Proposal Preparation Workshop

Background

Every company wishes to submit a world-class proposal that no other competitor could possibly do. But to its dismay, many times quality of proposal fails to meet the basic expectations of the customer. Quite a few times customer comes back with the comments like proposal was unclear, did not meet their objectives, unusually higher cost is quoted, could not understand the vendor’s value proposition etc. There are even responses like “major part of proposal kept on talking about what-all vendor can do in general with very little information about the solution proposed”.

When we introspect with these comments, natural question that arise is whether the company deserve these comments. Is company really lacking the ability to deliver good solution to customer’s problem at competitive cost and timeline? Generally answer is NO! Post analysis of the rejected proposals has shown different reasons for this failure. It points to the way people conceive the solution, manage the stakeholders and package the solution. Due to the short timeline and lack of the big picture, proposal preparation teams do a sub-optimal job of this.

What is the aim of this workshop?

This workshop from ITMiles aims to mentor and develop proposal preparation teams to arrive at proposals that meet the objectives in spite of the challenges. Focus of the workshop is to make the participants understand the big picture through experiential discussions. Workshop emphasises the need to understand the proposal drivers while modelling the solution. There are quite a few challenges in arriving at a good proposal in a short time. People should know how to face the challenges while conceiving the solution, managing the stakeholders and packaging the solution. This workshop discusses about these challenges, common mistakes and ways to conquer the same.

Who gets benefited from this workshop?

A person with IT experience of over 4 years involved in submission of at least one proposal. Person with more than 2-3 years exclusive experience in proposal submission may find this workshop as a thought consolidation exercise.

What is not covered in this workshop?

• Discussion on any one specific technology solution
• Discussion about different estimation methods that are followed
• Beautification of the proposal, refining the proposal language and format.
• Pricing the proposal in response to the competition
• Walking through one “winning” proposal

What are the topics covered?

• What is a proposal?
• What are the challenges faced in preparing it?
• Proposal submission process
• Solution design
• Structuring and packaging a proposal
• Addressing the challenges