This is the fifth of six articles in a series. This article focuses on assessment of your capture health for Phase 4 - Proposal Development. As appropriate, please revisit the April, May, June, and July articles to ensure you have the proper context for this article.

The first article provided an overview of a five-phase capture process and a summary of a capture health assessment tool I refer to as the Capture Report Card. The other five articles in the series focus on the key objectives and assessment guidelines for one of the five major phases, respectively.

As a refresher, the Capture Report Card 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. The assessment is a self-evaluation by the capture lead(s) of what is being done or has been accomplished for each element compared to what should be active or completed at the time of the assessment. 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. This series of articles provides assessment guidelines for each element, for each phase. While the guidelines I summarize are designed for a large, competitive bid, they can and should be tailored to fit any company's process and/or to fit any competitive business capture activity.

The remainder of this article provides an overview Phase 4 (Develop a Compliant and Discriminating Proposal) of our 5-phase capture process (shown below) followed by a discussion of the Report Card assessment guidelines for this phase.

Phase 4 Overview

The end of Phase 3 is determined by the release of a final RFP. You are now on the clock with a deadline for submitting the final proposal as prescribed in the RFP. Generally within the ensuing two or three days after final RFP release, your team will review the RFP for any surprises and make a formal Bid / No-Bid decision based on your status and chances for success. Assuming you continue, you shift to proposal development (Phase 4).

At this point, you will rely on a coordinated team effort with concurrent activities to ensure efficient, effective proposal development. Generally, this phase is relatively short, typically 30 days for a major proposal or shorter for task order proposals. Every activity is planned to meet the delivery day and time and the Proposal Manager will become the dominant leader with responsibility for day-to-day activities for development of a compliant, compelling, professional proposal. The Program Manager remains a key player to help ensure that what is proposed can be delivered. The Capture Manager should retain overall management authority and accountability and typically leads development of the final pricing and contracts elements.

The planning and preparation accomplished during the preceding phases will pay significant dividends at this point - enabling the proposal development team to move out quickly and focus on final development and delivery of a high-quality proposal that is responsive to customer requirements and objectives. As soon as possible after a Bid decision is confirmed (often the same day), a Kickoff meeting should be held with the entire proposal team (or as many as possible) to review the proposal outline (as developed by the Proposal Manager based on RFP instructions), schedules, assignments, and general rules applicable to this proposal development (BOE templates, writing guidance, etc.). Typically, the proposal is subject to independent reviews during this phase in the form of color reviews. Your company may have slight variations in terminology for these. Common definitions and timing for these are as follows:

Storyboard (or Blue Team) Review - A review of high-level plans for major sections of the proposal where lead authors demonstrate to management that they have a plan to address customer requirements, properly highlight our solution / strengths, and apply applicable win strategies and discriminators. This generally occurs within the first week after final RFP release. Note: This review may well have been completed during phase 3 if there was a mature draft RFP. If so, you need only ensure that the final RFP remains consistent with all storyboards developed during that phase - or make adjustments as needed.

Pink Team Review - A review of the initial (rough) draft of the proposal sections. Focus is on content, not on page count and formatting. This provides a valuable opportunity to identify any mid-course corrections and ensure the proposal is on track. This review should normally be held at least one week prior to the Red Team Review.

Red Team Review - A review of a mature, near-final proposal. This is ideally evaluated in the same way you expect the customer team to conduct their evaluation, with scoring that allows you to determine any strengths and weaknesses so you can make final corrections and improvements before delivery. This should ideally be held two weeks prior to the due date, and no later than one week before. In cases where there is major re-work required, a second, smaller Red Team should be scheduled.

Green Team Review - A review of all contract, pricing, and business case elements of the bid. This review should validate that you have achieved your PTW objectives while meeting all internal requirements for ROI, profitability, etc., with acceptable risk levels.

White Glove Review - A review of the completed, printed proposal. Generally, this is not focused on content. Rather, it is used to confirm that the proposal has a professional appearance and is fully compliant with all the delivery instructions for format and page count.

This phase completes with formal approval for proposal submittal and subsequent delivery of your proposal to the customer.

The table that follows provides a summary of the key inputs and outputs associated with this phase.

Report Card Assessment

The Report Card should be maintained during this phase. Any issues noted in the Report Card during the Bid / No-Bid review (beginning of the phase) should get immediate, focused attention. You should update the Report Card near the end of this phase for formal review as part of the Red Team and Green Team reviews, and particularly at the final management review that provides formal approval to submit the proposal.

To help ensure your assessment is as objective as possible, the table below defines assessment guidelines for each of the 10 elements for this phase. All ten elements are applicable for Phase 4 as you will see below.

As discussed in the initial article in this series, the timing of the assessment during this or subsequent phases may vary based on the importance or complexity of the opportunity, the amount of time spent in this phase, and other factors. Please refer to this initial (April) article for a broader discussion of assessment timing considerations.

As stated earlier, you will want to customize these guidelines to fit your company's process and to fit the specific opportunity. However, take caution not to dismiss guidelines simply because you have no information or plan in place.

The Report Card assessment calls for scoring each of the applicable elements. Article 1 provides a more detailed discussion of the assessment approach and scoring. This score for each element is a color rating based on a numerical score that you assign as follows:

0 = Not Applicable, Blank (this is the default score for Element 9 and 10 for this phase)
1-59 = Red
60-84 = Yellow
85-95 = Green
96-100 = Blue

In simple terms, review each guideline for each element and make an objective assessment of where you stand. If you feel you are on track or have adequate information, scores should generally be positive. If you have little or no information for an item, this should have a negative influence on the element rating. The scores, if performed objectively based on facts and data available (not the unfounded optimism or gut feeling of the team), will provide a fairly clear picture of the overall health of your capture and will highlight where the team needs to focus moving forward.

Throughout the Report Card assessment process, Senior Managers should avoid a 'kill the messenger' syndrome. Let the facts speak for themselves and use the data to correct weaknesses so that subsequent assessments will hopefully be more favorable. Ultimately, this is designed to help you improve your win probability by covering all the bases and doing the hard work that is critical to a successful capture. Alternately, you may find that your chances of success are not sufficiently favorable and you should abandon the pursuit - saving money and resources that can be allocated to pursuits with a better chance for success.

As scores are agreed for each element after appropriate discussion across the leadership team, then enter the score on the Report Card sheet (refer to article 1). This becomes a permanent record of your status 'at that point in time'. As you perform multiple assessments, you will see visual trends (neutral, positive, or negative) that may be useful in prioritizing tasks and assessing the effectiveness of your process.