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Where do you get the best proposal software return on investment?
When people look for an automated solution, they tend to take the hardest part of their job and try to automate it. Proposal managers have a natural tendency to want software that can parse the RFP, assist in building the outline and establish cross-references. As if that wasn't enough, they often want the software to link to the text response, track assignments, and even monitor section status. The problem with this is that the "hardest" part of a job (like developing proposals) may not be were the best return-on-investment for developing a software infrastructure can be found.
Because the principal cost driver in proposals is people's time, your best ROI will be on things that save time. As it turns out, most of the time spent in building an outline is spent thinking about it and not pounding on the keyboard. When it comes to requirements allocation, the portion of time that can be automated is only a small share of the total. Not only that, but RFP parsing and fully cross-referenced outline development require extremely complex (read: expensive) software development. If you are concerned about ROI, spending a lot of money on something that can only provide a marginal time savings is probably not the best approach.
The best ROI from proposal software comes from automating administrative tasks. These include things like maintaining an orderly file/folder system, streamlining file access, and version control. It also includes coordination activities like keeping the proposal team informed. These things may seem boring, mundane, and easy, but you probably spend most of your time working on a proposal involved with these simple tasks. If you can save time on them, the impact over all can be significant.
So when it comes to proposal automation, we usually start by looking at document management and collaboration before we consider things like requirements allocation. Workflow technology can sometimes bridge the gap between administration and process automation, and we take it on a case-by-case basis. But as a general rule of thumb, it's another case of the 80/20 rule (some prefer 90/10). You can get 80% of the potential benefit (with document management and collaboration technologies) at only 20% of the cost. That extra 20% of benefit represented by requirements allocation ends up driving 80% of the cost. If you have a large budget, and long term ROI outlook, you may want to go there. But we suspect most groups will get their best ROI without attempted to automate requirements allocation.
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