Software Description

For many companies proposal writing is reinventing the wheel over and over, at great costs within tight deadlines. Creative and concise documents emanate from original thoughts and repeated rewrites; each rewrite sparking more creativity and sophistication. The luxury of creative rewrites and many refinements usually cannot be achieved with a federal proposal because of the time constraints created by unrealistic due dates in federal Requests for Proposals (RFPs). How many times have you heard: "We know it's coming, we know what's in the RFP because we are the incumbent (or we drafted the specs), so let's start early?" I suppose that has happened but most people would admit that it is very rare.

Beat the tight deadline and cost game by modeling your core proposal(s) and then refining the model with each subsequent proposal. The more commonality among proposals experienced by your company the better this approach works. Some commonality exists in every company and almost all federal contracts use boilerplate and model text to some degree. Try taking it to a new level with model chapters.

Most companies do not take the time or have the discipline to take the suggested approach. Have you heard this in your company: "Didn't we do that last year, does anyone remember which proposal that was and where I can find it?"

Solution: Our Proposal Architect software provides a structured, electronic process for sales and proposal writing. It is the beginning structure for a model chapter approach to proposal writing. Use it over and over and your proposals will get better.

Successful federal proposals begin with a comprehensive and “RFP compliant” outline to begin the proposal writing process. Chaos ensues without an outline to begin the writing process and the lack of an outline creates excessive rewrite costs and loss of billable time. The Proposal Architect is a tool to assist Proposal Mangers in developing a comprehensive proposal outline quickly.

The tool is comprised of two screens.

1. The right side of the dual screen display is an “insert content” screen where outline content is inserted (cut & paste) from any source file, e.g., the RFP or legacy content.
2. The left side of the display contains a “hierarchical outline structure” where model proposal outlines are displayed. A model outline is provided with the tool or users may develop their own outlines using the tool.

Users drag and drop content from the right screen to the left using a series of steps. Completing the steps builds the outline from its initial model form to a complete outline to start the proposal writing process. The outline building process is intuitive and users will learn the features of the tool by building outlines.

Outlines displayed in the left screen are shown in a hierarchical structure. The sections of the structure or “outline” may be moved by clicking, holding, and dragging the section to a new location in the outline. This allows the user to build a work task/subtask hierarchy in the technical chapter of the outline by dragging and dropping text from the RFP Work Statement. And users can drag and drop content from any file using right to left screen operations.

The tool works well with two monitors with the left and right screens shown on separate screens. Or a wide screen format is ideal for product deployment. Users may also minimize either screen by clicking the Minimize Screen button.