Proposal Generation Software Helps Surveying Firm Win National Projects
Since making this switch, the time needed to create proposals has been reduced by more than 75%, making it possible for Tuck Engineering President Bobby Tuck, who has the most knowledge of previous projects, to create all of the proposals himself. Even more importantly, the company can now produce better targeted proposals that more accurately fit the bidder's requirements. "Our new proposal software recently played a major role in winning two large national projects by ensuring that we were able to precisely meet the bidder's complicated requirements," Tuck said.
Tuck Engineering employs over thirty people and is a leader in the fields of aerial photography, surveying, mapping, and modeling. The company has two GPS-equipped aircraft, Piper Navajos, each equipped with Leica RCD-30 cameras capable of resolving 130 lines per millimeter. The company also prepares ground control layouts for all of its aerial mapping projects. Providing a true 3-D design file of the mapped area makes it possible for Tuck's clients to use their mapping as a base for design projects. The company has capacity for more than 100 hours of digital mapping production per day. Tuck Engineering has also developed a process for the visualization of aerial mapping and engineering projects. It superimposes scale models of the engineering plans over the digital maps, providing a scaled contour relief model depicting how the engineering plan will look when construction is completed.
First move towards automation
Tuck began automating its back office operations 14 years ago. The company, which at that time employed only eight people, was performing all of its bookkeeping operations on ledger sheets and typing each proposal from scratch. "Our auditor suggested that we could save a lot of time and avoid errors by automating our project accounting," Tuck said. "He mentioned that he had heard about project management software designed specially for professional services firms called the Wind2 Financial Management System (FMS) and suggested that I give it a try. I found that Wind2 FMS dramatically improved my ability to manage the business. I was able to determine precisely how much every job cost to perform. That improved the way that I bid future projects which in turn helped to expand the business."
Based on this success, Tuck kept his eyes open for software that would improve the other paper-intensive aspect of his business: preparing proposals. A number of years ago, the company identified a software program specially designed for preparing the 254 and 255 forms used to bid on federal projects. The software was designed to reduce the large amount of time that was spent manually organizing the resumes of the people involved in the project, the company's relevant past experience, and other items required for these submissions. But there were several limitations that kept this package from providing an ideal solution. First of all, much of the information required for these proposals, such as a listing of previous projects, was already contained in Wind2 FMS, yet since the two packages didn't communicate, it had to be re-entered from scratch. And because this program did not automatically structure the proposal, Tuck had to spend valuable time searching through earlier proposals to find relevant information and then cut and paste it into position. Finally, the software was somewhat difficult to use. For these reasons, Tuck used the software only on government proposals and continued to prepare proposals for private companies by hand.
Switch to a new proposal generator
In early 2001, Wind2 announced the purchase of Infomax, a leading developer of client relationship management software for project-based services firms. After Wind2 revamped the Infomax product to include a seamless link to Wind2 FMS, Tuck believed that the new product, Wind2 Award, would significantly streamline his proposal generation process. This has proven to be the case, and is due in large part to Award's direct interface with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook. When creating proposals in Award, Tuck is able to directly access Word's powerful word processing features, and the two-way Outlook interface enables him to synchronize contacts, milestones, schedules, tasks, and activities assigned in Award with the appropriate Outlook folder. Plus, any changes he makes in Outlook are automatically reflected in Award.
Award works by maintaining a database of information from which the user can easily draw while creating the proposal. The program is organized around the key sections of the proposal: cover page and letter, introduction, project approach, schedule, project organization, project experience, resumes and staff, references, scope of work, and appendices. These sections can easily be renamed to accommodate specific terminology within a firm. Working in one of these sections, the user enters the word "surveying" and the software draws information from a database of description material, classified by subject. Taking the area of surveying as an example, the software retrieves a specific version of the company history, listing all past surveying projects, clients, project locations, completion dates, cost, and many other categories. The program also brings up resumes for all personnel with surveying experience. Tuck then goes through the list and picks those items that should be included in the proposal. He can also query the database for more information when required. If Tuck needs a list of sub-consultants with surveying expertise he can easily create one by calling up the sub-consultant database and searching on the term "surveying."
Reducing proposal generation time by 75%
"The new program automates what used to be mostly a manual process," Tuck said. "We have continually added to and improved the library to the point that we now have a complete description for nearly every project we have ever done that we can pull into a proposal with a click of a mouse. Every once in a while, we transfer all of the recent projects from Wind2 FMS to Award and write descriptions for them so they are available for future use. We also keep our list of employees up to date by importing them from Wind2. The whole process moves so much more quickly than with our old software. In fact, it now takes less than one quarter of the time to create a proposal, and these new proposals are more complete and thorough than the past system would allow. The software works so well, I soon began using it to create all of our proposals, both government and private."
The company also uses Award to manage deadlines and follow-ups. "When a proposal comes up but the deadline is two months away, I typically enter it as an opportunity in Award," he said. "The link to Outlook reminds me of what I need to do as the deadline gets closer. I also enter a follow-up date for my marketing person when I submit a proposal.
Tuck said that the biggest benefit of all has been the improvement in the quality of proposals, especially the large complicated proposals that are needed to win national contracts. "To win the biggest national contracts, we have to put together a team of players from around the country, then generate a proposal that includes the particulars from each company," he said. "We have greatly reduced the amount of effort required by storing resumes and references from the companies that we normally work with in the Award database. On the latest proposal, which had exceptionally complicated requirements, we imported the RFP into the proposal generator and used it as the framework of our proposal. The customer said we were the only company that had exactly the right information."
Source: Wind2 Software, Inc.