The request for proposal (RFP) process often requires collecting answers from multiple subject matter experts to produce a complete deliverable to the prospect—and in my experience, this project planning can get messy, fast, turning your seemingly normal day into a Freddy Kruger nightmare you can’t wake from.
Tracking who owns what, making sure you deliver the RFP by the fixed deadline, and collaborating with technical and product experts while relying solely on email might make you want to scream like Jamie Lee Curtis in the movie Halloween. In addition, tracking project tasks like this can result in outdated information and valuable time spent on a bunch of busy work.
Luckily you can wake up from the bad dream. Before implementing Projectplace, I had to go through the gruesome tasks of manually tracking status from emails sent and received by everyone involved.
ProjectPlace makes the process much smoother and allows us to see work in progress. Information pertaining to a certain RFP response is now in one location—no more digging through emails for the most recent status update or document version.
I set up a ProjectPlace workspace to manage global requests. Within the workspace, I can create and assign tasks to subject matter experts and key contributors. Tasks can easily be tracked throughout the entire process, resulting in improved collaboration and communication—no matter where contributors are in the world. As a result, the team has a focus on what needs to be done and when. RFPs are delivered in a timely fashion which helps us contribute to the sales process and the company’s bottom line—growth and customer satisfaction.
For me, the most useful feature of ProjectPlace is the Kanban board and cards. The Kanban boards allow everyone to visualize status, quickly see progress, and identify bottle necks so they can be resolved and work can continue. The cards allow the team to start conversations, ask questions, and request feedback; plus, there is a history. If someone new comes to the conversation, they can read the history and have a better understanding of the current state of the project. This is useful for asking questions or giving reminders to individual team members. All of this has resulted in easy and timely collaboration. For both myself and the team, being able to track both tasks assigned to you and due dates on your homepage is valuable for prioritizing work and creating accountability.
At first, adopting a new project collaboration software may seem like it will be time consuming or difficult to implement (a nightmare on its own); however, from personal experience, ProjectPlace is a very user-friendly system, and adoption was simple for our diverse, global group. Simply spending a day getting to know the interface and creating projects is enough to get started. Once you get used to the solution, making a project and inviting those who need to participate only takes minutes. For my team it improves RFP Management efficiency, saves hours of busy work, and allows everyone to remain informed and organized so we deliver RFPs on time.
To learn more about Projectplace, I invite you to register for the webcast titled The Terrors of Miscommunication. The webcast will feature how poor communication negatively affects work execution and provides ways to improve communication, collaboration, and task management to get work done.
For more information on how ProjectPlace can benefit each department in your organization, check out the following use-case blogs, covering: Public Relations, Human Resources, Blog Management, Cross-Department Communication, Demand Generation Marketing, Event Management, Digital Marketing, Customer Renewals, RFP Project Planning, Sales Team Collaboration, Customer Experience, Solutions Marketing, and Sales Project Management.
Content Contributor: Trey Carlson
