Reduce your Omissions by Recycling your Content
By Robin Davis President, Robin Davis Consulting

You get asked to provide the same information over and over again in the RFPs that you receive. Regardless of the buyer, the basic information about your programs, services and company remain the same. For that reason, it only makes sense to create a system to capture, organize, store, and manage this information.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel when you can recycle what you already have.

This makes logical sense to almost everybody, but creating a knowledge base and a knowledge management process often gets pushed to the bottom of the “to do” list because you are busy writing proposals. This article is written to help you make a case for knowledge management and focus on the 4 key things that will help you be successful. An effective knowledge management strategy can cut your proposal process time in half, improve relationships with your subject matter experts and other colleagues, improve the quality of your content, and help you win more business.

Making a case for knowledge management
By following the theme of reduce, recycle and reuse, there is a good case to be made for developing a knowledge management process for your proposal team.

Reduce

• Time. The information needed to answer RFP questions is typically scattered in various places like previous proposals, the company website, marketing materials, share drives, personal hard drives, and in the heads of our colleagues. Tracking down information can takes hours, days and even weeks. An effective knowledge management strategy can cut the time it takes you to create a first draft of your proposal by 50 percent. Saving this time on the front end allows you to spend more time on the critical things that help you win the business, like customizing your message.
• Errors. Pulling information from other sources may contain errors or poor grammar. You also run the risk of the information being outdated or offering too much or too little detail. Using information that was designed for a different audience can create inconsistencies in your messaging and cause confusion for the evaluator. With a knowledge base of pre-approved, well-written, and formatted content, your proposal is more likely to flow and tell a story that resonates with your reader.
• Omissions. You know that forgetting to include key information can cost you critical points or even disqualify you. But there’s another kind of omission that sometimes occurs – the opportunity to create a compelling answer that not only answers the question, but also describes how your approach/product is different from your competitors. With every answer, you have an opportunity to persuade the buyer to choose your company. When building a knowledge base, you can create answers that go beyond just stating the facts by providing critical information that will help the evaluator make an informed buying decision.

Recycle

• To recycle means to extract useful materials from one thing and reuse for something new. With about 60 percent of every RFP asking for the same information, recycling old answers just makes sense. A knowledge base enables you to store, manage and easily access frequently requested information. The time savings on the front end gives you more time to enhance the message by weaving in your strategic key points and the “what’s in it for me” message for your specific client.

Reuse

• Many companies do not have a corporate-wide knowledge management function. It is up to each department to document its processes and capture the intellectual property of its team members. But as proposal professionals, you have had to learn a little bit about everything the company does because you have likely had to answer a question about it in a proposal. By creating a knowledge base of all the information you collect, you are sitting on a gold mine. The information you collect and manage can be reused by other departments throughout your organization. For example, you might provide your human resources department with company history and program overviews to be used for new colleague orientation. This type of sharing increases your value to the organization and creates a culture of collaboration.

Keys to a successful implementation
Once you have identified how a knowledge management strategy will help improve your proposal process, you need a fundamental approach to getting started. I have identified four keys to success based on my experience with a variety of clients.

1: Senior Leadership Buy-In
The first step is to get buy-in from the people that can champion for you – senior leadership. These are the people that need to understand the value of your work and what it takes (i.e., resources, tools) for you to do your best work. To get them on board, you may need to create a project plan that defines the problem, outlines the solution, and defines the value proposition (ROI).
You can use the following metrics to help define the problem:

• Productivity/level of effort – compare the time that is spent searching for information versus the time spent on customizing and focusing on the client’s specific problem.
• Feedback on current proposal quality from internal and external sources – feedback from SMEs, consultants or prospects can help to validate current quality issues
• Dissatisfaction with current process – SMEs who are frustrated with last minute requests or repeated requests for the same information; or sales people that don’t feel like they had enough time to review and edit.

Once you have described your proposed changes and outlined the solution, you can describe the value proposition, such as:

• Improvements in productivity, process efficiencies, focus on the right things (i.e., the customer)
• Minimize risks of poor quality, negative reputation in the market, and lost deals
• Level of effort savings

2: Identify & Implement a Tool
Now that you’ve made your case to senior leadership and gotten the approvals you need to move forward, the next step is to identify and implement a knowledge management tool. It doesn’t matter what tool you use, you just need to find the tool that fits your goals and budget. Even if you use a folder structure on a share drive, anything you do is better than doing nothing at all.

When evaluating tools, take into consideration the following:

• Cost of the software, maintenance fees and training
• Your IT capabilities and restrictions
• Number of people that will be using the tool
• Ease of use
• Search capabilities
• Maintenance capabilities
• Collaboration features
• Availability of ongoing technical support
• Company stability

Once you have identified the tool you will use for your knowledge management system, you need to develop a plan to implement the tool. Follow these steps to get your knowledge base up and running:

• Identify the content for the knowledgebase – start with the most frequently asked information; determine a manageable amount of information for your first phase (i.e. 75-100 pieces of information)
• Develop your directory structure – make it simple and intuitive
• Assign ownership of the records – each piece of information needs to have a SME assigned for ongoing maintenance purposes
• Assign frequency of review – how often should the information be reviewed by the SME? Should be in line with how often the information changes
• Prepare the content – any content that goes in the knowledge base needs to be error free, grammatically correct, strategic, persuasive, succinct, and accurate
• Set a launch date – building a knowledgebase for the first time is a large undertaking; start with a manageable amount of information and a launch date; you will add more information over time.

3: Dedicate a Resource
Another critical component of a successful knowledge management strategy is to dedicate a resource to manage it.  With resources already strapped and budgets tight, this is often the hardest sell.  But this step is critical.  If nobody is accountable for management of the knowledge base and ongoing maintenance of its content, it will soon be outdated and useless.  Whether you hire a full-time resource, re-allocate some or all of a current resource, or outsource to an experienced contractor, the role is critical and your whole team will benefit tremendously.

When looking to fill this role, consider the following responsibilities for this resource:

• Develop the knowledge management processes
• Implement and manage the tool
• Create the knowledgebase (identify content, create structure, etc.)
• Manage relationships with SMEs
• Handle technical issues with tool
• Run queries and reports
• Upload new and update information
• Ensure quality and effectiveness
• Support the writers/help find information in a pinch

The person best suited for this role should have the following competencies:

• Detail oriented
• Self-starter, takes initiative
• Technical aptitude
• Analytical thinker, decision maker
• Process oriented
• Good communicator across all levels
• Collaborative

4: Training
Ok, you’ve got senior leadership buy-in, you have identified and implemented your tool, you have a dedicated resource, and now you need to train your users and other stakeholders.

End User: A tool is only effective if the end user has the information they need to get the most out of it.  User training should include:

• On the tool itself
  • Offered by the software developer, or
  • Conducted by the person that developed it
• An overview of what information is in the knowledge base today and how it will grow over time
• How to use the information – it should not be your final answers
  • Boilerplate, generic
  • Typically used for first draft; requires customization
• Feedback process on how to add new information or edit existing information

SME: The SME is your primary source of information. You have probably worked with most or all of these people on proposals already so they know what it is like to create answers under tight deadlines.  Communicating your intent to eliminate much of that last minute work is welcomed and very well received. Your goal is to build an on-going relationship that is low stress for everybody. Call all of your SMEs and schedule a training session to communicate the improved process including:

• Define overall process and strategy
  • Explain the increased efficiencies
  • How it will minimize “fire drills”
  • How the content will be used
  • Their role in the process – on-going review cycle
• Set expectations
  • Define the flow of information, how it will be gathered (i.e. documents they have already created, interviewing)

Sales people: With well-written boilerplate information available at your fingertips, you can respond to client and prospect needs faster. Training offered to the sales people should include:

• Highlighting the value
  • Increased efficiencies – quicker first draft
  • Increase confidence in the accuracy of the content due to on-going reviews by SMEs
  • Offering more time for reviews and customization
  • Content can be used for other sales purposes (i.e., unsolicited proposals)
• Set expectations
  • It is not automated – the information is boilerplate and requires customization and strategic focus

Make your world a better place
To “go green” is to make the world we live in a better place.  Establishing a knowledge management strategy will help make your work world a better and more productive place. It is easy to see the value but often challenging to implement because of the time and effort it takes to make it happen. Whether you hire a consultant, re-allocate or hire a resource, or work extra hours, it will be one of the best things you have ever done to improve your process.  I guarantee it.

Robin Davis is a strategic consultant with over 20 years of experience in sales operations. She specializes in proposal and knowledge management process development and implementation for health care organizations. If you have questions or comments on this topic, please contact her at (615) 712-6298 or at robin@robindavisconsulting.com.

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