cover letter sample – ISITE Design for Health Level Seven

While this cover letter uses the standard opening line, it’s scannable, brief and makes use of bullet points to highlight the company’s qualifications. In addition, the letter is addressed directly to the proposal evaluator. It’s a warm introduction for the web services strategy proposal that follows.

Helpful RFP response resources

Looking for more tools and information to help you write the perfect RFP response? Check the helpful resources below.

Guide to writing an executive summary

Do you know the difference between the executive summary and your RFP cover letter? Learn more in this blog that explores how to write an executive summary that stands out. 

Your personal guide to writing a winning executive summary

5 tips to make proposal content management easy

5 tips to make proposal content management easy

Product & Best Practices

No matter what industry or role you work in, tracking down the right information at the right time is key to success. This is especially true for proposal managers and RFP teams working to meet deadlines. However, thanks to technology, centralizing information in a proposal content library is easier than ever.

With a proposal content library, the manual process of searching through emails, old proposals, and spreadsheets is over. Finding answers is now easily completed with a simple search. But, as most proposal managers know, to be truly useful, the business must practice careful RFP content management.

This post will explore the value of a knowledge library, the importance of maintaining and managing your RFP content and best practices to help keep your proposal process running smoothly.

Proposal content library basics

So, exactly what is a proposal content library? A proposal content library is a centralized location where RFP response content is stored digitally. In some businesses or industries, it is called a proposal content repository or RFP content repository. Alternatively, teams that also store responses to security questionnaires or due diligence questionnaires may use the more general terms, knowledge library or content knowledge library.

Most proposal content libraries are created in Word, Excel, Google Docs or an RFP software solution, like RFPIO, with knowledge management functionality. Information can be copied and pasted into the centralized proposal content repository or, in the case of RFP software, simply imported from previous proposals.

Knowledge libraries with collaboration capabilities deliver even more value. The ability to work together more closely benefits both proposal managers and subject matter experts. As a result, they bypass the time-consuming back and forth of email and achieve true collaboration.

A well-curated content library contains a wealth of company information and its value extends far beyond RFP response. Increasingly, organizations turn to their content libraries for all sorts of response needs, including HR departments, public relations, communications, legal, etc.

The value of an RFP content library

Before the rise of digital transformation, proposal managers had to manually search through old RFPs, emails and documents to find the answers they needed. As intranets and cloud-based solutions grew in popularity, centralizing and storing information in a proposal content library quickly followed.

RFP content repositories bring improved efficiency, transparency and accuracy to the proposal process. A business empowered with a well-managed, organized content knowledge library sees a lot of benefits.

7 benefits of a knowledge library

  1. Easy, quick access to the information required complete proposals
  2. Consistent terminology, tone and style in proposal content
  3. Immediate and continual access to subject matter expert knowledge
  4. Faster onboarding for new subject matter experts
  5. Clear definitions of team responsibilities for revising and updating content
  6. Sales team that is empowered to complete proposals with approved content
  7. Extended value to entire company offered by answering common questions

The importance of managing your content knowledge library

Finding information quickly is one of the most common challenges facing businesses. In fact, the International Data Corporation (IDC) — a global provider of market intelligence — released a study that shows a typical knowledge worker spends “about 2.5 hours per day, or roughly 30 percent of the workday, searching for information.”

To solve this problem, businesses have invested in digital solutions to help collect valuable information. However, as information has become easier to retain, the flood of data presents a new challenge. The IDC article goes on to say:

“Intranet technology, content and knowledge management systems, corporate portals, and workflow solutions have all generally improved the lot of the knowledge worker. These technologies have improved access to information, but they have also created an information deluge that makes any one piece of information more difficult to find.”

Much of the value of RFP software is delivered through knowledge management functionality designed to make life easier. The practice of knowledge management focuses on saving, centralizing and organizing valuable information. Not only does RFP software store key proposal content for future use, but it also empowers users to organize and search for content. Proactive knowledge management is a crucial skill for effective proposal management.

Proposal content management best practices

The efficiency of using an RFP content repository depends on how well it is managed. Certainly, without proper maintenance, it can become a cluttered, unorganized mess of information. In order to avoid this challenge, follow these knowledge library best practices.

1. Add content to your proposal content repository strategically

How do you decide what goes into your knowledge library? Not every answer in every proposal or questionnaire needs to be collected and retained. You have to be strategic when building your proposal content library. Auditing content is an ongoing process, but beginning with best practices in mind will go a long way to keeping your RFP content repository clean and usable.

Avoid bulk uploading from old proposals

When creating your content knowledge library, it’s important to review the information you intend to include. Think of it like this: when you move to a new house, you don’t move the box of old cassette tapes and CDs gathering dust in your basement. Don’t bring things you don’t want to keep into your knowledge library.

Many RFP software solutions offer automated uploading of old proposals. On the surface, this option appears to offer a huge time savings. However, in practice, bulk uploading old proposal content creates a lot of unnecessary, out-of-date and duplicative clutter.

Analyze question intent to avoid adding duplicate content

From one proposal to another, there will certainly be similarities. In fact, in my experience, most proposals received by a business share nearly 60 percent of their content. These questions are a great place to start. Examine several proposals and identify core questions that exist in almost every proposal.

Take care to review several old proposals together, the language will differ but focus on the purpose behind the question and consolidate responses based on intent.

For example these questions have the same purpose. Each asks “who are you” however, each proposal might have a slightly different answer.

  • What is your company’s background?
  • Explain your company history
  • What does your company do and how long have you been in business?
  • Describe your company experience

Evaluate questions for future usefulness

Despite a large portion of similar information, some RFPs will ask questions so specific that the answer simply won’t apply to any future RFP you might receive.

Likewise, some RFPs are so customized to the company’s use case that reusing the content would take just as much rework as creating the answer from scratch. Evaluating questions critically is a key part of proposal content management.

Genericize your previous proposal content and add place holders

The last step before adding new responses to your RFP content repository is to remove any previous language, terminology or identifiers. For example, add placeholders like <>, <>, <> to stand in for specific information that was unique to the previous proposal. There’s nothing more embarrassing than sending a proposal with another company’s information still in it.

Because the amount of information created is constantly growing, managing what goes into the knowledge library is crucial. Evaluating the merit of content and deciding if it should be retained will avoid information overload.

2. Organize your proposal content library with tags

When it comes to knowledge management and keeping your proposal content organized and easy to search, nothing is more helpful than tags. Using tags adds key metadata to your RFP content, allowing it to be categorized. Tags are keywords and phrases you can associate to your proposal content. Then, when you later search for those keywords and phrases, you can isolate your search to just the tagged content.

Content tag categories

There are lots of ways to tag content. For instance, you may serve many different industries and find it helpful to tag responses accordingly — finance, healthcare, technology and so on. When you receive an RFP from a prospect in that industry, a simple search allows you to quickly access relevant proposal content.

Organizing RFP content by markets, however, might not make sense for your organization. It’s important to determine the organization method that would work best for your company’s employees. The important thing is to determine the categories that work for your users.

For example, you might choose to tag content based on:

  • Product lines
  • Internal groups that own the content
  • Security question categories
  • Geographic location

Tagging best practices for RFP content management

Use broad tags and limit the number of options

As you create tags in your RFP content repository, keep them fairly general. If too many tag variations are available, finding the exact one you need can become confusing. Limiting the total number of tags to less than 50 will keep your knowledge categorized and useful without being too segmented.

You also don’t need to combine tags to create highly specific categories that you’ll rarely use. For example, if you serve the healthcare and finance industries you may have proposal content in your library applicable to both. Instead of creating a new tag called “healthcare finance” it is better to tag it with both “healthcare” and “finance.”

Share your list of tags

Once you’ve established your core tags, publish the list. Then, when anyone in your organization needs to find information in the content knowledge library, they know where to start. Socializing your tags also has the benefit of validating your thinking and further defining tags. After all, what makes sense to you may not make sense to somebody else. Understanding the logic and justification behind tags will make your RFP content repository useful to everyone who needs it.

Review your tags regularly

It’s important to review your tag list regularly to make sure all of your tags are still useful. If your tags are well thought out and you have stored enough relevant proposal content, you should see between 10 to 20 records or more associated with each tag.

If you find an individual content record has more than four tags, you should reevaluate whether each tag is needed. On the other hand, if you identify untagged content, review it to determine whether the content is still useful. And if so, take a moment to add any relevant tags to ensure it can be found.

3. Give the right people the right access

You might want to share proposal content with certain users, but not with others. In some cases, providing access to the entire proposal content library may be an unnecessary distraction. How you grant access to your knowledge library depends entirely on where you manage it.

Version control and access in Word or Excel

If you’re managing your content repository in Word or Excel, your ability to collaborate with subject matter experts is somewhat limited. In order to collaborate with colleagues you may need to extract a set of questions from the knowledge library, create a new document with only the relevant info and send it over to your subject matter expert for review. Sending document versions through email can be difficult to track, so if you have an intranet platform it may be useful to share documents there instead.

Permission management in Google docs

Live editing available in Google docs makes collaboration easier, but permission management is still a challenge. Permissions are set at a document level so limiting access to your knowledge would mean creating individual documents for each subject matter expert. For Google sheets experts, there may be an available script to limit access by user by tab, but it’s far from a perfect solution. Google Drive’s search makes it possible to find content using keywords in multiple documents, but the process is cumbersome. It’s a time-consuming workaround.

User permissions in RFP software

RFP software makes setting user permissions easy. Using account hierarchies, you can easily ensure a user is only able to view and edit information that is relevant to their role. This empowers organizations to break down silos without putting sensitive client data into the wrong hands.

For example, if your company has multiple divisions, such as geographically separate groups, hierarchies and subaccounts can help you localize projects and users. Within each sub account, you can create additional subaccounts, continuing until you have a hierarchy structure that accurately reflects your organization. This empowers users to easily access all the data and information related to the sub account in which they’re searching.

In another example, if you’re a consultant who helps clients craft proposals, you can create a hierarchy structure to keep client work separate. When you set up clients as users in subaccounts, they cannot see activity in other client accounts.

4. Schedule regular content reviews

As your proposal content repository grows, implementing regular reviews will help things run smoothly. Old, unreviewed information opens you up to risk. Sending out-of-date information can compromise your chance of winning an RFP and damage your reputation.

As the proposal manager or sales person, you simply cannot keep track of every change throughout the business. Consequently, you won’t know when a change needs to be reflected in your response content. This is why proposal content management requires regularly scheduled updates to the proposal content library.

I recommend assigning subject matter experts the relevant tags to review on a regular basis. For most of your proposal content, reviewing once every six months is probably enough. However, for areas that change quickly, like security information for software a more frequent review cycle might be necessary.

Be sure to communicate expectations. It can also be helpful to encourage proactive updates when subject matter experts know changes have been made. And, finally, don’t be shy about following up and being persistent when proposal content reviews are past-due.

5. Teach key search skills

Once you have your proposal content library set up and organized, it’s time to make sure your team is getting the most out of it. Finding the right content often comes down to knowing what to look for and how to search for it. It seems obvious, but understanding how search works is an underappreciated skill. The ability to search is key to success, according to IDC.

“Increasingly, search has become one of the most frequent, vital tasks a knowledge worker performs.”

There’s a big difference between computer logic and how humans think. Using Boolean search logic will help you quickly find information in your RFP content library.

Boolean search basics

Most search engines leverage Boolean logic to find and narrow search results. Boolean search allows you to specify, group or exclude specific words using AND, OR and NOT functions.

AND search

AND logic only returns results that include all of the terms requested. This is useful when you’re looking for very specific information. For example, if you need answers for questions to respond to a potential client that provides financial technology, you could search for “finance AND technology.”

Proposal content management search skills for AND

OR search

OR will search for proposal content that has any of the search words entered. This is a great option when your key search term may have several synonyms. For instance, if you’re looking for responses that would fit for a banking client, you may want to search for “finance or banking.” Your search results will include any proposal content that contains either finance or banking.

NOT search

NOT searches for results that have one term but excludes another. This is helpful when you know exactly what you want to find between two closely related terms. For example, if you need to provide information about your company’s diversity, but don’t want to see results about HR recruitment policies. Searching for “diversity NOT recruitment” will yield the most relevant results.

Additional search options

In addition to AND, OR and NOT searching, you can combine the terms to further narrow results. You can also use quotation marks (“ ”) to request exact match for long search terms. And finally, you can use parentheses to tell the search engine which operation you’d like completed first.

For example, searching for “(banking OR finance) AND recruitment” will yield results that contain both banking recruitment and finance recruitment. Whereas “banking OR (finance AND recruitment)” will yield results that contain banking as well as results that contain both finance and recruitment.

How RFP software transforms proposal content management

Maintaining best practices for RFP content management is a challenge. However, RFP software makes the process much easier. The features of RFP software designed specifically to meet the unique needs of proposal managers and teams. Including everything mentioned above and more like, content importing, integrations, knowledge management extensions, tags, permissions, account hierarchy management and more ⁠— RFP software delivers huge value.

Discussing the value of their knowledge library, RFPIO customer Paul Maplesden from GEODIS said:

“The GEODIS Content Library refresh would have been much more difficult and time-consuming without the RFPIO tool. RFPIO features have made it much faster and easier for us to identify duplicate content and develop a strong approach to enhance the Content Library.”

To learn more about how RFPIO improves RFP management, learn more about our knowledge management solution or request a demo to see it for yourself.

Tender management explained

Tender management explained

Product & Best Practices

When a business, nonprofit organisation, or government agency needs to make a major purchase, such as materials required to manufacture their goods or services to keep the organisation humming, they typically initiate a bidding process before zeroing in on their best option.

If the purchasing organisation is in the United States, the bidding process begins with a request for proposal (RFP). In many other parts of the world, the request is called a tender. In turn, the vendors respond with a proposal, or more commonly outside the U.S., a bid (or response).

In this blog post, we’ll take a deeper look at the tender management process and how organisations can optimise their purchasing outcomes.

What is tender management?

Tender management is the structured process of getting information from the market to make a purchase or responding to a request sent by another organisation to purchase from you. It is about ensuring that bids or purchases align with company values, needs, budgets, security and compliance requirements, and so on.

Tender managers are responsible for coordinating with department leaders to create a list of potential vendors and send a detailed questionnaire that covers everything from vendor history to purchase specifications to legal requirements. They may also be responsible for crafting bids in response to tenders.

Confusing? Perhaps, but it’s also worth noting that in many companies, tender managers both send and respond to tenders. To avoid confusion, let’s call the questionnaire a tender and refer to the response as a bid.

Bid vs. tender vs. proposal management

Bid, tender, and proposal management are often used interchangeably. Traditionally, bid and proposal management are synonymous. Both are about the process of responding to tenders (or RFPs).

Today, some companies use tender management to describe both the purchasing and bidding process.

Who participates in the tendering process?

There are generally several stakeholders involved in the tendering process. Tender response teams may include personnel from:

  • Sales
  • Procurement
  • Operations
  • Logistics
  • Finance
  • Human resources
  • Marketing
  • Legal
  • Information technology and security
  • And more

Additionally, larger companies may have a dedicated bid team, which might include a bid manager to oversee the entire process, a writer or two, and an editor.

How the tender management process works

As with RFPs and all other questionnaires a potential customer might send, tenders are detailed, specific legal documents with zero leeway deadlines. As such, it’s critical that companies design a repeatable response process before the next tender reaches their inbox.

RFPIO’s response managers recommend an 8-step process:

Step 1 – Go/no-go

Tender response is a long process. It can take days and sometimes even weeks. To demonstrate respect for your time, that of your fellow stakeholders, and the company at large, initiate a selection process to determine whether the tender is winnable and aligns with your company’s goals.

The process should determine whether your organisation is willing or able to provide the product or service. It should also include reports to compare success rates of previous similar bids, whether similar bids you’ve won were beneficial to your organisation, and any available competitive research.

Step 2 – Hold a kickoff meeting

Gather your stakeholders to assign roles, responsibilities, timelines, and objectives. A project management platform designed explicitly for tender responses will help streamline the process and track progress.

Step 3 – 1st draft

Up to 80 percent of a tender’s questions are relatively standard. For example, questions about company history or your IT security protocols are common. Establish a well-maintained content library to store previous answers, so you can respond to those questions quickly, efficiently, and with marketing-approved content.

Ask subject matter experts (SMEs) to review their answers to ensure they are accurate and up to date. Ideally, you should involve them in periodic content audits to help simplify the response process.

Step 4 – 2nd draft

The second draft is the time to dig down and answer the remaining questions. You will need to involve SMEs to help craft responses to the questions that fall under their realms and your marketing department to ensure the answers meet brand guidelines.

Step 5 – Review and revise

Check that each question has complete, accurate, well-written, and proofread answers. You should also make sure that all relevant documents are attached.

Step 6 – Submit

Submit your polished response by the deadline or sooner. In fact, sooner is preferred in case there’s a glitch that requires you to submit it multiple times. Wait until you receive a receipt and let each stakeholder know.

Step 7 – Save and audit the responses

Record each answer in a centralised repository for use in future tender responses. You should also schedule routine content audits.

Step 8 – Hold a postmortem

Every response is a learning opportunity. Gather your team to gauge what went well and what didn’t.

Understanding the challenges of tender management

Even the best-designed tender response process has its challenges. The most common include:

Workflow

Without clearly defined roles and responsibilities, you might have people stepping on each others’ toes, or perhaps more likely, too few people willing to make the time.

Because tender response timelines are absolute, tracking progress is crucial. A robust project management platform that works with your existing tech stack will define roles, eliminate confusion, and help ensure each response arrives within the allotted time.

Collaboration

If your company is like most, you have work silos. Even if you don’t, your workforce might span the country or even the world. Effective collaboration is a must for tender response management. Look for bid software that integrates with your existing communication apps.

It’s also worth noting that RFPIO has no user licences, so you can include anyone you feel is valuable to your bid.

Disorganised content repository

One thing that will slow down the response process every single time is a nonexistent or disorganised content management system. Just to give you an idea of how much it can slow you down, a McKinsey survey found that average workers spent nearly 20 percent of their time tracking down information.

Because tender responses are legal documents that require coordinating with busy SMEs and input from your marketing team, 20 percent is very conservative. Some customers find they are as much as 5x more productive when they store their information in the RFPIO Content Library.

Best practices for tender management

Now that you have a repeatable process in place, how should you specifically approach your next tender?

Understand the full scope of the project first

An essential part of the go/no-go process is understanding the customer’s request. When you assume rather than reading and comprehending the entire document, you risk alienating the buyer.

Only bid on tenders you can fulfil

Maybe your product or solution is a perfect match, but when you dive a little deeper into the tender, you find that you can’t meet their timeline or security requirements.

I’m not suggesting that you should always avoid bidding when you aren’t the perfect fit. Sometimes you want to put your name out there for future consideration, but be honest with the buyer right up front, such as in the cover letter. Otherwise, you could risk damaging your reputation.

But, as the expression goes, a bird in the hand…

In most cases, opt for the winnable deals. Most tender response teams, and especially SMEs, are extremely busy. Directing efforts toward realistic, revenue-generating opportunities is far better than those that might only be viable years from now.

Develop a collaborative response strategy

Two- and even single-person bid teams aren’t unheard of but uncommon. The typical tender response requires choreography that almost rivals the Royal Ballet. Alright, that’s an exaggeration, but collaboration is critical.

To strategically optimise collaboration:

  • Provide the right tools – The chances are that your company already uses one or more collaboration tools. Look for a tender response software that works with the tools people are already comfortable with.
  • Respect contributors’ time – Your SMEs each have different work styles. Some have more time than others, and some have more stored question-answer pairs. Respect contributors’ time and work styles to help foster future collaboration.
  • Clarify roles and expectations – Avoid team members getting in the way of each other by letting them know precisely what is expected of them.

Manage and organise tender content

As my mother likes to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You should regularly audit your content library to weed out the ROT, or that content that is redundant, outdated, or trivial.

Engage your SMEs to check their own question-answer pairs. It’s a much lighter lift if you conduct periodic, such as quarterly, audits.

The role of tender management systems

Tender management systems help define, optimise, and manage the strategic tender management process.

What are the benefits of a tender management system?

A tender management system offers a structured approach for both buyers and bidders. In both cases, a structured system saves time, fosters efficiency, strengthens communication, and helps both parties achieve their goals.

More specific benefits include:

For the buyer

Creating a tender is arguably the least time-consuming part of the tender process, but it still takes a lot of time and effort. A tender management system lets buyers collaborate with the teams requesting the product or service and other stakeholders to ensure that all requirements are covered.

You may be able to pull similar tenders for reference from your content library.

For the bidder

The bid process is considerably more complex than the buying process in that bidders need to learn and follow the buyer’s rules. Thoroughness, accuracy, and quality are paramount. A tender management system helps ensure that bids are well-written, complete, accurate, in the buyer’s preferred format, and submitted on time.

Additionally, a well-curated content library benefits the entire organisation.

Tender management software

As businesses become increasingly selective while regulations such as GDPR add complexity, more and more organisations are looking for a future-proof tender management system.

Organisational structure has seen significant changes over the last few years. If employees aren’t working remotely, they’re often spread out over multiple locations and internal silos. All this is to say that collaboration tools have never been more critical. This is especially true for tender management teams whose members can come from any department. Some organisations even use freelancers to help write or for their expertise.

Since time management is necessary, tender management software should help ensure you never miss a deadline. It should work how you work but also stay within buyers’ parameters. And it should provide the data that fosters intelligent decision-making and proves its worth.

Tender response is about projects, not individual use. Individual licences inhibit collaboration and encourage skimping on resources. They also limit scalability. Look for a tender management system that grows when needed and scales back during slower times.

What to look for when choosing a tender management system

An ideal tender management system supports a strategic tender management process. Components should include:

  • Data – A strategic response requires data. An effective tender management system should provide customizable reports to assist with your go/no-go decision-making and informed business decision-making.
  • Automation – A tender management system is about accomplishing more while using fewer resources. Look for a system, such as RFPIO’s autoresponse or automated project management features, that intelligently works with you to boost your capacity and overall win rate.
  • Powerful integrations – Today’s CIOs prioritise consolidating their tech stacks instead of adding to them. Look for a system that integrates with your most essential tools.
  • A robust content management system – Your tender management system should not only direct you to the correct answers but also notify you of possible duplicates and outdated answers. Additionally, you should look for an accurate and comprehensive content repository for company use cases that extend far beyond tender management.
  • Import-export capabilities – Tenders arrive in various ways, including Word documents, spreadsheets, and PDFs. However, it can be difficult for multiple stakeholders to work within unknown categorising and formatting. A tender management system should be able to translate a tender into a format each user understands and revert the final product back to the original.
  • Customization – Very few people want to read thousands of words of nonstop text. Tell and show using customised tables, images, and rich text. Make your brand stand out with branded templates.

How to use a tender management tool

Tender management tools have multifaceted uses that benefit an entire organisation. A comprehensive content management system should be a single source of truth for two of your company’s greatest assets, its knowledge and essential documents.

At a higher level, tender management tools save time, improve bid quality, and increase company profits. A tender management platform is a sales enablement tool that benefits all revenue-generating departments.

And, when it’s time for the procurement department to do its thing, a tender management tool will help them create requests designed to fulfil all requirements.

How RFPIO can help your tender management process

If you’re looking for a way to improve your organisation’s efficiency and win rates, RFPIO is an excellent option. Our software is designed to increase collaboration and boost capacity while making tracking progress and managing deadlines easier. With RFPIO, you’ll be able to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time developing winning proposals. Chat with us to see how RFPIO can benefit your organisation.

Tender management FAQs

1. What is a tender?

A tender is a legal document that invites multiple parties to bid on a large purchase. A tender might also refer to the bids in response to the documents.

2. How is a tender different from an RFP?

The word “tender” is far more common outside the United States. Both documents ask for formalised purchasing proposals. Both terms can also refer to the proposals generated.

3. What is a request for tender (RFT)?

A request for tender is a request for a formalised business proposal.

4. What are the evaluation criteria for tenders?

Tenders have very stringent evaluation criteria. The winning bidder will have to provide the exact deliverables, security, and business requirements, and a price that fits the buyer’s budget.

5. How do I know if my tender has been successful?

Tender success can be measured by several metrics, including quality, response time, and of course, whether you win the bid. Tender management software should help you assess quality and response time. It can take weeks or months to learn whether you win the bid. However, customers may ask additional questions, which can indicate you’re on the shortlist.

RFP response management resource

RFP response management resource

Product & Best Practices

You may have heard the adage that 80 percent of a company’s business comes from 20 percent of its customers. Many call these big customers “whales.”

Whether or not that number holds true for your company, big-ticket sales are the holy grail for any business. While sales teams would love their whale customers to click “buy” on their website and call it a deal, large purchases require time and due diligence on the buyer’s part and at least an equal amount of effort on the seller’s part.

Requests for proposals (RFPs) precede most large purchases and they specifically outline the customers’ requirements and goals and define the bidding process and desired contract terms. A typical RFP could have 100s to 1,000s of questions.

If that sounds like a lot, I’m not going to lie; it is. Strategic RFP response management requires expertise from multiple stakeholders across the organization, a tightly coordinated set of deliverables, and an excellent wordsmith or two.

Now for the good news.

The right RFP response management processes help make short work of creating winning proposals.

This blog post will show you how to create timely, accurate, and compelling proposals by establishing systematic response processes and hopefully land more whales.

Understanding RFP management

RFP management, at least from the vendor side, is the process of organizing and responding to requests for proposals. Of course, that definition is simplistic. RFP response management is about choosing whether an RFP is worth a response and coordinating subject matter experts (SMEs), stakeholders, deadlines and deliverables, and a postmortem.

A typical RFP response includes:

  • A cover letter – Much like when you apply for a job, and perhaps even more so, a cover letter is an opportunity to shine beyond the document’s limitations. It may include information that shows you know what they need, how your company can address those needs, and maybe a little flattery, or at least a statement demonstrating that you’d like to work with them.
  • An executive summary – An executive summary dives deeper than a cover letter. It might show how you plan to address the customer’s needs, competitive differentiators, and why your company is an expert.
  • An implementation plan – This is usually part of the questionnaire. The implementation plan is about how you will meet customer needs, including timelines, onboarding and customer service team members, and so on.
  • Terms of the deal – This section details the costs, postimplementation support, and a contract. Note that the customer may not sign that particular contract, but it will show them the terms and conditions.
  • References – Potential customers want to know that you have a track record of meeting similar needs to theirs. Include at least a couple of references from a similar industry, size, or type of product or service.

The Response management process

Do you want to know my favorite part of a great RFP response management process? Cheating. As a matter of fact, cheating is encouraged, if not the only way, to respond effectively.

Below is the RFP process created by our response experts. You’ll get to the cheating part in step three, but please don’t skip steps one and two.

Step one – Should you bid or should you (no-)go?

Not all RFPs align with your business’s goals or capabilities. It’s okay to choose not to respond to an RFP that you probably won’t or might not want to win.

Step two – Hold a kickoff meeting

The most critical part of an RFP process comes before you ever receive an RFP. You should know your stakeholders and have a list of subject matter experts (SMEs) with their areas of expertise and availability.

Once you do receive the RFP, call a meeting with your SMEs, writers, editors, and others involved in the project. Fill them in on their roles, responsibilities, and deliverable deadlines.

Step three – First draft

Step three is almost fun, at least it should be if you have an up-to-date content and document library. Let the library do much of the work for you by responding to the questions you’ve seen before with its stored question-and-answer pairs.

Step four – Second draft

Depending on the age and health of your content library, you might arrive at step four with 80 percent of the work already done. Now is the time to roll up your sleeves and answer the rest of the questions. You will probably need to involve your SMEs.

Step five – Review and revise

When attempting to convey that your product or service is the best for the buyer’s needs, your RFP response should be perfect. Are your answers, including those from the content library, accurate and well-written? Are there any typos or grammatical errors?

Step six – Submit the response

Your response is polished and perfect and hopefully on time, if not early. Submit it as soon as it’s ready and wait for a receipt.

Step seven – Save and audit the responses

Your RFP response contains valuable information that is certain to be useful for future RFPs. Set yourself up for success by auditing your new responses and storing those with value in your content library.

Step eight – Postmortem

Even if you’ve answered every question with relevant and beautifully worded responses, your company’s product or service is a perfect match for the buyer, and even if you won the bid, you should always take a moment to assess what went right and what went wrong.

Perhaps you find a bottleneck in your process or rely too heavily on a particularly busy SME who’s understandably slow to respond. Addressing those or other problems before the next project will help you prevent those issues from undermining your subsequent response.

The challenges of response management

Response management is challenging. Even the best response teams need help. Heck, even our response management teams need help. Here are some roadblocks you might encounter:

  • Lack of time – It can take days or even weeks to respond to an RFP. RFP software can cut that time in half or better.
  • Strict deadlines – An RFP deadline is pretty much set in stone. A slow internet connection can mean the difference between winning and losing a deal. Try to submit your proposal early to avoid unforeseen delays.
  • Disorganized content library – A well-maintained knowledge base will save you days on a typical response. A poorly maintained knowledge repository will force stakeholders to search for answers and annoy SMEs, who might have to repeat themselves.
  • Siloed and distributed workforces – RFP response is collaborative by definition. When stakeholders are spread throughout the organization and even the world, let’s just say that herding cats seems like a comparative breeze. A great RFP response platform should have its own collaboration tools and work with your existing ones.
  • Security risks – When a company suffers a data breach, it affects customer confidence and the bottom line. Be sure your RFP response platform has strict security protocols.

How to manage RFP responses

Perhaps repeatability is the ultimate sign of a great process—or is it agility?

Imagine attempting to scale Mount Everest without a guide. An experienced guide knows all the well-worn trails and how to respond to changing conditions. Responding to an RFP is far less perilous than climbing Everest, but the principles are the same.

Optimize time management with automation

Your SMEs are some of the busiest people in your organization. Respect your stakeholders’ time by letting your process do most of the work. RFPIO leverages artificial intelligence to guide you to the correct answers to an RFP’s questions.

Scale your response management process

Response resource needs are tough to predict. One response might need dozens of stakeholders, while another might only need a few. You might have one RFP on your plate this week, but next week three more will appear.

Too few user licenses might force you to ignore some RFPs, while too many are a waste. RFPIO doesn’t have user licenses. Our scalable platform enables you to assign the exact personnel you need for each response without it affecting your team’s budget.

Upgrade your content management approach

A well-maintained content management system allows you to access company history, documents, hiring procedures, financial information, and much more. It also protects your SMEs’ time by ensuring they won’t have to repeat past answers.

Regularly audit your content management system to ensure that everything is accurate and up to date.

Facilitate collaboration

RFP response management is a team effort. If your company is anything like RFPIO, you have SMEs and other stakeholders distributed worldwide. Even if not, pinning people down for in-person meetings is a challenge.

RFPIO enhances collaboration either directly through the project management platform or any of its third-party integration partners, such as Slack, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, and so on.

Employ branded response templates

Add the final sheen to your polished and perfected response with branded response templates tailored to your organization.

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management is about capturing, storing, organizing, maintaining, and generally managing all of the information that is valuable enough for a company to keep. That might include incorporation papers, financial statements, hiring policies, product information, customer details, and so on.

Effective knowledge management also includes regular audits to ensure all the information is current and relevant. It should also flag records for disposal according to “shred by” regulations. Ideally, all knowledge should be easily accessible to those who need it.

Improving RFP knowledge management

Organizations and their employees lose a lot of time to improper knowledge management. An IDC study found that employees spend an average of 14 hours a week trying to locate data. A McKinsey survey found that searchable knowledge bases can reduce that time spent by as much as 35 percent.

RFPIO’s Content Library helps organizations improve their RFP (and companywide) knowledge management by providing a repository for all their company content and documentation in an easily accessible and highly-searchable, thanks to machine learning, single source of truth.

Scale organizational content

I like to shop. Perhaps you do too. As we both know, if we keep bringing new items into our homes without clearing out the old, we’ll soon overflow and might have trouble locating our favorite comfy sweaters.

Just as we occasionally need to clean out our drawers and closets, a well-organized knowledge management approach needs regular content auditing to ensure accuracy, relevancy, and timeliness. RFPIO helps you make data-driven decisions when streamlining and scaling your content library.

Conduct regular review cycles by turning to RFPIO to identify the content you use and the content you don’t. Additional reporting metrics include answer accuracy and who is using the content.

Remember, RFPIO’s unlimited user model lets you engage maintenance help from any team member.

Centralize your content library

You might have a distributed and siloed workforce, but a centralized content library consolidates and democratizes your organization’s knowledge base.

Future-proof your knowledge base

Your needs today look very different from your needs tomorrow. You can help future-proof your knowledge base by performing regular audits.

RFPIO gently reminds you when it’s time for your scheduled Content Library audit, ensuring that your content is accurate and current. The more often you issue new product features or releases, the more you should audit your content.

Another often overlooked component of future-proofing is creating a succession plan. Sure, you might plan on staying with your company until retirement, but perhaps you’ll receive a job offer you can’t refuse or simply choose to take a vacation.

Make sure you have a plan in place in your absence, which includes training others on the content library, including familiarizing them with tagging practices, and so on.

Choosing response management software

Maximizing your response output without adding employees will likely require help from a response management software. What are the key components of advanced response management software?

RFP management software: essential features

When assessing available software, look for the following:

  • Import/export capabilities – RFPs arrive in multiple formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and sometimes even PDFs. Advanced response software lets you import from any of the most commonly used formats, work within your familiar platform, and export into the buyer’s format.
  • Content management – Access all your stored question-and-answer pairs with a few clicks. Better yet, advanced response software leverages machine learning to help you find the correct answers fast and do most of the work for you.
  • Integrations – Response software should work within your existing applications to foster ultimate productivity and collaboration.
  • Artificial intelligence – Access automated answers, track progress, and generate reports using advanced AI.

How a response management platform can support your revenue team

The same features that facilitate response management help enable sales. Most large sales include proposals and documents such as due diligence and security questionnaires. RFPIO seamlessly integrates with sales enablement, CRM, and vendor assessment tools.

Increase your win rate with RFPIO

Respond to more RFPs, and boost your win rate without adding personnel by leveraging RFPIO’s advanced response software.

Case study

RFPIO helped a human resources organization double its win rate thanks to the Content Library. Before RFPIO, their teams spent most of their time searching for answers to questions they’d answered before.

For those answers they did have stored, they’d often find themselves correcting errors directly in the proposal rather than in the system, meaning the mistakes were being passed down to future responses. RFPIO made it easy to store, find, and correct answers within the system, saving hours on each response, while the professional responses helped significantly boost the win rate.

See how RFPIO can help you build better bids and increase your win rate by taking us for a test drive.

Response management software FAQs

  • What is an RFP? – Businesses, nonprofits, and governmental agencies issue requests for proposals when seeking bids for large purchases.
  • Who owns the response management process? – Response management ownership depends on a company’s organizational structure. Some have dedicated response management teams, and in others, sales personnel might own the process.
  • Do manual response processes work? – Manual response processes do work. However, they are inefficient and have trouble keeping up with growing needs.
  • What kind of organizations issue RFPs? – Any type of organization can issue RFPs.
  • How does artificial intelligence help the response process? – I will let data scientists and software developers debate whether AI is actually more intelligent than human brains (I’m team human, at least for now), but it is undeniably faster. It can find relevant responses within seconds, while humans might take minutes or more.
  • How many users can RFPIO support at one time? – RFPIO is a project-based platform rather than user-based. Go ahead and assign as many users as you need.
  • Does RFPIO integrate with other business applications? – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with more than two dozen of the most popular business applications.
  • Is RFPIO secure? – RFPIO offers best-in-class security protocols and is trusted by highly secure tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Visa, Facebook, and far more.
Knowledge management best practices: Out with the old, in with the new

Knowledge management best practices: Out with the old, in with the new

Product & Best Practices

A few years ago, Netflix debuted a show called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. It was an overnight hit. Why? It might not surprise you to hear that Americans, Europeans, and presumably much of the world, sit on a lot of clutter.

Clutter in the home can lead to stress and anxiety. Clutter in the workplace isn’t any better. But what happens when what you need is hidden away in a basement or crawlspace—or inside a subject matter expert’s head?

When your household clutter is hidden and you can’t find the vinyl record you’re looking for, it’s annoying. When employees can’t find necessary information, the ramifications extend far beyond their immediate departments.

While Marie Kondo is not (at least that I know of) a content management expert, a well-curated and maintained knowledge management system breaks through the clutter to ensure that the right information gets into the right hands at the right time.

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management, as defined by Slack, has four objectives:

  • Capture knowledge
  • Improve access to knowledge
  • Enhance the knowledge environment
  • Treat knowledge as an asset

Are organizations achieving their objectives?

  • Employees spend an average of 19% of their time searching and gathering information
  • Data professionals spend about 20% of their time rebuilding existing information assets
  • 87% of employees want transparency in the workplace, yet only 18% feel their workplace is transparent
  • Only about ⅓ of organizations leverage AI as part of their knowledge management strategy

A centralized knowledge management system is vital to an organization’s operations. A single source of truth, as opposed to scattered knowledge, provides:

  • Organizational resilience and agility
  • Faster and better-informed strategizing and decision making
  • A greater ability to confront challenges and solve problems
  • Faster and improved innovation
  • Improved employee engagement, productivity, and morale
  • Better sharing of subject matter expertise
  • Enhanced collaboration
  • De-siloed business processes
  • Competitive benchmarks
  • Improved security
  • Increased revenue and profits
  • A better customer experience

Creating and maintaining a content library

A content library is not a dumping ground for documents and data. Each entry into the content library should align with business goals and processes and help maintain legal and security compliance. All content should be up-to-date and relevant—a.k.a., used or at least usable.

Doing the content management heavy lifting

In the first of our two-part series, we discussed respecting your subject matter experts (SMEs), which means doing as much heavy lifting as possible.

With the end of the quarter approaching, this is a great time to audit existing content. Here’s how:

Be organized and keep track of your own work

I keep track of my work using an Excel spreadsheet. I list all the categories of content I will review, who my subject matter experts are, and how much content I have.

I also indicate how often to review the content. For example, a publicly traded company’s content requires quarterly review. The content might be owned by a content manager, someone in investor relations, or corporate communications.

If a company is privately-held, it might have some high-level information it provides on a quarterly basis, although many privately-held companies provide that information annually. If you don’t know how often to review your content, rely on your SMEs. They know the content the best.

Once the SME has provided a review schedule, you can track it on a spreadsheet or on a content management platform to establish review cycles.

Once you’ve established your review cycles, there are a few metrics you want to consider to show SMEs and leadership that your content is in the best possible condition, including:

  • Usage
  • Recency
  • Completeness

You should do a few things to show SMEs that you are organized and ready for them. Build out a plan, including:

  • Showing that you’ve removed unused content
  • Showing that you’re focused on the most-used content
  • Showing that you are organized
  • Showing that you know how to distribute the content to be reviewed
  • Testing your proposal automation and content management platform in multiple environments (office, home office, client’s site, hotel and airline wifi, etc.) to ensure stability
  • If you are using a content management platform, leverage the review and reporting functionality
  • Strategic tagging, especially if an SME has a lot of content to review (consult with your customer success manager before going into that level of detail)
  • Engaging leadership at both the proposal and SME sides, so they know what you’re doing, what the SMEs are doing, how much work there is, and when it’s expected to be completed
  • Recognizing contributors once the reviews are completed

Review most-used content first

The first step to an efficient content management system is pretty simple. However, you will need a lot of help from your subject matter experts to ensure accuracy. The key to maintaining a collaborative relationship with SMEs is to honor their time. Rather than hand them a mile-high virtual stack of content, sort by that which is used the most.

As a proposal manager, you know that RFxs aren’t exactly creative documents. Most questions are near duplicates of those you’ve seen 100s of times before.

So, if your organization doesn’t have content management software and you use SharePoint or Excel to track your content, you can still review the most-used content by seeing the Q&A pairs used on your last 2 or 3 proposals, or perhaps the previous 3-6 months.

You could even take your very first 2023 proposal, review every piece of content that goes into it, and call that your 2023 gold standard.

Review zero-times-used content

The next step is to approach content management from the other end of the spectrum—look at never-used content. It might be tempting to automatically archive or delete (I’m not a fan of deleting) all your never-used content, but that could be a mistake.

As with your most-used content, look at the last 3-6 months. Ask yourself this:

  • Is some of the content relevant, but you haven’t had the time or an opportunity to use it?
  • Is some of the content deal- or client-specific?
  • Is some of the content product- or service-specific and something you might only need to use every 2-3 years?
  • Was the content updated in the last year?

If any of your never-used content meets the above criteria, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on it during the upcoming year to see if it proves its value.

Keep your review/moderation queue current

Once you’ve completed your initial review, keep your review/moderation queue current by setting aside time each week and each month to work through your new and existing content.

Make sure you get content out the door and into the content library in its most accurate state as it is reviewed and updated through projects and SMEs.

Break down your content to achieve success

Now that you know which content is relevant or which might be relevant in the future, it’s time to think strategically about content and how to organize it. It might seem daunting, but it’s very manageable if you approach it in bite-sized pieces.

High-level groups of content

High-level groups of content might carry different names depending on your content management system. If you use RFPIO, those groups fall under “collections.” Others may refer to them as “folders.”

Regardless of names, collections or folders are great ways to begin to attack the content and look at its health as you enter a new quarter or year. You can organize the folders by solution, geography, language, product, etc.

If you added the information to your folders in the last 6 months, keep it. If the content was not used during that time, you can archive it. If you aren’t comfortable creating a periodical archive, you can create a holding tank (or parking lot) for content you want to make available to a limited number of people.

The holding tank will contain content that’s still relatively current but not locked down. Then you’ll be able to access that content and pull it back into the content library if used. If you haven’t used content in your holding tank or parking lot in 3, 6, or 9 months, depending on your review cycle, you can archive it.

Using the holding tank is a great way to strategically add content back without muddying your current content library.

If you have a way to export the content from a SharePoint site or existing non-RFPIO platform to an Excel spreadsheet, you can begin to run some pivot tables. Look for:

  • Number of Q&A pairs in each collection or folder
  • Number of times used
  • Date it was last used

You can also run a pivot table on the zero times used content to see what was added and not used over the last 6 months vs. what should be archived because it’s more than 6 months old.

Report, report, report

Most leaders aren’t particularly interested in the minutiae of a content management review cycle. Still, they want to see results and a demonstration of continuing value, beyond just time savings, in your proposal automation system. That’s where reporting comes in.

Most proposal management systems contain built-in reporting features. Look for them if you are about to deploy a new proposal management solution.

The goal is to show that you have demonstrable time savings and that you are getting into the strategic benefit of the platform by showing that you can keep your content current, accurate, and fresh.

Reporting metrics should include the following:

  • Time saved
  • Accuracy of answers
  • The number of people successfully using the system
  • The number of people who can successfully access content that they may not have had access to before

Let leadership determine reporting frequency

Reports are how you substantiate the strategic benefit you’re getting out of your content management platform, so let leadership determine the frequency.

Most likely, they’ll say quarterly, although it could be monthly at the beginning and then quarterly after your first review cycle. Think of these reports in much the same way you think of the reports your proposal team has to create.

Be consistent and strategic

Stick to your reporting schedule, metrics, and format. Show leadership usage, review schedules, and recently updated content reviewed by your SME and polished by your proposal team and content manager.

Show these for each group of content, line of business, collection, geography, language, or however you organize your content. Be consistent in your format by nailing down your template at the beginning of the year.

Get feedback from the proposal leadership, SME leadership, sales enablement leadership, or, if your company is small to mid-market, from your C-suite.

Ensure that you’re reporting in a way that is valuable to them. Use that format every time you report. Executives and leaders like consistency; they also like graphics. Instead of a lot of Excel spreadsheets, use graphics such as charts or screenshots.

If, for example, you’re an RFPIO user, show leaders used vs. unused content for the annum and then quarterly going forward. You can also show them content that has owners, no owners, has been reviewed, hasn’t been reviewed, etc.

Explain to them why these things matter, and make sure all your content managers, SMEs, and leadership teams are involved in the reporting conversations.

If you use RFPIO or another platform that includes reporting functionality, you can take screenshots of your system reports and include them in your slide decks. Having that consistent graphic will be helpful for leadership, and it will show you the incremental and cumulative progress you’re making.

Also, it will show you when you need to start archiving content and maybe gaps where you need to add new content. RFPIO users can take screenshots of your content library insights report at the beginning of the year, then monthly and quarterly.

At the end of the year, the screenshots will tell a powerful story. Halfway through the year, you might start seeing gaps and areas you may need to improve upon, so by the end of the year, you can show where you spotted that and where you can make adjustments.

Monetize the value of time spent

Leadership likes to see that you’re flexible, nimble, and always thinking about best practices. Additionally, as you save SMEs’ time by reducing the number of Q&A pairs they have to review, etc., leadership will be able to put a dollar value on time saved.

For example, it takes around 3-5 minutes to review a Q&A pair. 10 of those at 5-minutes-a-piece saves 50 minutes of an SME’s valuable time—time they can spend with clients, prospects, doing demos, or other vital aspects of their day job.

If your company has some newer SMEs, content review is a great way to engage the new SMEs and make the time they spend learning the new system and products valuable to the organization.

Think about the next thing coming

As you know, content evolves. As you acquire new knowledge and content, be strategic. Don’t just start loading content to your newly reviewed content management system. Spend time with the content before you load it. Make sure it’s the right content for your content library—it will be used again…it has been reviewed…and it’s current, accurate, and comprehensive.

When you import the new content, identify who owns it, whether you work from a content management platform, a spreadsheet, SharePoint, etc. You also want to set the content up for success.

Tag the content, organize it, and put it in collections, folders, or however your system works. Additionally, you want to work with your SMEs to identify when that content needs to be reviewed—quarterly, annually, every 18-24 months, or when there’s a new product release.

Then use the sweet spot of 10-12 Q&A pair reviews per week to spread the content out in a way that’s easily manageable for your SMEs. Be mindful of the review work they already have assigned to them.

Technology-enabled content review

Keep your content current, accurate, and fresh, and set your SMEs and content review process up for success with RFPIO’s review cycle reminders, advanced reporting, and project management features.

If you would like to learn more about how RFPIO, with the help of machine learning, helps ensure best practices throughout your content review processes, schedule a free demo.

Knowledge management best practices: Gaining company buy-in

Knowledge management best practices: Gaining company buy-in

Product & Best Practices

At RFPIO, one of the first questions potential customers ask is whether our platform is scalable. The answer is an unequivocal “yes,” but we can ask the same about most other organizational content management systems.

Is your content management system scalable? Do you know how much content you have? How much of it is redundant? How much of it is outdated? How much of it is trivial? Do you have systems in place for new content?

According to Deloitte, 75% of organizations recognize the importance of creating and preserving knowledge, but only 9% of companies are ready to make that commitment. There are a few reasons for this, but 4 of the top 6 reasons cited are easily overcome by creating top-down buy-in through adhering to content management best practices.

  • 55% report organizational silos
  • 37% specify a lack of incentives
  • 35% say there’s a lack of organizational mandate
  • 35% point to shifting roles

Perhaps yours is one of the 75% of companies that appreciates the need for a compliant, organized, accurate, and up-to-date knowledge library. However, with most obstacles coming from within, leadership might see sprucing up your knowledge base as too high a hill to climb, at least right now.

You aren’t alone. In this blog, we’ll discuss achieving organizational, and most importantly, subject matter expert buy-in.

The importance of information governance

Information governance, as defined by Gartner, is the “specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure appropriate behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving, and deletion of information.”

Your company’s information management system is everything—and I mean that literally. A well-developed and maintained content management system prioritizes and categorizes all the key documents and pieces of information your company has collected since its founding.

It also includes retiring information that is inaccurate, no longer relevant, redundant, and past a document’s “shred by” date.

Information may be called upon to facilitate major decisions, create proposals, close sales, reassure customers, prove regulatory compliance, help resolve legal matters, etc.

It’s not just decision makers who benefit from a content management system, so do employees. A disorganized system brings about higher labor costs, reduced productivity, and lower morale.

  • Employees value information that is easily accessible
  • Most employees perceive the information in their company’s knowledge base as average or below
  • Over 70% of companies believe that effective knowledge management will increase productivity by at least 20%
  • People spend more than half their days on “busy work,” which includes searching for information
  • 42% of company knowledge lies with individuals, and when they’re unavailable, coworkers lose 42% in productivity
  • Enterprise businesses lose $47 million per year in productivity due to poor knowledge sharing
  • 81% of employees feel frustrated when relevant information for their jobs is withheld
  • SMEs are extraordinarily busy and, like everyone, resent when they think you’re wasting their time

Benefits of good information governance include:

  • Informed decision making – Decision-makers need accurate and current information
  • Breaking down silos – Good governance helps break down information silos by democratizing knowledge
  • Regulatory risk management – Document lifecycle management helps ensure regulatory compliance
  • Legal risk management – Proper digitization and tagging simplify the legal discovery process.

Proving value to leadership beyond just cost

When you initially implement a content management system, the time savings will be impressive—often 40% or more in the first year. But once you begin to reach peak efficiency, demonstrable time savings drops.

That’s when you need to think strategically to show lasting value in your content management platform. Your goal is to prove that value to leadership and keep your content in gold-standard shape.

Unfortunately, many content management strategies don’t provide the types of reporting that include the metrics decision-makers expect, which may include the number of Q&A pairs, those that are regularly used, those that are never used, the amount of redundant information, and how much time is spent searching for information, etc.

Done right, regular content auditing and reporting will provide the data leadership demands as well as help improve morale and boost productivity.

Who are your key decision-makers?

Every organization is different. You may need to get buy-in from one or more members of your C-suite. You may also need to engage sales, sales enablement, and of course, your SMEs (subject matter experts).

Working with your content teams

Subject matter experts are not octopuses—or is that octopi? At most, they have two arms, and if you tug too hard at one, it will never grow back. All of this is my roundabout way of saying, “respect your SMEs!” and do as much of the heavy lifting as you can.

Monetize the value of time spent and time saved

SMEs are typically either consultants or high-ranking members of your organization. Either way, their time is worth a considerable amount of money.

If you can demonstrate to leadership that you’ve reduced the number of Q&A pairs SMEs need to review, you will have shown significant cost savings.

Typically, reviewing a piece of existing content will take about 3-5 minutes. Removing 10 unused Q&A pairs could save your SME as much as 50 minutes. That’s time that could be spent with prospects, doing demos, or performing other tasks.

How to make friends with your SMEs

SMEs may not be official content team members, but they are vital participants in the content creation process.

SMEs are almost, by definition, some of the busiest people in most companies. Odds are, they’ve already invested a considerable amount and expertise in your Content Library. They may have answered many questions multiple times, so you might understand their frustration with the process.

Keep your SMEs engaged by:

  • Forming a partnership – Assure your SMEs that once the Content Library is clean, duplicate efforts will be unnecessary.
  • Involving management to drive SME participation – You’ve proven value to decision-makers. Let them use their influence to encourage SME participation.
  • Soliciting feedback from the SMEs and incorporating it into your process – They will likely have insight into content management and development.
  • Respecting their efforts by spreading content reviews over time – As I like to joke, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Not that we’d advocate actually eating an elephant, but the point is, break the project up into smaller, easier-to-manage pieces.

Your SMEs have ownership over all of their content. Respect their time, but also respect the thought and effort they’ve given each answer. Show them that you value the integrity of their content while taking on as much of the work as possible.

You will be working long-term with your SMEs, so build a rapport by showing that you have a plan. Let them know that you’ll do as much of the project as possible before calling for their assistance.

If you can show that you have carried the baton as far as you can, they’ll realize that you respect them and that their time matters to you.

Communicate with leadership

You’ll want to keep leadership informed regarding both your proposal team and SMEs so they know what you’re doing and what the SMEs are doing, how much work there is, and when you expect it to be complete. When the work is complete, show leadership who was invaluable to the process.

The best way to do this is to identify the leaders and then ask your leadership to coordinate a meeting for all those leaders. Create a PowerPoint deck to show that you are invested, prepared, and ready to partner.

The deck should show that you are ready to own the process, communicate with all parties as often as needed, and you will be a partner with the SMEs. Show how it will not be incumbent on the SMEs to complete the review.

Earn and maintain leadership buy-in with regular reporting. Early on, you might issue weekly reports. Once you get going, you can move to monthly reports.

The goal is to show the impact you’re having, the amount of updated content, the SMEs who are involved and have done good work for you, and time saved.

Get user buy-in: Understand how different people use the Content Library

Content management is not a one-size-fits-all approach. User input is critical for managing a Content Library. Adjust your approach depending on the type of person who owns the content.

Content hoarders

Like those who don’t regularly clean out their email, content hoarders won’t generally archive their content.

If the hoarders are rolling along just fine because they’re familiar with all their content, that’s great, but perhaps not for others who need it.

You should build a strategy for hoarders and get creative using their own tags, star ratings, or keywords instead of archiving their specific content. Then, gently guide them toward warehousing content.

This incremental approach will encourage content hoarders to trust that you aren’t out to get rid of all their content while preventing negative feedback from other users.

People who know the answers

Some authors are so familiar with the content that they might know the answers cold, or at least to the point where they can simply check the boxes on an RFx, add any comments, and go on from there.

The problem for other users is that the authors aren’t using content in one of the identified ways to capture content usage. They aren’t applying or copy/pasting the answer as they would with RFPIO.

Authors are probably highlighting what they need, copying it, and plopping that right into the answer field if they’re using it at all.

The best approach to get them on board is to ask them to strategically go through the content and review and mark their best content.

With RFPIO, they can use a star rating system, where the author can mark only their frequently-used content with 5 stars. The rest of their content should have no rating, at least for now.

People reluctant to change

Generally, people who are reluctant to change have all their Q&A pairs conveniently stored on a spreadsheet. Show those who are change-averse that a content management system will save them time and keep them from having to repeat themselves.

It will take them a little time to get used to the system, and they’ll need to see trust from others. One way to do that is to team them up with someone already using the system successfully.

RFPIO helps you identify those who are reluctant through usage reporting. For example, those who spend very little time in the system might be reluctant. This could also be true of people who spend more time in the system than their productivity indicates. In both cases, additional training sessions could help.

Another way to identify reluctant users, or perhaps just those who need additional training, is to survey them. I suggest using a Likert scale, where for each statement, such as, “Using RFPIO is simple,” there are 6 possible responses, from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

If a few people choose answers in the bottom 3, individual training might be in order. If more than a few are uncomfortable using the system, it’s time for general training sessions. I recommend about 6-8 questions per survey. You can issue further surveys on a quarterly basis or what works best for you.

The knowledge management platform that instills trust

RFPIO is the industry-leading response and content management platform. decision-makers undoubtedly know about the cost and time-saving benefits of RFPIO’s proposal response features. Even the most reluctant users will recognize the benefits and soon become expert content librarians.

And what about RFPIO’s role in information governance, turning your knowledge library into a sales enablement tool and a true repository of company knowledge instead of simply a response management tool?

Schedule a free demo to see how RFPIO can help turn your knowledge library into a business asset, remove some of the burden from SMEs’ shoulders, and provide leadership with the reporting and results they need.

How to respond to a security questionnaire

How to respond to a security questionnaire

Product & Best Practices

If you’re like me, you regularly receive emails advising you to change your passwords because one company or another has suffered a security breach. Unfortunately, data breaches are all too common.

In 2021, there were over 1,800 reported data breaches. That is a significant uptick from prior years. 83% of those breaches involved sensitive customer information, such as Social Security and credit card numbers.

The average data breach costs $4.4 million, and much of that is passed on to customers—the same customers who had their sensitive data compromised.

No wonder many businesses now consider cybersecurity their number one concern. Not only does a data breach cost money, it also runs the risk of damaging credibility and eroding trust. Some companies, especially small companies, never recover.

More than half of organizations have experienced third-party data breaches, often despite having what they think is a rigorous security protocol.

The average tech stack might contain dozens of different applications and tools. Sometimes, bad actors sneak in through one of those third-party applications, so it’s critical to properly vet each vendor’s security protocols as you would your own.

The most common way to vet vendors is through security questionnaires. But what are security questionnaires, and how do you respond to them in a way that you, as a vendor, will instill trust?

What is a security questionnaire?

After reading this far, you probably have a good idea of what a security questionnaire is. Still, to boil it down, it’s a questionnaire designed to determine whether a vendor or potential vendor is compliant with your security and legal requirements.

Not surprisingly, security questionnaires are complex and highly technical. The good news is that most questions have “yes” or “no” answers.

DDQ vs. security questionnaire

Many people confuse security questionnaires and DDQs (due diligence questionnaires). It’s easy to see why, as both are issued to assess a company’s compliance with the issuer’s regulations and security requirements.

Neither DDQs nor security questionnaires are specifically part of a sales cycle, although they may be issued before entering into a contract. They might also be issued before an organization is even buying to weed out non-compliant companies before and if the buying process begins.

There are significant differences between the two types of documents, however. You’re most likely to see DDQs if you’re in the financial segment. They are broader in scope than security questionnaires and may ask about business plans, profits and losses, revenue, etc. They might also ask about cybersecurity policies.

A security questionnaire is more straightforward and can be issued from any segment to any organization, although primarily to tech companies. While DDQs ask broad questions about processes, often in narrative form, a security questionnaire forces you to pony up your proof of compliance.

You might see both a DDQ and security questionnaire before receiving an RFP. Generally, the DDQ will come first. Once the issuer is satisfied that you meet their requirements, they might send a security questionnaire to gather certificates and other forms of proof.

In some cases, a security questionnaire follows an RFP and could be the last step before finalizing a deal.

Preparing for a security questionnaire response

Security questionnaires usually arrive via the response manager or perhaps through a CRM. Since most questions center around cybersecurity, SMEs can be from IT, risk management, sales engineering, accounting, information security, operations, and even HR.

The response turnaround time is typically shorter with a security questionnaire than with an RFx. The issuer might want it within days.

Components of a security questionnaire

There are many, many types of security questionnaires, and it would be impossible to list them in this blog post, but here are some examples of what a security questionnaire might assess:

  • Network security
  • Information security
  • Datacenter and physical security
  • Web application security
  • Infrastructure security
  • Business continuity
  • Security audits and penetration testing
  • Personnel policies, hiring practices, and training programs
  • Security certifications
  • SLAs and uptime vs. downtime

Types of security questionnaires

There are several types of security questionnaires, but primarily, you will see these:

Security Questionnaires and Security Questionnaires Lite – Standardized Information Gathering Questionnaires

  • VSAQ – Vendor Security Assessment Questionnaire
  • CAIQ – Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire
  • VSA – Vendor Security Alliance Questionnaire
  • NIST 800-171 – National Institute of Standards and Technology Questionnaire
  • CIS Controls – Center for Internet Security Questionnaire

How to respond to security questionnaires – and how RFPIO will help

If you are a response manager, you’re likely very comfortable responding to an RFx or even a DDQ. Both allow for a bit of creativity, in that, along with answering questions, you’re constructing a narrative to show how your company is the right fit for the issuer.

Security questionnaires aren’t about narratives. They are straightforward and stringent, and accuracy is a legal requirement. Clearly, there’s no room for error. If you’re ready, let’s grab a cup of coffee, or your favorite motivational elixir, and dive right in.

Step 1 – Search for all available materials

While security questionnaires are undeniably bulky and complex, there’s a lot of redundancy. You have probably answered many similar questions before. Search your existing database for those answers.

Often, issuers send a boilerplate questionnaire rather than customize it to each product. Eliminate the questions that don’t apply to your product. Don’t be afraid to ask the issuer to clarify questions that seem confusing or unnecessary.

Step 1 with RFPIO – Prebuilt centralized Content Library

RFPIO features the industry-leading AI-powered prebuilt Content Library. Every previous security questionnaire and all your documentation are housed in one place, accessible to any authorized user.

Step 2 – Answer only the pre-existing matching responses

Response management isn’t like school. In fact, copying other people’s work is encouraged. Search your existing database for pre-existing matching responses and use them when you can.

Step 2 with RFPIO – System-driven identification of sections and questions

RFPIO’s import capabilities, which include Lightning import through Salesforce, leverages machine learning to automatically find matching responses, without you having to initiate the process. This feature alone can do up to 80% of the work for you.

Step 3 – Group all unanswered questions and collaborate with SMEs

Once you’ve found all the applicable existing content, you’ll need to collaborate with SMEs to finish the process. Group all your unanswered questions, broken up by SME, and inform them of their timelines.

Step 3 with RFPIO – Automate through AI

RFPIO’s auto-respond feature and recommendation engine find existing documents and similar, although not specifically matching, content for SMEs’ review. As a side benefit, once SMEs recognize the time-saving capabilities of RFPIO, they’ll be far more likely to help you in the future.

Step 4 – Follow up and track the status of responses

Make sure every team member is completing their portion in a timely manner.

Step 4 with RFPIO – Streamline collaboration through project management capabilities

RFPIO’s Project Module offers up-to-the-minute reporting and reminders to ensure that the questionnaire will be ready on time.

Step 5 – Manually collate and complete the questionnaire

Whew! You’ve answered all the questions and all you have to do is collate the answers and export them back to the original document. Unfortunately, for many companies, that’s a manual process which could take hours—and sometimes days.

Step 5 with RFPIO – Export to the source file

RFPIO eliminates all of the cumbersome manual work with automatic exporting to the response file, all within seconds.

Security questionnaire response obstacles

There’s no direct line from a security questionnaire to revenue generation, which is why they’re sometimes left on the back burner. But that’s not the only reason there might be reluctance on the part of your response team. Other obstacles include:

  • Length – A security questionnaire can have hundreds to thousands of questions. That’s more than a little intimidating if the answers aren’t ready to go.
  • You’re time-bound – Sometimes the questionnaire gets stuck in an internal limbo, and sometimes the issuer sends it expecting an almost immediate turnaround. Having most of the answers ready will cut your response time to a fraction of what it could have been.
  • SME cooperation – SMEs are busy people, so understandably, they might not put the security questionnaire at the top of their “to-do” list. Assure them that you value their time by completing as much of the questionnaire as possible.
  • You don’t have all the certifications and protocol – Most companies won’t be able to answer every question in the affirmative. Submit what you have and perhaps see this as an opportunity to reevaluate where your company might be lacking.
  • Too much jargon – Security questionnaires tend to be jargon-heavy, and if you aren’t familiar with what they’re asking, you might not provide an accurate answer. SMEs can help but so can a well-organized, searchable even by jargon, Content Library.
  • Scattered knowledge (identifying and locating the right content) – If you have a siloed knowledge base, tracking everything down is challenging and time-consuming. Upload all of your certificates, documents, and Q&A pairs to a single source of truth accessible to any authorized stakeholder.
  • Non-compliant content management software – If your content management software isn’t compliant with your company’s requirements, SMEs, especially those in security, won’t use it. RFPIO is even secure enough for Microsoft.

Priorities and tips for the response process

As you’re staring down a seemingly infinite inbox and a calendar filled with back-to-back meetings, speed might be your top priority. However, security questionnaires are legal documents, so accuracy is the most crucial consideration. Fortunately, response software with built-in content management helps ensure both.

Streamlining workflow

RFPIO has several tools to help streamline your workflow, including:

  • Import/Export capabilities – Avoid disorganized, inconsistent, illogical formatting by importing security questionnaires right into your customized template for uniformity, making each stakeholder’s job much more manageable. Once you’ve completed the questionnaire, upload it onto your branded response template or straight to the source document.
  • Project management – If your workforce is like ours, you have people working from home, on other floors, in other buildings, and across the world. RFPIO helps you virtually gather your scattered stakeholders and track progress without chasing people down.
  • Content management – If I, for some reason, were forced to choose my favorite RFPIO feature, it would be the AI-powered Content Library. It:
    • Busts down silos – RFPIO’s Content Library is a single source of truth, with all of your company’s knowledge and documents in one repository.
    • Does most of the work for you – Once you upload the questionnaire, the Content Library’s magical gnomes—we call them the recommendation engine—comb through past responses to make suggestions. All you have to do is accept, edit, or reject. Since security questionnaires ask yes/no questions, there’s little to no editing.
    • Stores content – As the company creates more knowledge and documents, the Content Library will store them for future use.
    • Organizes content – Format, tag, and generally organize the content how you want.
    • Helps keep you compliant – Since we’re talking about security questionnaires, your security team will love this! RFPIO reminds you of expiration and “shred by” dates. It also reminds you when to review specific content and when to audit.
  • Integrations – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with nearly all the communication apps, CRMs, and productivity apps your company uses every day.
  • RFPIO® LookUp – Access the Content Library from anywhere in the world.
  • Autograph – With RFPIO’s Autograph, there’s no need to hunt signatories down. They can sign right from their computers.

Improving Content Library

Keep your Content Library clean, up to date, and organized by consulting with sales engineers and others involved in answering security questionnaires. Ask for their input in categorizing and tagging.

Keeping information up-to-date

Because security questionnaires are legal documents, accurate and up-to-date information is vital. RFPIO reminds you to clean out all the ROT (redundant, outdated, and trivial) information and documents. It even helps you locate all the ROT.

Software for security questionnaire responses

Many companies still rely on manual responses, which are time-consuming and inefficient.One way to differentiate your company from your competitors is to use advanced response software for security questionnaires.

Response software, such as RFPIO, gives each security questionnaire the thoroughness and scrutiny required while saving your team’s time, keeping SMEs on your good side, and helps keep you compliant.

Automation

If you use a CRM or project management software, you probably already know the benefits of automation. Most users do. In fact, IT professionals, such as those helping answer security questionnaires, save up to 20 hours a week using automated processes.

Automation is a morale booster! 45% of knowledge workers report feeling less burned out when they use automation tools, and 29% say automation lets them leave their jobs at the end of the official workday.

RFPIO’s automated response processes automatically fill in most of your answers to a security questionnaire and pull corresponding documents. One customer reports that after RFPIO security questionnaire automation, they can answer 100 questions in just 2 hours!

Templated responses

Most security questionnaires arrive in Excel, which, as you know, is about as standardized as the snowflakes covering Mount Everest. Excel isn’t to blame. Microsoft designed the OG of spreadsheets to track everything from kids’ activities to trips to space.

RFPIO imports the hundreds to thousands of lines on a security questionnaire spreadsheet onto your customized template, ensuring that everyone knows exactly how to find what they need. Additionally, since many questions are redundant, RFPIO answers those duplicate questions for you.

RFPIO’s approach to security questionnaire responses

Breathe a little easier next time you receive a security questionnaire, knowing that RFPIO has your back. You will save loads of time, create accurate, complete responses, and stay on your SMEs’ good sides.

If you don’t already use RFPIO, try a free demo.

Knowledge management best practices

Knowledge management best practices

Product & Best Practices

When a business is in its founding phase, it’s undeniably chaotic, but it’s also when company communication is at its peak. Everyone is on a first-name basis and working toward the same goal.

If Mark in sales needs financial information about the company for a potential customer, it’s easy to run down the hall to ask Bethany, the CFO. If Bethany wants next quarter’s marketing forecasts, Harper, the CMO, is just steps away.

Soon, though, the business grows, which of course, is the goal. Then the company hires an HR team, and the staff begins to expand. And then, perhaps without noticing, something happens—silos develop. 

Harper and Bethany might still know each other, but their employees may not. Sales, for example, becomes wholly removed from the people responsible for building the company’s products. They may even be siloed off from others involved in the sales cycle. 

The most significant loss in a siloed organization isn’t about names or distance to colleagues’ workstations; the most significant loss is democratized access to company knowledge. 

This blog will discuss best practices for transforming scattered company knowledge into a single source of truth, a.k.a., an intelligent Content Library. 

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management refers to how companies collect, organize, analyze, share, and maintain valuable company documents and data. The objective is to democratize knowledge and empower employees to accomplish more in less time. 

Knowledge management is also about ensuring that everyone in the organization is on the same page—a single source of truth. Effective knowledge management prevents miscommunication, incorrect information, and knowledge gaps. It also spurs productivity and helps connect, if not tear down, silos. 

Knowledge management systems

A knowledge management system is about managing a centralized repository of all of an organization’s information. It may include shareholder or annual reports, marketing collateral, sales enablement material, legal documents, contracts, company data, software documentation, operating procedures, etc. 

Knowledge, of course, is fluid—so is an effective knowledge management system. The software should prompt gatekeepers to run regular audits for inaccurate, non-regulatory compliant, or out-of-date files. It should also remind them when a record might need to be virtually shredded. 

Aside from its employees, internal knowledge is a company’s most important asset. Accurate and up-to-date knowledge management systems help executives, response management teams, sales, marketing, accounting, human resources, etc., do their jobs. Does that mean all employees should have access to the entire knowledge base all the time? Definitely not, but we’ll elaborate on that in a bit.

The importance of managing internal knowledge

We are in the midst of the Information Age. Nearly anything we’d want to know is a simple Google search away. But can we say the same about workplaces? As much as that might be the goal, for most organizations, the unfortunate truth is no. 

  • 75% of organizations qualify creating and preserving knowledge as important or very important.
  • Only 9% of those organizations say they are ready to address knowledge management.
  • About ⅓ of organizations haven’t leveraged any form of artificial intelligence (AI) for knowledge management.
  • Only 8% say they’re leveraging AI to a great extent.
  • More than half of companies’ data goes unused.
  • An employee survey showed that over 90% of respondents think it should be as easy to find company knowledge as it is to find information on Google.
  • Most think it’s easier for consumers to find information.

Advantages of developing a knowledge management system include:

  • Informed decision making – All the data and documentation is at decision makers’ fingertips.
  • Better strategies – Knowledge management systems provide click-of-a-button access to sales and market trends.
  • Increased revenue – Arm sales and response teams with the knowledge they need to win more business. 
  • Increased efficiency and productivity – No more searching for information.
  • Improved proposal quality – Content at your fingertips provides more time to write and edit a compelling, bid-winning story. 
  • Increased response accuracy – Reusing existing company-approved content is far less error-prone than rushing to compile information and provides more time to check work.
  • Trend analysis – Generate reports from anywhere.
  • Staying ahead of competition – Compile competitive and market research.
  • Expert knowledge retention – No one likes to answer the same questions twice (or more). 

What is content creation and reuse?

Content creation is about generating content that appeals to a company’s persona buyer. Content can come in written, visual, or audio form. 81% of organizations see content as a core business strategy.

A content management system allows users to create, collaborate, publish, edit, store, and catalog digital content right on the platform. Advanced content management systems help take work off of users’ hands, leveraging AI to read, catalog, and store uploaded documents. 

Then, instead of reinventing the wheel each time stakeholders need information, they can reuse and edit content as required. 

Best practices for knowledge management

Knowledge management aims to create an effective single source of truth, with accurate and up-to-date information. Whether a stakeholder works in sales, response management, legal, finance, or HR, the information should be easily searchable, consistent, and repeatable. 

But consistency and repeatability on their own aren’t enough. A knowledge management system needs to not only have the scalability to grow and change with the organization but also to help the organization grow and change. 

Determine the best type of management solution for your company

There are two main knowledge management solutions: company wikis and internal knowledge bases. Let’s delve a little deeper into which solution might work best for your organization.

Corporate Wikis

Did you know that the word “wiki” means “very quick” in Hawaiian? It sort of seems like an oxymoron for island life, right?

A corporate wiki is basically the same concept as Wikipedia. A wiki allows any employee to add, delete, or edit content. And surprisingly, most wikis are pretty quick.

Corporate wikis:

  • Are knowledge repositories – Employees add knowledge to the database as it becomes available.
  • Are searchable – As with Wikipedia, corporate wikis are easily searchable.
  • Save time – If the information is in the wiki, there’s no need to track down subject matter experts. 
  • Improve employee engagement – Since wikis are open to all employees, even relatively bottom-of-the-ladder employees can participate in information gathering, sharing, and utilization.
  • Support links – A single document or piece of content might have one or more parent or child records. Wikis let users link to related documents and content.
  • Some, but not all, wikis are open source.

Still, corporate wikis are not without their downsides, including: 

  • Unreliable contributors – Sometimes, knowledge can be too democratized, and contributors might not have the entire picture.
  • Inaccurate information – Wikis don’t generally have quality control measures in place.
  • Difficult to audit – Knowledge can have a short shelf life. Wikis aren’t famous for processes to weed out and update old content. Also, anyone can edit.
  • No way to define page roles – Wikis are open to all employees; there is no way to limit viewing or editing rights.

Internal knowledge bases

On the other hand, an internal knowledge base has more in common with a library, only without space limitations. Ideally, a knowledge base should house all company knowledge, and after an employee enters their login credentials, a library card of sorts, the virtual librarian directs the user to the content they need.

But there’s more to an internal knowledge base than gatekeeping and pointing users in the right direction. A true internal knowledge base should have several key features, including:

  • Built-in smart search feature – Leverage AI assistance for fast and accurate searching.
  • Custom fields – No two companies are alike; they should be able to create fields that match their company needs.
  • Multi-format capability – An AI-powered internal knowledge base should support both written content such as question and answer pairs, and uploaded documents.
  • An intuitive and easy-to-navigate user interface – What good is an internal knowledge base if it’s difficult to use?
  • Tagging – You would never just throw files in a file cabinet. Think of your knowledge library as a sophisticated file cabinet. All content should be tagged and, if applicable, attached to parent and/or child folders.
  • User restrictions – Content creation and editing are reserved for verified specialists.
  • Simplified auditing – Function within the parameters of a content strategy with regular audits.
  • Scalability – A knowledge management system needs to grow as your company grows. 

Implement change in gradual steps

Too much change all at once is a shock to the system. Prioritize departments in need and introduce the system to one department at a time. Gradually expand as you dial in training, word of mouth circulates about how great the system is, and you have success stories to share with new departments and executive sponsors.

Showcase improvement metrics

Internal knowledge base software capabilities allow easy, quantifiable measurements of post-implementation success. The functional value of knowledge management will rapidly become apparent to end users in how they can execute their responsibilities. 

See how Genpact increased efficiency by up to 35% with their RFPIO-powered knowledge base.

They’ll be able to build better proposals faster, respond to prospects and customers with greater accuracy in near real-time, and gain contextual insight into all the content relevant to their role.

The strategic value of knowledge management is that you’re able to show the system’s value to your leadership team so that they can trust your reporting accuracy. Numbers don’t lie, but you need measurement capabilities to get the numbers. Plus, it makes it easier to measure ROI. You have to communicate the value of your single source of truth.

Internal knowledge base software easily allows you to measure success post-implementation. I’ll call out three of my favorite RFPIO reports that help illustrate its strategic value:

  • Content Library Insights Report – This dashboard connects you to insights on your Content Library, including content moderation and usage, content owners, and content moderators.
  • Content Library Timeline – More of a tool than a report, this allows you to proactively set SME schedules, so content auditing responsibilities are parsed out manageably instead of piling on hundreds of questions at the end of the year. From a reporting standpoint, it shows leadership how SMEs use their time.
  • Content Library Search Terms Report – Which terms are end users searching but receiving zero results for? This report delivers instant insight into which content you need to develop to meet user—and ultimately prospect and customer—needs.

Ensure that your team can access the knowledge they need for shared success

If knowledge is not accessible and usable at scale, then it’s probably not worth managing. Sales teams need content to answer tough prospect questions in near real-time and build personalized presentations. Proposal teams need on-demand knowledge to answer questionnaires and create engaging proposals. Support teams need access to knowledge from wherever they’re working without toggling between applications to improve the customer experience.

This can only happen with open access to the knowledge management system. That’s why RFPIO provides unlimited user licenses, so everyone who can benefit from knowledge can also access knowledge. Technical, product development, sales, marketing, legal, security…all of this content has value and will strengthen your knowledge management. The right system will help you restrict access to sensitive content that may include private, confidential, or proprietary information.

Managing organizational knowledge with RFPIO® LookUp

Remote work and distributed workforces are the new norms, so why should employees have to go to the office to access the knowledge database? 

RFPIO’s internal knowledge base software enables better organizational knowledge management. RFPIO® LookUp provides team-wide access to RFPIO’s Content Library from anywhere and from preferred productivity tools, such as:

  • Google Chrome
  • Chromium Edge
  • Google Hangouts
  • Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Slack

Whether from a salesperson in the field or a response manager who works from home, enhanced accessibility helps facilitate content reuse, enable real-time access to corporate expertise, improve response time, and scale the ability to respond to RFPs from wherever they have access to a computer. 

See RFPIO® LookUp in action

I often say that RFPIO’s robust, scalable Content Library is like Clark Kent—bookish, a little nerdy, but incredibly smart and has the strength of a superhero. RFPIO® LookUp removes the metaphorical glasses and lets the Content Library fly to any destination at the speed of, well, the internet.

If you’re interested in learning how RFPIO’s Content Library, teamed with RFPIO® LookUp to let your company knowledge fly, read more about it. You can also schedule a free demo.

 

RFP management best practices

RFP management best practices

Product & Best Practices

“You have to have a plan, or else you’re just creating a recipe for chaos.” ~ David Brooks

What is your first instinct when an RFP lands on your desk? Do you push it aside in favor of more urgent matters? Do you dive right in, or do you already have a strategy in place?

New York Times columnist David Brooks might not have been talking about RFP management, but as with many things, having an RFP management plan, a strategy, can mean the difference between winning your bid and chaos. 

What is RFP management?

At the highest level, RFP management is about managing the process of responding to proposal requests from start (even before receiving the RFP) to finish. Responsibilities vary from organization to organization, but the goals are the same, which is to win new business. 

At their core, RFP response is about answering how you will address a prospect’s requirements, but a good response goes far beyond giving rote answers. Using carefully curated and fresh content, the response should tell a story demonstrating that you understand the customer’s needs and how to best address them. 

RFP management includes leveraging company resources, such as subject matter experts (SMEs), existing data, and of course processes. If you consistently provide quality answers to RFPs, your win rate will increase. Below are the best practices we and our customers use to drive revenue and elevate win rates. 

Bid for RFPs strategically

There’s strength in numbers, right? The more RFPs you answer, the more you’ll win, right? Probably not. Some of the RFPs you receive aren’t a good fit for your company, so why waste time and resources on those? 

Tools such as RFPIO’s AI-powered content library, which answers up to 80% of an RFP’s questions, makes answering an RFP much faster and less resource-intensive. But if you know going in that you won’t win the bid, or you can’t service it, you’re still wasting valuable time and resources. Is the bid winnable? Follow these steps to narrow down which RFPs you should respond to. 

  • Do you have a preexisting relationship with the customer? Did they specifically choose to send it to you, or are they using a buckshot approach? A previous relationship—or when the issuer has done their own research—will dramatically improve your win rate over the RFPs that are automatically sent to everyone in your industry.
  • Is your company a fit? If you can’t service the customer’s needs, there’s no reason to answer their RFP.
  • Can you address all of the challenges presented in the RFP? Or at the very least, the most important ones?
  • Is your pricing within the customer’s budget? No, money isn’t everything, and often, features and ability to meet the RFP’s challenges will win out. However, if your solution is far outside of the customer’s budget, it’s a tough hill to climb and efforts will be best spent elsewhere.
  • Can you meet the prospect’s timeline? Can you meet the submission deadline? What about each deliverable? Can your organization fulfill all of the requirements on time?
  • Do you know why the RFP was issued? This could help determine the customer’s pain points.

First you should identify and consult with your SMEs. If you haven’t won similar bids before, or if you’d have a difficult time fulfilling the requirements, you might be better off passing on that particular opportunity. 

Have a clearly-defined RFP team

Regardless of whether your organization has a proposal management team or proposal management is the purview of the sales team or even a single person, there should always be a person who’s ultimately in charge. 

From there, the team might vary depending on the customer’s needs and your company’s organizational structure. Titles are often used interchangeably and can mean different things to different organizations. 

The Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) membership roster includes more than 1,300 different job titles. You might have a dedicated proposal management team, but they may need to involve additional SMEs and stakeholders such as the executive team, legal, HR, information security, training and implementation, sales, customer success, account managers, IT, operations, finance, etc. Each organization is different, but proposal management team roles might include the following: 

  • Bid (or project) manager — The bid manager leads the proposal management team and is involved in every stage of the bid process.
  • Proposal manager — The proposal manager works on a more granular level than the bid manager. Proposal managers oversee the entire process.
  • Proposal writer — The proposal writer is responsible for responding to the customer’s requirements in a persuasive style that includes relevant information such as case studies and other differentiators.
  • Proposal coordinator — The proposal coordinator is responsible for the administrative aspects of the response, including coordinating the internal flow, schedules, security and integrity, and directing submission of final documents.
  • Proposal editor — The proposal editor ensures that the writing is high quality, persuasive, and maintains a consistent voice. They also check grammar, spelling, punctuation, and format consistency.
  • Content manager — The content manager is responsible for adding to, maintaining, and periodically reviewing the content library. 

In many organizations however, all of these roles are being filled by only a few individuals or even one, which means those individuals often wear a lot of hats. Be sure to have actionable deliverables to ensure that each person contributing to the response has clear expectations. This applies even if there’s a single contributor. 

Fully understand the customer’s expectations

There’s no such thing as a cookie-cutter RFP or customer. It’s critical to fully understand a customer’s specific wants and expectations before attempting to answer their RFP. For example, don’t mention features that don’t matter to the customer, such as niche certifications that don’t apply.  Start with what interests the issuer and then tailor your responses to those interests.

Read between the lines in trying to understand customer pain points. For example, if a customer asks a software developer if they offer user-based pricing, rather than answer “yes” or “no,” ask yourself why a customer might ask that. Perhaps they’ve reached limitations with other systems, or there’s a competitor that offers a more appealing pricing structure.

Determine how you stand out from your competitors, which of course can include cost, but it can also include product or service quality, expertise, customer service, and overall reputation. 

Manage and organize RFP content

As baseball icon Babe Ruth once said, “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” Similarly, yesterday’s answers don’t win today’s RFPs, even if you’ve won that exact same RFP for the exact same customer in the past. Why? Because as your business changes, so should the content. 

When you search your content library, you might find hundreds or even thousands of relevant Q&A pairs. Weeding through them might seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Managing and organizing your content library should be an ongoing process, but there are some things you can do right now to help whittle down your Q&A pairs. The key is to focus on quality rather than quantity. You should regularly audit your content library for:

Accuracy – If, for example, you inadvertently lowball the bid, you could be contractually obligated to honor that pricing. Additionally, if you erroneously claim regulatory compliance, your organization could be held responsible for data breaches, etc. In other words, accuracy is critical, as is regularly auditing your content library to archive outdated information and update as applicable. 

Content availability – RFPs are bulky and time consuming, and most organizations are stretched thin. Finding the correct answer quickly is critical. An updated content library lets you easily find the right information without having to sift through thousands of documents and megabits of data.

Naming and tagging – Establish a standardized naming convention for each project. Not only does that make the content more accessible to each team member, it helps you find customer-specific content for future requests. You can further narrow down the content by tagging. How you want to tag is up to your company. Many choose tagging by industry or general requirements. This can help dramatically narrow down your content.

Keep content up-to-date

The best way to get around content bloat is to avoid it in the first place. Perform regular audits to keep your content fresh. 

  • Is the content still current?
  • Is the content accurate?
  • Are the answers relevant to your customers?
  • Is the content well-written?
  • Does the content match your company’s voice and tone?
  • Is the content easily accessible?

Regularly scheduled audits might not be enough, though, especially if your company goes through pricing, service, or regulatory changes. 

RFPIO response management software is a proven tool to increase RFP win rates and help you keep your content up to date. If you’d like to learn more about how you can win more by doing less, schedule a demo. 

The proposal management plan for a one-person team

The proposal management plan for a one-person team

People & Teams, Product & Best Practices

An effective proposal management process is like a jigsaw puzzle; it takes multiple pieces, and they have to fit together just right. If you’re a one-person team, putting all the pieces together can be a challenge, but it’s manageable, at least if the right processes are in place. 

With small and medium-sized businesses, it’s common for one-person teams to manage the entire proposal management process. However, they can hopefully count on support from collaborators, such as the sales team and subject matter experts (SMEs).

If you’re a one-person team, you might have other job responsibilities on top of responding to RFPs. In addition, a proposal manager can oversee many different aspects of the RFP process. 

If that’s you, we’re here to help you bring order to the chaos, starting with incorporating these factors into your proposal management plan—powered by collaboration and automation.

How a proposal team of one can optimize the proposal process

A proposal manager is in charge of the proposal management process. Whether they are a one-person team or the head of an entire department, an effective proposal management process incorporates three essential factors: 

  1. Saying “no” as part of your proposal management plan
  2. Engage your sales team
  3. Leverage subject matter experts

There are many aspects to the proposal management process. Let’s dig into three of the most critical and why they matter.

Saying “no” as part of your proposal management plan

RFPs are a great opportunity—and maybe your CEO has the impulse to throw a hat in the ring for each one. That might sound like a great strategy, but it’s also a way to rack up a lot of losses. 

Sometimes your product or service isn’t what the customer is looking for. Responding to poorly-qualified opportunities can put well-qualified prospects at risk because they pull resources from winnable bids.

Establish a go/no-go process to focus your organization’s efforts on suitable proposals.

Work with sales and executives to perform a win-loss analysis on past bids. Understand the likelihood of winning business when new deals are on the table by researching the requirements before writing a single sentence of an RFP response.

A viable proposal management plan is based on data and research. Rather than reactively pressing “go” every time an RFP arrives, pause and analyze to ensure the opportunity is the right fit. Taking this extra time will ensure your time is optimally spent.

Engage your sales team

Salespeople are motivated to sell, and they have a lot to keep up with, so responding to an RFP may not be topmost on their list of selling activities. Yes, you need their support with response content, but what level of support are you offering them in exchange?

Proposal managers can provide a lot of value to their sales teams.They can help sales with time management, content management, and seamless collaboration. With proposal automation in place, you’ll enable your sales colleagues to respond to RFPs faster and more effectively.

Your response process will run smoothly when salespeople have instant access to high-quality content in the Content Library. Since RFPIO® LookUp is accessible via a web browser or CRM, the same content library will come in handy for them on discovery calls and prospecting.

Using proposal automation software, your sales team will collaborate using the same communication tools they’re comfortable with, including CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot, and communication solutions such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.

By showing sales teams the value you can provide, they’ll be more willing to help you out, so get sales on board early and use RFPIO proposal automation software as their support system. Show them how they’ll save time and improve client-facing communication.

Many subject matter experts are a one-person show, just like you. Proposal automation makes their lives easier by reducing time spent responding to RFPs and other internal queries. An important aspect of your role as a proposal manager is to continue improving your process to minimize unnecessary SME involvement and protect their time by bringing them in only when necessary.

SMEs are process-driven individuals; they expect clean processes and clearly defined responsibilities, tasks, and deadlines. Your response process will be most effective when your subject matter experts’ time is protected and valued. Proposal automation offers a more intelligent approach to response management, allowing SMEs to contribute and move on with their day.

The first step to transforming your proposal management process into a well-oiled machine is to consolidate all of your organization’s content in one place. Whether you are an enterprise or a small business, proposal software is key to a well-run process. 

The Content Library offers standardized and curated content, effectively breaking down information silos and saving time. You can automatically fill in most of the RFP responses with help from the Content Library and save SME contributions for any revisions or customizations.

Once an SME has provided expertise on one RFP, the proposal manager can seamlessly update the Content Library with the new answer. 

The next time you have an RFP that includes similar queries, RFPIO’s AI-driven content management system and answer recommendation engine will automatically present the responses for your approval, further reducing the time SMEs spend responding.

Successful response management revolves around processes and people. As a team of one, you lead the charge by creating a viable proposal management plan and providing value to colleagues that support you. How can you make collaboration easier? What steps can be automated? Stay focused on plan improvements to keep your team happy, supported, and productive.

The next step in your new and improved proposal management plan is bringing on RFPIO. See how proposal automation allows you to thrive as a team of one. RFPIO can help proposal managers thrive, no matter the resources. 

 

See how it feels to respond with confidence

Why do 250,000+ users streamline their response process with RFPIO? Schedule a demo to find out.