According to the Deltek GovCon Industry Study for 2015, 32% of companies are using Excel to manage their pipelines. Can you manage a pipeline with Excel? I guess that depends on your definition of management, but we would suggest the answer is no. Another 40% are using some kind of CRM, which is certainly moving in the right direction, but even a CRM does not allow for everything that should be present to optimize your business development efforts. Now, we are not saying that effective BD is all about the tool that you use, it is not. But a strong tool set certainly helps to keep everyone on the same page, well informed, and therefore more effective. We think to do the job right you need a full suite of collaboration tools that include internal communication, document management, task management, database management, spreadsheet support, wiki management and scheduling.
Of course, all the tools in the world are not going to get the job done if they are not configured properly for the task at hand, which is government business development, not commercial sales tracking or simply customer relationship tracking. So, starting from a robust collaboration platform we customized the entire tool-set to create the 360 BD-Architect. What does the 360 BD-Architect do? Wow, a lot. Just a partial list would include:
- Tools to help profile your company, its core capabilities and value proposition
- Tools to help plan the appropriate metrics to determine your pipeline needs and measure its health
- Tools to help screen opportunities for your pipeline and measure the strength of the business case for investing in a pursuit
- Tools for storing information about each pipeline opportunity, including:
- Opportunity profile
- Key dates
- Statement of work requirements
- Incumbent information
- Contract data
- Financial data
- Win strategy building blocks
- Key contacts and organizational data
- Teaming information
- Probability of Win calculation capability
- Associated document library
- Associated task assignment list
- Comment communications entries and more …
- Tools to schedule and support Gate Reviews
- Tools to create general corporate libraries for proposals, past performance, graphics, resumes and more …
- Wiki pages to store your best response information by topic for RFI, Sources Sought and RFP/RFQ efforts
- Tools for scheduling events
- Full site search capability
- Bank level encryption and daily back-up
These are just the highlights for your Company Master workspace. There is also a capability for managing the development of your proposals. A Proposal Master, which is set up for each proposal, contains all the same communication and scheduling functions, but it also has a proposal schedule template, Gantt chart scheduler, milestone and task list management, automated notification services, document management with auto-version control, document workflow and more …
We could go on and on about the 360 BD-Architect, but the best thing is to call and schedule a demo. Remember, however, while having the right tool is important, having the right hands to wield that tool on your behalf is what makes the difference, so be sure to check out our ‘build your business’ programs on the Business Growth Services page.
Available for use by all subscribers to our 'build your business' programs
Stop just nailing everything and start sailing towards a better future for your business.