Question

Topic: Other

Suggested Proposal/rfp Respone Software Tools

Posted by jmcnary on 4/16/2009 at 4:21 PM ET 250 Points
My professional services firm produces many proposals every year, but do not have a very good centralized proposal database. We use a typical file/document server and Word Templates stored on those servers to manage our current proposal load. Then we save finished proposals off as PDFs, etc. to project specific folder structures, etc.

Anyway, I am looking around for legitimate and well tested proposal software tools. I do not want a "automagic" tool that somehow creates perfect proposals with little work. I see there are many on the web and many look to be downright scams to me. Instead, the tool needs to help manage our proposals, but also be sensitive to and able to deal with company/salesman specific needs and customizations.

What I want is a powerful software tool to help us better pull data for new, share data between each other for, help manage creation of new, and store old proposals and RFP responses.

Who out in MarketingProfs land has suggestions for me? Remember, I want legitimate and well tested solutions --- more or less the "Salesforce" of the proposal software world. Which/where is it?

Thanks!
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted on 4/16/2009 at 5:52 PM Accepted
    A few years ago I wrote a book on management consulting (Rasputin For Hire), and one of the chapters is about proposal writing. I even include a detailed sample proposal in the appendix (pp 175-185).

    At that time I looked for the kind of software you're now asking about, and it didn't exist. Of course it's possible that (1) it DID exist but I missed it, or (2) someone has created it since my search. My hope then was that there would be a good way to file/catalog old proposals and eventually analyze what worked and what didn't.

    Alas, there may not be anything on the market that does what you want. I'll be following this discussion closely to see if anyone comes up with a great solution/suggestion.

    Good question!
  • Posted by jmcnary on 4/17/2009 at 4:33 PM Author
    Hello Mr. Goodman, I think we have met at some of the MarketingProfs conferences and/or webinars.

    Thanks for your response, but it is not very encouraging regarding my question! That is not your fault, but it seems this type of proposal management tool would exist. Prehaps proposals are all so project/client dependent people have found they just need to be "done by hand" each time?

    This type of response is often what my sales/staff people say when I talk about trying to create a consistent, branded, and collaborative system for our proposal response (such as I was inquiring about via software). I'm all for customization, but also find consistency, branding, and accuracy important!

    Anyone else have any thoughts or ideas?
  • Posted by jmcnary on 4/23/2009 at 10:14 AM Author
    It appears there is limited options for this type of software or tools! Hopefully we'll come across such tools in the future...
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(Other)