Capture Management Best Practices

By establishing a capture management process, you can also significantly shape a procurement by actively influencing the customer's requirements and expectations during the pre-solicitation phase. 

This blog delves into capture challenges and benefits, as well as tips for implementing an effective strategy. 

What is Capture Management?

Capture management, or capture planning, is the process of proactively identifying opportunities, building relationships, gathering information, and strategizing how to win a specific opportunity. Essentially, by developing a well-informed capture plan, businesses improve the probability of winning a strategic opportunity. 

A capture plan typically features the following components:

• Opportunity Identification
• Competitor Research and Analysis
• Cost Benefit Analysis
• Customer Pain Point Analysis
• Action Plan Development

By dedicating resources 12 - 24 months before the RFP or Tender is released, a capture process can deliver a number of game-changing benefits. 

Insights and More Precise Proposals

Competitive procurements are a fierce battleground. Imagine you're a business development manager for a specialized engineering firm that designs and builds subsea infrastructure for oil and gas. A major offshore platform operator, Oceanic Energy, has just announced a future opportunity to bid for the design and construction of a new subsea production system in the Gulf of Mexico.

It's a highly competitive procurement, with several major engineering firms in the mix, but winning would generate substantial revenue and basically put your business on the map.

With a disciplined capture management process in place, you significantly boost your chances of winning: 

• Opportunity Identification: Your team identified this opportunity months in advance, and conducted in-depth research on Oceanic Energy, including past projects, procurement history, and key decision-makers.
• More Qualified Pipeline: This information and intel feeds into your sales process for a faster, more informed go or no go decision, as well as better resource allocation. 
• Relationship Building: Your team has cultivated relationships with key contacts and participated in relevant conversations to demonstrate expertise, build credibility, and influence the procurement to align with your strengths and capabilities. 
• Win Strategy Development: A better understanding of Oceanic Energy and your competitors delivers compelling win themes, differentiation, and specifically how to address potential doubts or objections. 
• Proposal Development: All of this information and insight feeds into a more precise, personalized, and engaging proposal that helps you stand out against your competition. 

The Time and Intel Imperative

In the fast-paced world of competitive procurement, time and intel are the enemies. If you don't have a deep understanding of the client, and a well-developed plan for winning, before the RFP or Tender drops, you're essentially shooting in the dark. 

Which means you must overcome today's common capture management data and collaboration challenges: 

• Data Silos: Client and competitor information is often scattered across multiple spreadsheets, databases, and individual files, making it difficult to maintain accuracy.
• Limited Knowledge Sharing: Siloed data hinders knowledge and insights sharing, slowing down decisions and action plan development.  
• Manual Data Aggregation: Manually gathering and integrating data from multiple sources is time-consuming and prone to human error.  
• Lack of Standardized Templates: Lack of standard templates and procedures for the collection and presentation of data can lead to inconsistencies in data interpretation. 
• Inefficient Feedback Processes: Traditional methods of securing feedback, for example, email and hard copies, is time-consuming and can lead to confusion and delays. 
• Change Tracking: When multiple team members and tools are involved, tracking changes is manual and not very effective.
• Version Control: Ensuring everyone is working with the latest version is another challenge that further confuses the team, and creates extra work to reconcile.
• Security: Relying heavily on email for sensitive intel is risky, making you vulnerable to malicious actors, hacking, or accidental disclosures. 

Capture Management Process

Capture management involves a series of well-planned steps to identify, qualify and pursue strategic opportunities. It can save time and money by prioritizing opportunities and better allocating resources. And it can help you influence decision-makers and stand out from the competition.

Your competitors, armed with months of diligent research, cultivated relationships, and laser focused solutions, have a significant head start. This isn't a just disadvantage; it can be a major blow to your chances. 

A well-defined capture management process improves your chances. Here's how:

Opportunity Identification

Research the market and organizations to find opportunities that match your capabilities. Assess your current situation and establish criteria and goals. Generate and evaluate ideas, weighing them based on the value they bring to your business. Weigh the risks against the potential outcomes, considering qualitative and quantitative factors. 

Competitor Research and Analysis

Gather competitive insights and incumbent information. Look for their strengths, weaknesses, and performance on similar projects. Consider their target market and audience, pricing and market share. Identify if they have any existing relationships with the client.  

Cost Benefit Analysis 

Develop a cost benefit analysis, or analysis of the cost and potential for success to guide the decision. Price to win or PWIN is a methodology used by capture managers to estimate the price that will most likely win the contract. Analyze a variety of factors, including what the competitors will likely offer, the client’s priorities and budget, and your value proposition. Strike a balance between the features and price that deliver the most client value based on what they prioritize.

Client Pain Points Analysis

This is the cornerstone of any successful capture strategy. By analyzing client challenges, unmet needs, frustrations and goals, you can identify your unique value proposition and key messaging. This directly informs the development of your proposal, so you can effectively address their most pressing concerns. 

Action Plan

Develop a detailed plan outlining how you intend to win, including: 

• Solution Framework: Map your strengths to each of the problems you solve. Then, prioritize based on what the client values and question your benefits. Create a preliminary solution as a model for pursuit. 
• Win Strategy: Highlight what makes you unique and better than your competitors, and how to counter weaknesses. Include strategies related to features, pricing, management, staffing, schedule, and performance.
• Communications: Define your communication channels and create a plan for client communications, including events, meetings and calls. Work with marketing to proactively create relevant sales-branding content to support each channel. Work with management and sales to allocate resources for capture activities. 
• Connect with the Client: Build relationships with decision-makers and influencers across the organization. Share information and insights to build awareness and position your business.  

Develop a Winning Proposal

Work with your proposal manager to translate your strategy into an actionable plan for your proposal process. Create a presentation for the kick-off that shares your vision for the story, messaging, language, and evidence. Interpret vague or ambiguous requirements. Inform the writer's package to help guide contributors.  

Tips for Effective Capture Management

Clients who recognize you, are more likely to read your proposal. Clients who are familiar with your work, are more likely to trust your capabilities. Clients who view you as credible, are more likely to consider working with you. That's the power of capture management. 

By solving your data management challenges and incorporating these tips, you can implement an effective capture management process:  

• Baseline SMART (measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals to measure and continuously improve your capture process. 
• Establish regular product direction discussions with capture to head-off any solutioning challenges or missteps.  
• Align your capture process with the criteria of your go/no go process.   
• Establish opportunity briefings with your proposal team to prepare for development.  
• Establish milestones for evaluating new information, risks, and changing win probability.
• Cultivate capture skills with active listening, non-verbal communication, and effective questioning workshops. 
• Consider using your social media channels to connect and share relevant insights that build credibility. Regularly publishing a LinkedIn newsletter keeps you top of mind with your audience.
• Double-check the solicitation for “wired” opportunities. If the response time is extra limiting, it might be an indication someone else is practicing capture management.

In today's hyper-competitive landscape, client relationships are an imperative for survival and growth. If you want clients to get to know you well enough to consider awarding you their business, it's on you to proactively initiate, foster, and cultivate a relationship. By implementing capture management, you put your best foot forward, and position your business as their top choice.