6 min read

Want to Maintain a GovCon Proposal Schedule and Meet Every Deadline?

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Maintaining and managing a GovCon Proposal Schedule can be challenging! Government deadlines, Capture Manager Deadlines, Proposal Manager Deadlines, and individual team member work schedules all need to be integrated so every deadline can be met to keep the Proposal on track. 

Traditional Best Practices 

Proposal Managers need to track and manage many milestones and events during the proposal development process. The RFI, DRFP, and RFP all have due dates, which may change multiple times. 

There will likely be customer events such as Industry Day or 1-on-1 Sessions that GovCons need to track and attend. The Proposal Schedule is a complex listing of linked and often dependent deadlines. 

There are also hundreds of action items and writing assignments relevant to the Proposal Manager and Proposal Team. Since BD departments often work multiple opportunities simultaneously, the number of events, dates, and tasks they manage is further multiplied.  

It is essential that the Proposal Manager create a schedule for each proposal and keep the schedule up-to-date with the ever-changing data from the government or from other internal drivers. Manually updating a schedule almost daily for multiple events and proposals can be tedious and may introduce errors.  

OneTeam's Best Practices and Solutions 

Automatic updates of solicitation dates in accordance with data provided by the customer, is one of the ways OneTeam uses automation to reduce potential of errors. OneTeam provides an Integrated Proposal Schedule for each opportunity in a company’s pipeline. When a company links OneTeam to their GovWin account, OneTeam is updated each time GovWin updates opportunity data.  

Having a real-time online schedule reduces the need for a Proposal Manager to manually create a schedule and send to all proposal team members. Additional schedule capabilities are included in the consolidated list of milestones, events, and tasks for all opportunities in a company’s pipeline. This allows the Proposal Manager to balance resources based on tasks assigned to team members. It also allows for consideration of other proposal’s review schedule and events, when determining if Writers and Reviewers are available. 

The graphic below and the following sections provide an overview of three key features in OneTeam that support the Integrated Proposal Schedule. 

 

Number 1 Solicitation Dates Auto Populate

OneTeam auto-populates dates from the opportunity details. The Proposal Manager may manually add the dates, or they may be automatically created through an import from GovWin. Milestones from GovWin or those added manually to opportunity details will automatically populate the schedule including: RFI Release, RFI Due, DRFP Release, RFP Release, Proposal Due, Award, and Contract Start. When these dates are updated, OneTeam will automatically update the Schedule.

Schedule 1 Graphic

 

Number 2Add Custom Events & Tasks

Schedule 2 Graphic

The Proposal Manager may add proposal custom events, milestones, and reviews, such as Pink Team, Red Team, Pens Down, Industry Day, and Production days, directly in the schedule and then edit as needed.  

The Proposal Manager can also assign tasks to internal or external contacts with a due date and time. OneTeam automatically notifies the assignee of their task via email. Tasks can also be quickly added from Activity Feed, either in the Pipeline view or from within the specific opportunity. Tasks show as an item in the Activity Feed and are included in automatic pop-up notifications. 

 

Number 3Integrate with Outlook  

Events and milestones can be integrated with Microsoft Outlook - either as a separate calendar or into the user's primary calendar.  

  • Overdue tasks are shown in red in the Schedule.  

  • Completed tasks are shown in blue.  

  • A master list of all tasks across all opportunities is available at the pipeline level and may be searched, sorted, and filtered for review. 

OneTeam Benefits

  • Milestones from GovWin or manually added to opportunity details will automatically populate the Schedule including: RFI Release, RFI Due, DRFP Release, RFP Release, Proposal Due, Award, and Contract Start.

  • Add custom events such as, Industry Day, Color Team Reviews, Questions due to Government, etc. to the Schedule.

  • Integrate events and milestones with Microsoft Outlook – either as a separate calendar or into a user's primary calendar.

  • Assign tasks and actions with due dates to teaming partners or internal team.

  • Notify the assignee of task assignment via email automatically.

  • Track tasks and check-off when completed.

  • Quickly add task from Activity Feed in Pipeline view or from within an opportunity.

  • Easily view overdue tasks in red.

  • View and download a Gantt schedule.

 

This is the 3rd in a 10-part series How GovCons Easily Save Time with OneTeam Proposal Automation. This series is based on the eBook GovCons Save Time with Proposal Automation, which contains the entire series with additional bonus content. Download your free copy of the eBook.

OneTeam is a complete, secure, cloud-based collaboration platform for GovCons to track, qualify, capture, propose and win more contracts with fewer resources by streamlining and automating processes. OneTeam was designed and developed by a federal government contractor to address the lack of resources and time, as well as the pain associated with winning government contracts.

download ebook proposal automation for govcons

 

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