During the 15 years I have been associated with OCI, customers have called on me to assist in “fixing” their proposal process many times. The setting is always similar. The company has been losing important proposal competitions. Therefore they need help to iron out problems with their proposal process and start winning more contracts. This typically requires analysis of past proposals, fact gathering from cognizant personnel, preparation of recommendations, submission of a fix plan in conference, training, and documentation.
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2011 Highlights and Board Meeting
OCI shareholders held their annual board meeting on Thursday, January 19, in Reston, Virginia. OCI is an employee-owned company. Following below are highlights from the meeting.
During 2011, OCI had a strong and profitable financial year. OCI greatly strengthened its customer service capability. The company’s ability to serve customers in the southeastern United States was enhanced with the opening of a regional office in Orlando, Florida. Under the leadership of Sales VP Mike Summers, OCI has been able to focus their expansion in the states of Florida, Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas.
A Current Look at the Proposal Market
Now that all Federal appropriations have been passed by Congress and signed by the president, proposal personnel can breathe a sign of relief. Last year business was slow because the gridlock in congress slowed the appropriations process down so much. We expect that this year will resemble 2010, when business was good, healthy and strong.
The Proposal Market in 2012
During the six-month fight over the federal appropriations, it has been obvious that uncertainty reigns supreme in the federal spending that drives the proposal business. As recently as 10 days ago, only 3 of the 12 major appropriations bills were signed. And most agencies were working under a Continuing Resolution (CR) providing temporary funding.
Volume of Proposal Activity in the Fall
We are optimistic that the volume of solicitation releases / proposal activity in the fall will be higher than usual. Due to the latest ever passage of final appropriations in 2011, there was not enough time remaining to process all the procurements needing to be processed prior to end of the fiscal year. Therefore, many of these procurements were pushed into the October to December first fiscal quarter 2012 timeframe
As a result of having FY 2011 business pushed into the fall, we estimate that the proposal services market will be 12 – 15% faster than usual during the fall quarter. This estimate is supported by the virtually unanimous expectation among seasoned proposal professionals and industry analysts that volume of solicitation releases will be up significantly in the fall. However, to keep things in perspective one must remember that proposal activity is traditionally slow in the fall quarter, and that there is often only 40 – 50% as much proposal activity in the fall months as there is during some of the fast months such as May and June.
How to Select an Orals Coach
The requirement to give oral proposal presentations has been important for decades, but the nature of oral proposals fundamentally changed with simplification in contracting during the mid 1990s. Two important results of the changes in orals were as follows:
- Proposal orals that had been free form became highly structured, usually having specific requirements as to length, graphics, content, and who would serve as presenters.
- Orals became much more important in determining the winner, sometimes even accounting for 40 – 60% of the total evaluation point score.
Recruiting and Selling Key Personnel in Service-Contract Proposals
Recruiting and selling key personnel are critical factors in preparing winning proposals. Despite its importance, it is easy for even experienced proposal managers to let key personnel efforts get overshadowed by other issues.
Even if your team does stay focused on selecting the right people, effectively selling these key people throughout the proposal often remains a major challenge. As a result, while key personnel should always be one of the contributing factors to a win, it can cause an otherwise winning proposal to lose.
Proposal Departments: Whether to Use Permanent Staff or Consultants
When considering the development of a proposal, every company faces the same question: Do we use our in-house, permanent staff or do we outsource the proposal by using consultants? This question is especially important to government contractors, because a large and expensive effort is usually required to prepare winning proposals. The issue is how to best invest Bid & Proposal (B&P) dollars.
Hints on Preparing Past Performance Sections
Especially after early 21st century reform in contracting, past performance has become the section that often decides who wins or loses the contract. The hundreds of proposals we have worked during the past three years have usually assigned 30 - 40% of the total evaluation score to past performance. Past performance can assume an even more important position in the proposal, however, because Source Selection committees are going to award contract only to vendors with strong past performance.
OCI Supporting Innovative AIDS Research Program
OCI is assisting Macha Hospital in Zambia in a search for funds to carry out a highly innovative AIDS research project. This project is a game-changing experiment designed to demonstrate a way to eliminate AIDS over time. This experiment is significant because present approaches to AIDS treatment do not have the capability to end the epidemic.
The experiment will focus on the approximately 130,000 people living within 30 kilometers of Macha Hospital. The researchers will do the following:
- Conduct an education and training campaign to obtain buy-in from the community
- Test the entire population for AIDs
- Provide drugs to all who test positive
- Provide drugs to the spouse or partner of those who test positive to prevent them from contracting AIDs
A recent mathematical study suggests that this approach could reduce the incidence of the disease by 95% in 10 years and eradicate it within 30 – 40 years. To see this in perspective, one must realize the pieces of the present approach do not end the epidemic, and there is not a drug cure on the horizon.
Macha Hospital is a well managed and well run 210-bed facility about 100 miles west of Livingston, site of the spectacular Victoria Falls. Funds are being sought primarily from federal and private grant sources.
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Categories
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Editing (2)
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Graphics (4)
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Marketing (8)
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Key Personnel (3)
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Red Team (5)
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Proposal Writing (19)
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Resume Preparation (2)
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Proposal Coordination (3)
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Writing Past Performance (3)
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Orals Coaching (18)
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Proposal Protests (5)
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Proposal Management (25)
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Miscellaneous (12)
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Earned Value Management (1)
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Competition Analysis (8)
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Risk Management (1)
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Capture Management (19)
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Proposal Evaluation (1)
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Government Procurement (7)
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Proposal Group Management (11)
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Contract Management (9)
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Business Development (8)
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Virtual Proposal Preparation (1)
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Unsolicited Proposals (1)
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Performance Based Service Contracts (PBSC) (3)
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Grants (1)
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Executive Summary (1)
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First Time Proposals (2)
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Training/Education (2)
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