According to Changepoint, a leading provider of project portfolio management, a whopping 72% of teams still track project status manually. If you’re still managing a proposal project using a spreadsheet or other manual “tools,” then your team is no doubt spending more time trying to figure out what tasks to work on and when they are due than actually working to complete their proposal tasks. That, combined with the time it takes you to coordinate their time, is eating into what little time, and budget, you have to develop your proposal.

Here are four ways to save proposal time, get your team focused on their tasks instead of the process, and position your team for success that is not only repeatable, but scalable.

#1 Time-Saving Proposal Prep

According to the Seibert Group, “40% of your success as a proposal manager comes down to all of your pre-RFP sales efforts.” This means the information you gather during sales, business development and capture, RFP evaluation, and bid/no bid analysis is pure gold for the team of experts tasked with writing your proposal.
The “time suck” lies in how effective you are at capturing and transitioning that information and intelligence from the sales/BD/capture team to the proposal team, especially if you’re relying on manual communication methods like spreadsheets and emails.

• Stop emailing RFPs. Save time by inviting your team to review, comment, and discussion online.
• Capture the RFP discussion. Save time by automatically capturing the details you need to flesh out your capture plan.
• Bridge the gap between sales and proposals. Save time by letting information flow automatically between sales and proposal teams.

#2 Time-Saving Proposal Communications

Project management is at the core of your proposal management process; from developing the plan and coordinating the resources to packaging and shipping the final proposal, and managing every step in between. That project is just as critical to business performance and organizational success as any software development or software installation project. The difference lies in a simple factor; with proposal management, you (usually) don’t own the resources. Yet, it is your job to lead them and manage their time wisely.

• Stop emailing the calendar. Save time with a single, centralized calendar everyone consults.
• Stop emailing assignments. Save time by defining assignments upfront in workflow.
• Stop leaving voicemails. Save time by automating assignment, and re-assignment, task notifications.
• Repeat and scale. Save time by reusing effective workspace templates you define.

#3 Monitor and Control Your Proposal Time

The time-saving benefits of centralized, proposal management-specific tools go far beyond secure team, document, and collaboration management. One of the core benefits of centralizing, integrating, and automating your proposal management process is business intelligence; the tracking of team time, task, and process activities for reporting and analysis.

• Stop chasing down proposal status. Save time by automatically monitoring your team’s status and progress.
• Avoid bottlenecks. Save time, and avoid delays, by quickly reassigning tasks and automatically notifying your team.
• Stop scrambling to update execs. Save time by giving your executives and key stakeholders an online dashboard of proposal, and opportunity, progress and status.
• Stop guessing at the budget. Save time by analyzing resource and process performance.

#4 Use Your Team Time More Wisely

Whether you use proposal writers or not, your subject matter experts are a critical component of your proposal development process. They design the solution and they build the product or provide the service. Their expertise provides insight into how to develop and successfully deploy. With full-time responsibilities on other projects, you need to use this time wisely.

• Stop emailing capture plans. Save time by centralizing, securing and sharing this information.
• Skip the blank page. Save time by centralizing reusable content for browse and search, copy and paste.
• Eliminate review confusion. Save time by centralizing your review team feedback loop, real-time.
• Stop renaming files. Save time by automating version control.
• Stop merging review documents. Save time by centralizing the review team feedback loop.

In the age of technology, manual proposal organization, coordination, and communication shouldn’t slow you down. Isn’t it time you cracked the proposal time-saving nut and positioned you and your team success?