Part III – Staffing for the Proposal
For some reason I have never been able to define, many companies think they need a gaggle of people to solve any problem or to write any section. They use everyone available, but many for only part time work. They assign people based on availability, and not on qualifications. They use “subject matter experts”, but many of these people do not write or otherwise contribute to the proposal, they just tell other people (assigned authors) what is important or what they should be writing about, with no regard to the solicitation, or clear rationale as to why, beyond a broad statement that they were there, they have xx years of experience, etc. Some companies fall into the trap that a former contract employee is a SME with all sorts of (secret) operational details to share with the authors. However, the sales lead should already have all of this information (it should be in the Capture Plan) and it should be distributed to the authors in the proposal kick-off package. Make no mistake, SMEs are sometimes critical to understanding a technical issue and should be made available at all times to the assigned authors, but only as the authors need their advice, not sitting in the same room day after day, charging to the proposal. SMEs should also be capable of writing any section within their area of expertise. What is the Right Number of Proposal Staff?
The simple answer is not too many, but not too few. While this seems to oversimplify the answer, the most optimum approach is always to use a “core team” made up of the most qualified individuals you can find, using to a high degree consultants with a history of working together. The benefit to using a core team is that they keep lessons learned, communicate far more quickly and effectively, and can produce more work with less effort than lesser qualified personnel, especially those internal to the company with other daily duties to perform. I have made a fairly decent living over the years coming in behind a failed proposal team effort to rework the proposal from top to bottom (and doubling their original proposal B&P estimate), however, if proper resources had been allocated in the first place, this would have been avoided. While working as the Director of Proposals in one large company, one of our proposals grew to over 45 people who were charging to the proposal. While after the fact it was argued that many of them charged only small amounts of time, it all adds up. When proposal skills are not viewed as actual unique and difficult to master trade skills, but as tasks that can be accomplished on as “other duties as assigned” basis, it almost always leads to unnecessary cost. Regardless of the solicitation being responded to, it always takes time to understand the requirement or task before responding. This time is sometimes referred to as “reading-in”, where the new author reads the solicitation requirement for familiarization. The problem stems from the fact that once he becomes educated enough to actually become productive, he is often replaced with another person who then follows the same cycle, thus effectively doubling cost for that duplicated period of time and effort. Another area of cost creep is the issue that was previously discussed above regarding who is actually in charge of the proposal and its resources, On one proposal I witnessed, tasks that the Proposal Manager thought were being accomplished by one or another author were in fact also being done by someone else (reassigned by the Capture Manager) working outside of the proposal team. This added to the cost significantly, as now two people were charging for the same work, even though one was writing material that was never used in the proposal, as the assigned author was working in concert with the team, and thus had the most integrated response. This takes us into our next discussion, labor utilization. Labor Utilization / Cost of Overhead
This is an area where some companies simply add (perceived) cost to the proposal through policy. This is not to say it is wrong, just that one needs to understand the difference if we are to make fair comparisons. It is a “perceived” cost only in the regard that it is a difference in accounting principles only. I'll elaborate below. As an example, lets say that company A’s policy dictates that all personnel charge to the proposal even when performing the most perfunctory of administrative support tasks. this adds to the cost of the proposal, by including time that would otherwise be overhead, thus giving the perception that their proposals cost "more". Company B however, has all of the same costs, but their policy causes them to account for them in a manner that gives them the impression that they do it for less. By charging their time directly to overhead and not a distinct proposal, the Sales Lead, Department Manager, Production staff, legal, Contracts Manager, and all administrative support is charged to normal every-day overhead - recovered through their General and Administrative (G&A) rate, and so does not appear in the proposal cost rollup. The Outsourcing of Entire Proposals
This is has been simply a great way to ensure the absolute maximum proposal cost possible. Period. Still, Outsourcing entire proposals, from time-to-time, may be the only way to produce a proposal. Sometimes the company is at their maximum capability when an opportunity presents itself, and the only way to respond is to outsource the effort to a qualified company that can provide additional capability on short notice. If this is the case, it needs to be controlled and executed on a FFP basis, with quality levels and deliverables well defined, your company management deeply involved at all times, and should include penalties for failures set at multiple milestones. I also recommend a Schedule of Deductions (SOD) approach to managing subcontracted proposals. I have seen more than one company outsource proposals only to place the proposal in the trash once received. How RFP Requirements and Approach Affect Cost
Each proposal approach needs to respond to the specific requirements of the solicitation, and not just use what we conveniently have on hand. This means that we cannot simply submit our operating plan, execution plan or use almost any other ready-made documents, but must carefully craft an answer to specific (most times complex) questions being asked as outlined in the proposal instructions. An exception to this is preparing Standard Form 330 responses for A&E work, or proposals for contracts that are single function in nature such as a grounds maintenance, pest control, or Job Order Contracts. The RFP itself sometimes contains unique requirements leading to higher cost. Is it an oral, or “Spoken” proposal effort? Severely page limited? Highly graphical response required? Generally speaking, the more oral considerations a response has, the higher it’s cost. This is because not only do you need to prepare a written document, you now need to prepare additional presentation material and coach a team of key personnel, many of whom probably will incur living and travel expenses during preparation, and so costs almost double. Accountability for Controlling Costs
We finally come to the last point…just exactly who is accountable for the B&P anyway? This should not one person, but a responsibility shared by the people involved in the lifecycle. The department manager is accountable for the entire B&P budget that has been allocated to the targets within the various Account Plans and Capture Plans. The Sales Lead/Capture Manager and the Proposal Manager must estimate their portion of the process for the expected timeframe required, to arrive at reasonable estimate of the entire effort. Each must then be accountable to manage their individual effort to that number and to report variances as soon as possible to avoid going to the end of the cycle and learn the effort was two or three times higher than anticipated, robbing B&P dollars from other targets in the pipeline (it happens more often than one might think). Segregating costs is also crucial to managing the B&P Pursuit and Proposal budgets. To develop a budget for pursuing a target, and then not report on the results, or hide the costs in another accounting structure is a path leading to an accounting nightmare at best, and a painful, if not punitive government audit at worst.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 James Movich
http://www.azmo.org
http://businessdevelopment.co
For some reason I have never been able to define, many companies think they need a gaggle of people to solve any problem or to write any section. They use everyone available, but many for only part time work. They assign people based on availability, and not on qualifications. They use “subject matter experts”, but many of these people do not write or otherwise contribute to the proposal, they just tell other people (assigned authors) what is important or what they should be writing about, with no regard to the solicitation, or clear rationale as to why, beyond a broad statement that they were there, they have xx years of experience, etc. Some companies fall into the trap that a former contract employee is a SME with all sorts of (secret) operational details to share with the authors. However, the sales lead should already have all of this information (it should be in the Capture Plan) and it should be distributed to the authors in the proposal kick-off package. Make no mistake, SMEs are sometimes critical to understanding a technical issue and should be made available at all times to the assigned authors, but only as the authors need their advice, not sitting in the same room day after day, charging to the proposal. SMEs should also be capable of writing any section within their area of expertise. What is the Right Number of Proposal Staff?
The simple answer is not too many, but not too few. While this seems to oversimplify the answer, the most optimum approach is always to use a “core team” made up of the most qualified individuals you can find, using to a high degree consultants with a history of working together. The benefit to using a core team is that they keep lessons learned, communicate far more quickly and effectively, and can produce more work with less effort than lesser qualified personnel, especially those internal to the company with other daily duties to perform. I have made a fairly decent living over the years coming in behind a failed proposal team effort to rework the proposal from top to bottom (and doubling their original proposal B&P estimate), however, if proper resources had been allocated in the first place, this would have been avoided. While working as the Director of Proposals in one large company, one of our proposals grew to over 45 people who were charging to the proposal. While after the fact it was argued that many of them charged only small amounts of time, it all adds up. When proposal skills are not viewed as actual unique and difficult to master trade skills, but as tasks that can be accomplished on as “other duties as assigned” basis, it almost always leads to unnecessary cost. Regardless of the solicitation being responded to, it always takes time to understand the requirement or task before responding. This time is sometimes referred to as “reading-in”, where the new author reads the solicitation requirement for familiarization. The problem stems from the fact that once he becomes educated enough to actually become productive, he is often replaced with another person who then follows the same cycle, thus effectively doubling cost for that duplicated period of time and effort. Another area of cost creep is the issue that was previously discussed above regarding who is actually in charge of the proposal and its resources, On one proposal I witnessed, tasks that the Proposal Manager thought were being accomplished by one or another author were in fact also being done by someone else (reassigned by the Capture Manager) working outside of the proposal team. This added to the cost significantly, as now two people were charging for the same work, even though one was writing material that was never used in the proposal, as the assigned author was working in concert with the team, and thus had the most integrated response. This takes us into our next discussion, labor utilization. Labor Utilization / Cost of Overhead
This is an area where some companies simply add (perceived) cost to the proposal through policy. This is not to say it is wrong, just that one needs to understand the difference if we are to make fair comparisons. It is a “perceived” cost only in the regard that it is a difference in accounting principles only. I'll elaborate below. As an example, lets say that company A’s policy dictates that all personnel charge to the proposal even when performing the most perfunctory of administrative support tasks. this adds to the cost of the proposal, by including time that would otherwise be overhead, thus giving the perception that their proposals cost "more". Company B however, has all of the same costs, but their policy causes them to account for them in a manner that gives them the impression that they do it for less. By charging their time directly to overhead and not a distinct proposal, the Sales Lead, Department Manager, Production staff, legal, Contracts Manager, and all administrative support is charged to normal every-day overhead - recovered through their General and Administrative (G&A) rate, and so does not appear in the proposal cost rollup. The Outsourcing of Entire Proposals
This is has been simply a great way to ensure the absolute maximum proposal cost possible. Period. Still, Outsourcing entire proposals, from time-to-time, may be the only way to produce a proposal. Sometimes the company is at their maximum capability when an opportunity presents itself, and the only way to respond is to outsource the effort to a qualified company that can provide additional capability on short notice. If this is the case, it needs to be controlled and executed on a FFP basis, with quality levels and deliverables well defined, your company management deeply involved at all times, and should include penalties for failures set at multiple milestones. I also recommend a Schedule of Deductions (SOD) approach to managing subcontracted proposals. I have seen more than one company outsource proposals only to place the proposal in the trash once received. How RFP Requirements and Approach Affect Cost
Each proposal approach needs to respond to the specific requirements of the solicitation, and not just use what we conveniently have on hand. This means that we cannot simply submit our operating plan, execution plan or use almost any other ready-made documents, but must carefully craft an answer to specific (most times complex) questions being asked as outlined in the proposal instructions. An exception to this is preparing Standard Form 330 responses for A&E work, or proposals for contracts that are single function in nature such as a grounds maintenance, pest control, or Job Order Contracts. The RFP itself sometimes contains unique requirements leading to higher cost. Is it an oral, or “Spoken” proposal effort? Severely page limited? Highly graphical response required? Generally speaking, the more oral considerations a response has, the higher it’s cost. This is because not only do you need to prepare a written document, you now need to prepare additional presentation material and coach a team of key personnel, many of whom probably will incur living and travel expenses during preparation, and so costs almost double. Accountability for Controlling Costs
We finally come to the last point…just exactly who is accountable for the B&P anyway? This should not one person, but a responsibility shared by the people involved in the lifecycle. The department manager is accountable for the entire B&P budget that has been allocated to the targets within the various Account Plans and Capture Plans. The Sales Lead/Capture Manager and the Proposal Manager must estimate their portion of the process for the expected timeframe required, to arrive at reasonable estimate of the entire effort. Each must then be accountable to manage their individual effort to that number and to report variances as soon as possible to avoid going to the end of the cycle and learn the effort was two or three times higher than anticipated, robbing B&P dollars from other targets in the pipeline (it happens more often than one might think). Segregating costs is also crucial to managing the B&P Pursuit and Proposal budgets. To develop a budget for pursuing a target, and then not report on the results, or hide the costs in another accounting structure is a path leading to an accounting nightmare at best, and a painful, if not punitive government audit at worst.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 James Movich
http://www.azmo.org
http://businessdevelopment.co
