Capture & Proposal Process Consulting

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Katrina Harper
6 years ago
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Capture & Proposal Process Consulting Did you know that having the right capture and proposal process can raise your win probability, increase your new business revenue, and decrease your cost of new

1 Capture & Proposal Process Consulting Did you know that having the right capture and proposal process can raise your win probability, increase your new business revenue, and decrease your cost of new business acquisition? See how we can help you achieve this with our proven capture and proposal process support. In the best companies, processes are designed and optimized for the government market. These processes take into account the company s management structure, work culture, and competitiveness in its market. They are fully integrated from new business opportunity identification to contract award. Whether your company is poised for growth, considering an acquisition, or needs to boost win rates, we can help. Our Business Development Operations (BDO) process experts will assess your company s BD, capture, and proposal processes, compare them to our government contractor best practices model (GovCon BPM), and identify and assess any process and procedure gaps. We will then build an actionable roadmap that will improve your processes, raise your win probability, and reduce your overall business acquisition costs. We can design your new processes and procedures and implement them using your existing tools or help recommend the best combination of industry-accepted tools. Defining your business development, capture, and proposal processes Successful companies recognize that building the right BD, capture, and proposal processes is key to their growth and survival. They also know that the sooner they implement well-designed processes, the more successful they will be. Our BDO process experts work with both large and small companies to build defined, repeatable, managed, measured, and optimized BD, capture, and proposal processes specifically designed for your company. You can expect the processes we develop to be fully documented with step-by-step procedures for every activity in the BD, capture, and proposal life cycle. Depending on the program developed, your new fully defined and integrated BD, capture, and proposal management processes can include:

2 Instructional materials integrated into each step of the process that explain how to perform each activity in the business acquisition life cycle along with checklists and assessment criteria to ensure you are performing each activity well. A complete set of templates to collect the data needed to manage the business acquisition process. Proposal improvement assessments Despite poor results, we often continue to do things the same way. This pattern may apply to your proposal shop as well. Perhaps your win rate is stagnant or declining, your team is burned out, your technology doesn t work, and/or proposal quality is at an all-time low. To provide a roadmap for improvement, we offer an independent Proposal Improvement Assessment. This review is an objective analysis of proposal operations (people, processes, and technology) versus best practices as well as proposal quality versus our 7 quality measures proven to increase win rates. Based on the analysis, we provide detailed, actionable recommendations that will dramatically improve results. Our review service offers the best return on investment (ROI) for proposal improvement that will increase your win rate. Often, proposal shops realize they have problems, but don t know how to articulate and fix issues. Even when they realize what the fix is, they don t know how to implement it and/or they don t have organizational buy-in. By investing in the unbiased opinion of an expert, proposal organizations can better understand strengths and weaknesses and take actionable steps to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Through documentation reviews, observation, interviews, and focus groups with proposal operations employees and focus groups with business unit customers accessing proposal services, the assessment uncovers what works and what doesn t. Combined with reviews of representative submitted proposals, the analysis helps organizations achieve positive results by competing more effectively to win more bids. We provide oral and written briefings that document our findings and provide detailed recommendations and actionable next steps. Our experienced consultants can perform the following separate reviews. Proposal process/operations review Gather and review existing documentation related to proposal operations organization and staffing, processes, tools, and technology, including representative proposals.

3 Interview proposal operations staff and hold a focus group with stakeholders regarding the as-is environment and related strengths and weaknesses. Develop recommendations for improvement of people, processes, training, and technologies. Proposal quality review Review the quality of two representative proposals one win and one loss versus Lohfeld Consulting Group s 7 quality measures proven to increase win rates. Develop recommendations for improvement. Proposal post-mortem review Review RFP. Develop compliance matrix. Review submitted proposal. Provide completed score sheet. Provide outbrief. Too busy? A packed calendar is not a problem, as we can conduct the review to work around your schedule. If desired, we can complete much of the analysis off-site. We provide a documentation list, and all you need to do is gather and provide the materials. Interviews can be conducted on or off-site with a very flexible schedule. Optional focus groups are the only aspect of this service that must be performed on-site, but they are definitely a great way to gain a true understanding of customer perspectives and overall satisfaction with the proposal shop services. Tuning up your existing BD, capture, and proposal processes Company mergers provide an excellent opportunity to tune-up and standardize BD operations for the combined corporate entity. Defining best practices and streamlining operations is a necessary task, but most companies don t have the time or resources to do this. Our BDO process experts can take on this task. We build on your existing processes, preserving what has worked and introducing or revising processes that fall short of our industry best-practices model. The overall result is a tailored, fully integrated business process based on the combined strengths of your previous processes and recognized industry best practices. Our experts focus on the following: Achieving a complete, logical, and integrated process for business acquisition.

4 Increasing efficiency and effectiveness of overall business acquisition processes to allow you to purse more new business and lower your overall cost per bid. Leveraging existing business tools where appropriate to increase accuracy and consistency of results. Implementing the processes in an enterprise-wide management repository to ensure access to business acquisition artifacts, enhance reuse, and provide a basis for measuring and optimizing BDO processes. Our experts can help tune-up your existing processes and realign them with your organizational model. Implementing your BD, capture, and proposal processes Save money, time, and human capital. Let us implement your newly designed BD, capture, and proposal process. We use your existing business tools to design a virtual workspace comprising the materials, templates, and repositories that drive a rigorous approach to opportunity pursuit tailored to your company s unique circumstances, environment, and culture. Creating and populating résumé and past performance databases We can help you set up your résumé and past performance databases and integrate them with your other company knowledge management systems. If you don t have these databases, we can create and populate these databases for you. Résumé database We build specialized résumé databases especially designed for supporting BD activities. These résumé databases are different from applicant-tracking databases. We collect and manage the information needed to select candidate résumés for your proposals and gather the data needed to write résumés tailored to the specific programs you bid. We employ the following approach: Define project scope and goals, including establishing overall searchable database structure, résumé standard format, and résumé metadata and searchable tags, and then delineate user accessibility and security requirements. Develop the infrastructure to house working and final résumés as they mature through the résumé development and review process, culminating in a Résumé Search Library (RSL) housing all final résumés. The RSL is fully searchable according to predefined properties tagged in each résumé and allows Boolean logic searches of all résumé text. Develop a list of employees needing résumés developed and reach out to employees to collect source résumés, modify as needed, edit for style and completeness, and upload finished résumés to the RSL.

5 Provide detailed documentation about the résumé development process, including defined templates, style and acronym guides, and project plan/design. Provide training for your management team. Continue to administer and manage the database and its content using our workflow process and defined schedule for routine updating (quarterly, annually, or other interval) or turn over database and content administration and maintenance to you to manage internally. Past performance database We provide a past performance database that includes company past contracts and task order profiles and that is searchable using both contract metadata as well as Boolean logic searches. Past performance databases are different from contract databases. Past performance databases capture work accomplishments not just work scope and are designed to capture information necessary to get an outstanding score in proposal evaluations. We also archive multiple versions of the same past performance citation so you can have access to all previous write-ups used in proposals. We employ the following approach: Establish standards, define tagging properties and search features, and delineate user accessibility and security schema. Develop infrastructure to accommodate working and final documents as they mature through the process, culminating in a Past Performance Search Library (PPSL) housing all final contract and task order descriptions. The PPSL is fully searchable according to predefined properties tagged as well as all description text. Develop a prioritized list of the most important contracts both active and recently completed to populate the database initially. Reach out to identified client points of contact or repositories (e.g., program managers, contracts leads, proposals archives) to collect source information on contracts, develop detailed descriptions of each contract, and upload them to the PPSL. Document process, including defined templates, styles, acronym guides, and project plan and design. Provide training for your management team. Continue to administer and manage database and content using our workflow process and defined schedule for routine updates (quarterly, annually, or other interval) or turn over database and content administration and maintenance to you to manage internally. For further information, please contact Brent Hunt at BHunt@LohfeldConsulting.com or

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