Proposal Management: Understanding the Value of the Process

The right proposal management process is critical for winning the lucrative government contracts you need to grow your business and capture a bigger share of your target markets.

Having a proven process in place not only saves you time and helps you win more contracts, it also protects your business from costly mistakes.

The Importance of a Proven Proposal Management Process

Having a formalized, cradle-to-grave process for managing the business development effort provides many important benefits.

This process matches specific contracting opportunities to a firm’s aptitude, interest and capacity. By selecting only those opportunities for which a contractor has a high likelihood of being competitive, the company can preserve resources that might otherwise be lost. Additionally, adopting a comprehensive and structured approach to data and content management greatly reduces the time and resources required to prepare accurate and responsive proposals.

Each phase of the management process is designed to improve the contractor’s hit rate for valuable opportunities and improve the firm’s brand, reputation and profitability.

Opportunity Tracking and Bid/No-Bid Analysis

The process begins with a formal method for identifying opportunities that fit with your business goals and objectives.

As each potential Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Qualifications (RFQ) is issued by a contracting entity, a bid/no-bid analysis provides a quantifiable means for deciding whether to pursue that contract.

Without this facet of the formal process, contracting firms may waste precious time and resources in the pursuit of projects that they aren’t well-suited to or that they have little chance of winning.

If the bid/no-bid analysis identifies a lucrative opportunity, the team mobilizes to begin win theme development, proposal preparation, and if applicable, the pricing.

Effective Content Management Improves the Proposal Management Process

In addition to having a formalized proposal management process in place, many successful contracting firms adopt formalized contracting firms adopt formalized content management platforms to support the business development effort.

Although many parts of the RFP and RFQ processes require per-project data development, many other components of these submissions use preexisting data relating to your company structure, history, experience, etc.

Recreating this content for each proposal not only takes needless time and effort, but it increases the possibility of errors and inconsistencies. With a proven content management platform in place, you not only simplify proposal submissions, but improve their professionalism and accuracy.

Meridian West Consultants is proud to provide our business development clients with a comprehensive suite of services tailored to their individual needs and business goals. Contact us today to learn more about our content and proposal management services and how they can help your contracting firm prosper.