This is the first in a six-part series on the Capture Process Report Card – a tool and approach for a conducting a disciplined and objective assessment of the health of your capture over the full capture life-cycle.
Any business must constantly grow to survive. Achieving growth and earnings objectives with limited new business acquisition resources requires that you identify opportunities that fit your strategic objectives, are real, are winnable, and are profitable. Once identified, you must apply a disciplined process to qualify the opportunity, position your company as the best choice for the customer, and develop a compelling and compliant proposal. Even after proposal submittal, you must reinforce your offer and respond to any customer concerns or questions. If you are ultimately successful, you must be ready to perform what you proposed on day one of your new (or renewed) contract.
The timeline from identification of an opportunity to submission of a proposal typically spans several months, often years. It is critical that you have a mechanism that will guide your efforts. You also want to measure the status and effectiveness of your efforts across the full life cycle of the capture. You need to know what should be done at each phase of the capture and have the facts and data to make an objective assessment of your progress in each area.
A disciplined capture and assessment process will provide focus and structure as the capture team will clearly understand what needs to be done and when – and they will operate with the understanding that assessment data will be available to and reviewed by senior management. You will know what is going well and what is not. This allows the team to understand where they need help so they can focus resources on areas that need attention. A timely and comprehensive assessment may ultimately lead a business to conclude much earlier than otherwise that the chances for success are not high enough to warrant continued investment – allowing the reallocation of resources to opportunities that have a better chance for success.
This 6-part newsletter series discuss both a capture and assessment process or approach. The Capture Process we discuss is a common model that distributes the capture and proposal activities across five phases as shown in the figure. Each phase include activities and actions that are appropriate for that point in the capture lifecycle.
This five-phase capture process is fundamentally common across industry.
The assessment tool we present here is called the Capture Report Card. This is a tool that supports objective, timely, and comprehensive assessment of the health or status of a competitive business capture over the entire 5-phase life cycle. It provides for an assessment of ten (10) elements as shown below. Everything associated with a competitive capture, from identification to award, is covered in one (and only one) of these 10 elements:
1. Opportunity Status / Past Performance
2. Customer Knowledge and Relationships
3. Win Strategy
4. Capture / Proposal Resources
5. Solution / Teaming
6. Competitor Assessment
7. Price-to-Win
8. Financial / Contract
9. Proposal Development
10. Program Readiness
For each phase, each of the 10 Report Card elements includes a variety of items or actions (referred to as assessment guidelines) associated with a competitive capture, showing what should be done during that phase. Assessment guidelines are provided for each element, for each phase. While the guidelines I summarize in this series of articles are designed for a large, competitive bid, they can be tailored to fit any company’s process and/or to fit any competitive business capture activity.
For each of the next five months, this newsletter will feature an article that covers each of the five phases, showing how to define assessment guidelines for that phase, for each of the ten elements. This article will provide an overview of the Report Card tool and how it might be applied.
Report Card Tool and Assessment Approach
Using the Capture Report Card does not call for assembling large independent review teams. It is designed as a self-assessment tool that is scored by the capture leads (Capture Manager and other key capture and proposal team leads). The Report Card serves as an effective means of communicating the overall health or status of the capture / proposal at the time of the assessment. Use of the Report Card and the timing of Report Card assessments can vary depending on the value and/or importance of the opportunity.
It is worth noting that the most companies have decision milestones or gate reviews at various points, usually aligned to the capture phases as shown in the earlier capture process graphic. The Report Card is not a replacement for these reviews and these reviews are not a replacement for the Report Card. These gate reviews alone are often not held with enough frequency to provide the timely status information needed and they are often structured to focus on a limited set of data related to the capture. The Report Card assessment should be a part of these gate reviews (and will improve their effectiveness) but the Report Card assessments will likely need to be made with a higher frequently than these gate reviews.
The Report Card is generally designed for large, competitive opportunities where your company is bidding as the prime. Most companies have an extensive pipeline in terms of the number of opportunities being tracked. Typically, the top 10% of these (those with the highest order value) will represent 90% or more of the total value of the pipeline. Accordingly, you may want to draw a line such that opportunities above a certain value will require more rigorous use of the Report Card tool and the others can use the Report Card on a less frequent or voluntary basis. However, you may want to require use of the Report Card for opportunities that fall below the line if they are otherwise strategically important – opportunities that serve as a critical foundation or stepping stone for future, larger opportunities.
Once you decide to use the tool for a designated set of opportunities, the frequency of Report Card assessments may also vary based on the opportunity. Generally, opportunities with very high value or significant strategic importance should schedule assessments on a monthly basis throughout the life of the capture. For other opportunities, a quarterly assessment may suffice through the initial two phases (Identification and Qualification), converting to monthly assessments once you enter Phase 3 (Pursuit / Positioning).
For example, the following is a hypothetical but realistic scenario for medium or large companies that routinely pursue high-value opportunities (in excess of $50 million):
Opportunities below $5M – Report Card not required unless designated by management. However, teams can use it voluntarily and are encouraged to comply with the principals defined even if the tool is not used for formal reporting.
Opportunities in the $5M - $9M range – Update Report Card for each gate review - include in the gate review presentation package (Gate reviews represent a review conducted at the end of Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3, Phase 3 being the Bid / No-Bid Review)
Opportunities in the $10M - $49M range – Update at least quarterly through Phase 2 and move to monthly reporting in Phase 3.
$50M or Greater or opportunities designated as having high strategic value – Update Report Card monthly throughout the capture and proposal life-cycle.
In its simplest form, the Report Card tool is a Microsoft Excel file with multiple tabs as summarized below:
Tab 1 – Opportunity Summary Sheet. Provides general information on the opportunity such as name, value, key dates, opportunity attributes, and other information. This is easily customized to capture the information that is desired by your company.
Tab 2 – Summary Score Sheet. See figure below. Provides a single column for each assessment – with scoring for each of the 10 elements. The sheet is designed to show up to 12 assessments on one page. Numeric scores (from 0 to 100) are entered for each element for each assessment as applicable. Conditional formatting in Excel automatically colors the cell based on the number entered. As multiple assessments are made, the color trends across a single element become visually apparent as illustrated in the figure.
Tabs 3 – 14 (Named Assmt 1 thru Assmt 12) – Summary Comments Sheet. Scoring is entered on Tab 2. This scoring, and the scoring for preceding assessment, is automatically repeated on the applicable assessment tab. These individual review tabs provide space for summary level comments to help explain the scores – helpful to reviewers who may be reviewing this data without benefit of a briefer to explain scores. It is recommended you add comments for any Red or Blue scores and to explain any significant changes in the scores from one assessment to the next.
The Tab 1 Opportunity Summary Sheet and Tab 3-14 Comment Sheets are not covered further in this article. The remainder of this article focuses on the Summary Score Sheet.
Scoring for each element is expressed as a number from 1 to 100 based on how well the team is performing to the applicable element guidelines. Colors are assigned to ranges of numbers as shown below:
0 = Not Applicable, Blank
1-59 = Red
60-84 = Yellow
85-95 = Green
96-100 = Blue
The range of numbers is used to allow the person making the assessment to qualify where they stand within a specific color range. For example, a score in the low 60s and low 80s both yield a yellow color status, but the score in the low 60s represents an assessment that is weaker and almost Red whereas a low 80s score represents an assessment that may be nearly Green. This numerical information also provides the opportunity for calculating win probability if companies wish to develop element weighting and formulas for that purpose. As shown in the figure below, this sheet supports up to 12 separate assessments, numbered 1 through 12. For each assessment, the date is entered at the top of the column and the numeric value is entered for each of the 10 elements as appropriate.
As you will find in the detailed assessment guidelines (to be presented in future articles), not all 10 elements are applicable for every phase of capture. For example, there is nothing to evaluate in the Proposal Development and Program Readiness elements for Phase 1. Accordingly, the element assessment guidelines show that the element is ‘Not Applicable’. A blank or number 0 is used when one of the 10 elements is not applicable for the specific assessment being made. This results in a ‘blank’ color status as noted above.
Every capture is different and each will present unique challenges and opportunities. The assessment guidelines have been designed for large, competitive opportunities, but they can be tailored to fit any business capture. Some assessment guidelines will not be applicable to a particular opportunity and should not influence the score. There is no specific formula for determining if the status of an element should be Blue, Green, Yellow, or Red. The reviewer is asked to objectively assess the status of their capture effort against the guidelines that represent what should be done or known at that point in time in the capture. There should be more accomplishment or maturity if the capture is near the end of the phase versus the beginning or middle of the phase – so this needs to be factored into the scores. If the team is on track to accomplish all applicable criteria by the end of the phase, scores should generally be positive.
While one lead may assess an element as a high yellow and another reviewer might assess the same element as a low green, the real value of the Report Card is derived from developing a clear understanding of what is going well and what needs to be addressed or improved to increase your win probability – based on objective analysis of the capture effort against the assessment guidelines. As the Report Card is presented to management (or reviewed separately by management), the Report Card allows the reviewer to focus on the areas that need attention. Too often, review sessions are time-limited and the briefer covers countless charts in detail just because they are in the review package. This can limit the time needed to properly focus on the areas that deserve attention and discussion. There is no need to spend 10 or 15 minutes briefing an area that is going well. However, capture leads need to be ready to defend their good scores with facts, data, or other objective information should management challenge the assessment – as they should routinely do.
Once an assessment is complete, the scoring for that assessment should be considered final (no further changes should be made to the scoring for that assessment). The new assessment that follows will be made using the next assessment column to the right. As multiple scores are entered over the life of the capture, a historical record of the capture status is revealed. This can highlight trends (positive or negative) for each of the 10 elements and provides valuable input to your post-award lessons learned analysis as you work to learn from your successes and failures.
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Completed Sample Summary Score Sheet - The Report Card not only provides current status information, but provides history to support lessons learned and trend analysis.
In summary, A Capture Process and corresponding health assessment process provide the following three significant benefits:
1. Provides a roadmap to capture teams regarding what should be done or known over the capture / proposal life cycle, allowing them to use this a planning tool for future activities and as a tool to objectively assess capture health / status
2. Having objective status information allows management to make informed decisions regarding continued pursuit of new business and allows early identification of issues so that proper attention and resources can be applied as needed maximize your win probability
3. It provides an effective historical record that can be used to support lessons learned and continuous improvement in your business development processes
