New survey reveals content updates and cross-department collaboration as the top challenges within the proposal and RFP development process
Online, November 15, 2016 (Newswire.com) - CHELMSFORD, Mass.--Qvidian, the leading provider of cloud-based RFP and proposal automation software, today announced a significant update to its software that optimizes the end-to-end RFP and proposal process and extends collaboration beyond proposal teams to include Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The new release also includes enhanced analytical and reporting capabilities that provide insight into critical proposal management performance indicators such as average turnaround time and content freshness.
"Qvidian provides our bid team and salespeople with access to the best, most relevant content to include in RFPs and sales proposals"
According to a new survey of nearly 200 Qvidian customers, almost half (45 percent) of respondents, which include proposal team members and sales executives, reported receiving content on-time as their biggest pain point associated with colleague collaboration on proposals and RFPs. Often, compiling an RFP or proposal requires input from many different subject matter experts (SMEs) within an organization. More than half of survey respondents (52 percent) reported collaborating with anywhere from six to 100 different colleagues on a single proposal spread across departments including sales, engineering, product management, legal, marketing, operations and finance, among others.
SMEs Gain Dedicated Workspace
With Qvidian's new SME workspace, each SME is given a dedicated workspace within the software application to update content and answer RFPs and proposals more fluidly. After receiving an email notification that their expertise is required, SMEs click on a link and are redirected to their dedicated workspace - making the process to collaborate simple and efficient and increasing the likelihood that their content will be updated on-time and with current messaging.
"Qvidian provides our bid team and salespeople with access to the best, most relevant content to include in RFPs and sales proposals," said Louise Gregory, Senior Bid Manager, Ricoh UK Ltd. "Its sophisticated content management workflow capabilities have enhanced overall efficiency within our sales organization and allowed us to quickly find content to support us to write compelling responses. We are excited about the recent enhancements and look forward to realizing even more great benefits through the software."
Facilitating Global RFPs and Proposals
A key challenge for global organizations is how to best manage translated content. More than half of survey respondents that collaborate with SMEs located in countries other than the U.S. find the process to be moderately challenging, while nearly 20 percent of respondents rate it substantially or extremely challenging. To ease the burden of managing language translations in proposal content, Qvidian now enables users to work within their native language in the SME workspace, automating the translation back to the desired language as content is synced into the primary document.
Intelligent Workflow Capabilities
Qvidian's new intelligent workflow capabilities allow content managers to design and save the workflows that are most efficient for specific pieces of content. Additionally, the update allows organizations to ensure the right SME is assigned to review the content most relevant to their area of expertise and provides content managers with real-time access to review and approve updates, allowing them to better manage deadlines.
Expanded Analytics and Reporting Features Shed New Light on the Proposal Process
Because the SMEs are working directly within the application, organizations are able to capture significantly more insight into the proposal creation process, including average completion time and freshness of the content, making it easier to understand what content is actively managed, which requests are past due, where SMEs are in the response process and when deadlines are approaching. With this increased visibility, Qvidian customers can identify process bottlenecks and out-of-date content and make required improvements.
"We have turned to Qvidian to streamline our proposal content management lifecycle so that our content library is always fresh, relevant and up-to-date," said the head of proposal management at a large telecom company. "These enhancements will provide our team with the functionality they need to remain at the vanguard of developing personalized, persuasively structured, client-focused proposals and RFP responses. Additionally, the opportunity to give Subject Matter Experts direct access to the content they need to review and approve introduces a more integrated approach to managing proposal content with greater speed and efficiency."
For more survey insights, please visit the Qvidian blog.
The updated Qvidian software is available now. For more information, please visit www.qvidian.com.
About Qvidian
Qvidian, established in 2003, is a solution provider of cloud-based RPF and proposal document automation software. Qvidian enables teams to easily and efficiently access, assemble, deliver, measure and manage sales documents. Qvidian's innovative software and advisory services help organizations manage repeatable processes and workflows that enable them to deliver winning proposals. Qvidian has more than 1,100 global customers and 200,000 licensed users.
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