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In today's competitive landscape, winning proposals are more critical than ever. But, to stand out from the crowd takes compelling content influenced by in-depth expertise. And that takes time. That's where proposal content management software comes in.
Here we’ll explore the intersection of content management best practices and proposal management software, and how this powerful combination helps you optimize your processes and better showcase your expertise and experience.
What is Proposal Content Management Software?
Proposal content solutions is a specialized combination of tools designed to streamline the process of developing proposals, as well as the process of managing reusable proposal content. By combining content management best practices with modern co-authoring and document automation, teams get the best of both worlds.
Real-time collaboration captures in-depth expertise for reuse as proposals are created. While tasks, deadlines, and workflows manage proposal development, as well as the creation, storage, and maintenance of dynamic business information for reuse. Together, these tools optimize your time and make it easier to infuse your proposals with the in-depth expertise clients demand.
Benefits Content Management Tools
Imagine searching for the answer to a question to finish up your proposal task. You begin by searching your hard drive. Then the local network storage. Then the company-wide shared drive. Frustrated, you end up just writing it again, recreating the wheel.
Now imagine needing expertise to write a more unique response, or clarify a specific detail. You begin by consulting an old proposal, then email some experts, if you know who they are. Then you wait. If you do receive a reply, it's lost in translation. Frustrated, you submit your task "as is" and let the review process fix the errors.
Sound familiar? These are frustrating and time-coming activities repeated on just about every proposal, and you just don’t have time for that.
Proposal content management software transforms that search for information and expertise into a eureka moment that drives results, not lost time, by:
- Establishing a Single Source: There is one place to look for info, expertise, and images, simplifying the search and saving valuable time.
- Connecting Experts and Content: Expert inputs are captured as part of the proposal, automatically infusing your content with experience.
- Controlling Content: You control content accuracy and use, so teams stop recreating the wheel and making changes that impact accuracy.
- Improving Search: Add secure, closed-system Artificial Intelligence (AI), and you find relevant results even faster through context, not tagging.
- Controlling Layout: You can quickly couple high-quality content with brand-reinforcing design using predefined layout and formatting templates.
- Increasing Productivity: Instead of wasting time searching, rewriting and waiting, your team is investing more time in high-quality content.
Common Content System Challenges
Anytime you try to organize assets or resources at a team or enterprise level, you are bound to face resistance. Proposal content management software is no different. Contributors are constantly juggling shifting schedules and changing priorities, and changing the status quo can be overwhelming.
So, despite its many benefits, organizations may encounter obstacles, such as:
- Data Overload: The sheer volume of content and graphics you create and maintain makes it time-consuming to organize and tag effectively.
- Inconsistent Quality: Without proper guidelines and standards, content quality varies, making it difficult to reuse without thorough reviews.
- Resistance to Change: Team members doubt the benefits while experts fear becoming antiquated.
- Content Creation: Content created outside of the proposal process creates additional storage and tagging tasks.
- Maintenance: Content requires regular reviews and updates, which is difficult to formalize across cross-functional experts.
- Searching: Without effective tagging, teams struggle to find what they are looking for, or something relevant, quickly.
- Security: Collaborating over software channels feels risky when you need to safeguard sensitive and confidential information.
- Vendor Lock-In: Choosing a solution for today doesn't necessarily position you to scale up for new content needs as you grow.
Proposal Content Solutions: Best Practices
Effective proposal content management tools requires a harmonious blend of people and process, as well as technology. Contributors and experts must be aligned with process goals and expectations, and empowered to take ownership of their work and know-how. Process must be standardized for consistency and metrics, yet flexible enough to adjust to evolving needs. And technology must solve the problem, for example eliminating redundant process steps and connecting siloed experts.
By following these best practices, and striking the right balance between people, process and technology, you can optimize your proposal management, and position your team to do more with less while thriving.
People
- Team Alignment: Ensure that responsible experts and contributors responsible for proposals understand their goals, roles, and expectations.
- Expert Network: Establish a relationship with key experts outside of the proposal process. Work with them to identify where they naturally create content. For example, as part of product development and software delivery.
- Communication Plan: Establish messaging, metrics and channels. Find early adopters to help you demonstrate the benefits through their eyes.
Process
- Guidelines & Standards: Set rules for content creation and use, including style, tone, and formatting, which may vary by industry and client type.
- Content: Include structured content for answering questions as well as unstructured frameworks for tackling more unique content. And don't forget about images and graphics!
- Content Lifecycle: Create expiration and archive timeframes, as well as regular review workflows. Map the experts to the content they write for proposals, and try to embed this development within their existing processes and responsibilities.
Technology
- User Perspectives: Choose software that is easy-to-learn and easy-to-use, including tasks, deadlines, writing, reviewing, formatting, workflows, and status and progress visibility, as well as content management and collaboration.
- Involve IT: Rely on your IT experts, they have the knowledge and skills to ensure your efforts are secure and integrated with other systems, such as your CRM.
- Centralized Repository: Choose software that aligns with your organizational requirements, specifically with regard to capturing, developing, using and maintaining content as you grow.
Manage Content Easily with XaitPorter
With a myriad of options available, it's a wonder why some organizations still develop proposals the old-fashioned way; searching too many sources, waiting for expertise, recreating the wheel, fighting with formatting - and struggling with the bottlenecks, delays, and poor quality content that come along for the ride.
Perhaps sticking with the status quo file-based, word processing approach designed for the individual worker is just easier; people do tend to resist adopting new technology if they are comfortable with how things are working. Perhaps it's the busy schedule, email overload, and perceived learning curve; some software can be complex to learn and use, and temporarily disrupt existing workflows. Or perhaps you struggle with articulating the potential benefits; the short-term focus on cost savings overshadows the long term benefits of investing.
Whatever aspect of change you may be struggling with, here are some insights from our clients about how XaitPorter makes proposal content management easy and effective:
- Resistance to Change: Do you want to keep searching and tagging amidst version control issues, reformatting, and document crashes? Or do you want to invest in winning? XaitPorter eliminates these challenges. And, according to APMP, "those using software submit 34 more RFPs annually."
- Learning Curve: When software supports its purpose and user activities, it is just easier to learn and use. XaitPorter is an easy-to-use solution; go through it once or twice and you'll know how it works. In fact, one client called it, "life-changing."
- Time to Benefits: The faster you can realize the tangible benefits of your investment, the more empowered your team will be. That's why XaitPorter supports you and your process out-of-the-box, backed by an experienced customer success team, to reduce set-up and training time.
- Expert Fears: Unlike file-sharing, database-driven co-authoring software contains all of the objects and information that your documents need, from tables and macros to forms and queries. With XaitPorter, content is created and captured in the database for reuse, saving expert time.
- Budget: At a certain point, proposal content management software becomes the pathway for scaling and growing your business. By cutting the time spent on each proposal in half, XaitPorter helps clients respond to 65% more bids with the same level of resources.
- Security: Our clients handle sensitive and confidential information, so security is a top priority. That's why Xait is ISO 27001 certified, the internationally recognized standard for information security management systems (ISMS).
- Backup and Recovery: Local storage and email will not help you recover deleted content or documents. With XaitPorter, your work is automatically saved every 30 seconds, and backed up automatically, including restore points for users so they can easily recall a previous version.
Ready to unlock the full potential of your proposal team? By combining team collaboration, content management, and automation, XaitPorter gives you a competitive edge for achieving greater success in winning new business.
Remember, effective proposal content management is about more than just technology; it involves a combination of people, process, and the right technology to be effective and efficient and secure the results you desire.
