RFP Writers and Managers

RFP writers and managers respond to Response for Proposals (RFPs), Due Diligence Questionnaires (DDQS), tenders, and other document requests to help their win company deals. They may also respond to general requests for information for their team. It is important that they stay organized, balance their workload between themselves and their SMEs, and create and customize responses quickly and efficiently.

Some organizations have RFP Managers who lead a team of writers, oversee all proposals, manage collaboration and communicate on progress with key stakeholders.

Note: This topic focuses on working with RFPs in projects. For more information on working with RFPs in created documents, see the Created documents topic or review the differences between the two in the Projects and documents topic.

Best practices for creating and managing RFP responses

The user who creates a project is by default, the project owner. As a project owner, you are responsible for managing the project workflow and collaboration, tracking participant progress, and building the package. You may want to assign an additional owner if you would like someone else to be able to manage the project with you or in your absence. Qvidian users who have the Manage Projects Created by Other Users application permission will be able to perform all functions available to owners, regardless of whether or not they are assigned to the project.

The keys to a successful project are:

Project workflow

Establishing an efficient project workflow can help you get your RFP, proposal, or DDQ out the door faster. Based on the document type you use to create your package and the size of your team, you may have different workflows. The suggested project workflows below are a starting point to help you find the workflow that works best for you. You may want to switch a task or two to customize it to your needs.

Suggested project workflows

  1. Create the project.
  2. Prepare your RFP, proposal, DDQ, or other questionnaire and upload it to the project.
  3. Upload participant information in the Instructions and Related Files subsection.
  4. Add project participants. If you use the same group of users, you can save the list of users and their roles in the Manage Participants dialog.
  5. Assign the questions in the questionnaire.
  6. Do one of the following:
  7. Track the progress and manage the project. There are a variety of ways you can manage your project, including:
  8. Work on the unassigned subsections. files, and questions.
  9. (Optional) If you have reviewers who must review and approve the finished project, create an overview assignment.
  10. Build the package.
  1. Create the project.
  2. Prepare your RFP, proposal, DDQ, or other questionnaire and upload it to the project.
  3. Work through the questionnaire by doing the following:
    1. Run AutoFill first as a first pass to eliminate easily answered questions.
    2. After you've run AutoFill, answer the remaining questions in the Word or Excel questionnaire using other options.
  4. Upload a file to the File List section. If you would like to assign this section to another user who can upload the file, see task 7.
  5. Add project participants.If you use the same group of users, you can save the list of users and their roles in the Manage Participants dialog.
  6. Assign the questions in the questionnaire.
  7. Assign the file list section or assign a file.
  8. Track the progress and manage the project. There are a variety of ways you can manage your project, including:
  9. Work on the unassigned subsections. files, and questions.
  10. (Optional) If you have reviewers who must review and approve the finished project, create an overview assignment.
  11. Build the package.
  1. Create the project.
  2. Prepare your RFP, proposal, DDQ or other questionnaire and upload it to the project.
  3. Work through the questionnaire by doing the following:
    1. Run AutoFill first as a first pass to eliminate easily answered questions.
    2. After you've run AutoFill, answer the remaining questions in the Word or Excel questionnaire using other options.
  4. Upload a file to the File List section.
  5. Work on the unassigned subsections. files, and questions.
  6. (Optional) If you have reviewers who must review and approve the finished project, add project participants and then create an overview assignment. If you use the same group of users, you can save the list of users and their roles in the Manage Participants dialog.
  7. Build the package.

Formatting your questionnaire

Formatting your questionnaire before you load it to the RFP subsection will ensure your styles are consistent with the rest of the project and that you don't have any unnecessary spaces. For example, remove extra paragraph markers and column breaks in a Word document. If you would like to take advantage of the Word Track Changes feature, turn it on below you upload. For more best practices on uploading questionnaires, see Projects: Preparing an RFP for Upload.

Maintaining styles

If you maintain styles as you go, you will not need to go though the project right before you build or update the Word files in the package after it's built. This will save you at the end of the process which is often the busiest.

As a best practice, the content in your library should be formatted. As you add answers to your questionnaire, verify the style matches the questionnaire. When you edit an answer, use the Edit in Microsoft Word or Edit in Office Online options to preserve the formatting. Opening a questionnaire slice or table cell in the Edit Inline dialog box will dissociate the text from its Word styles. For more on formatting styles, see Using Microsoft templates with your Upland Qvidian content.

Using AutoFill on your questionnaire

AutoFill is a search tool that retrieves, and optionally inserts, RFP answers by matching the text in questions to a content record's properties or content. You can use AutoFill as a first pass before assigning questions to eliminate easily answered questions that you already have answers for, such as the company's address or the number of people it employs. When you run AutoFill, you can select search parameters, such as folders and keywords, for your search. We recommend running AutoFill in groups, rather than on the whole questionnaire at once, so you can select the parameters to get the best results for each set of questions.

Communicate with comments

You can lose visibility when participants send comments on a project via emails. By using the comments feature, you can keep all conversations on the project in one place. Project participants can post comments on individual assignments or the project as a whole. All participants can post and view project level comments, but only those included in an assignment can post, reply to, or view comments for that assignment. Comment indicators appear to the left of the first slice in any assignment with assignment comments.

Tracking progress

Keeping on top of your project's progress can help prevent assignments from getting backed up and ensure you meet your deadline.

You can quickly see the progress of the project and individual assignments on the project dashboard. The assignment status bars indicate which task in the workflow the assignment is in and shows the status of the assignment. The project status bar shows the progress of the project by indicating the percentage of assignments in each status. You can also export project information on activity or assignments into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to create a report. The information in the report varies depending on the report type and may include assigned slice titles, due dates, when participants have accessed the project, the participant currently working on an assignment, and actions such as sending a slice to a contributor or assigning a slice.

Show Custom Fields

Most projects include content that has merge codes which are placeholders for text, data, or an image. Your document type architect may include a Data Entry screen where you can enter information for some of these merge codes. However, there may be unexpected merge codes in the added content, such as a file list file or RFP answer. To ensure you catch every merge code, you can select Show All Custom Fields when building your package. Then, the Customization tab will list any merge code in the content that is either not included in the data entry screen or has been left blank. Any fields that were populated by any participant in a previous build of this package will also display. If you select Hide Empty Custom Fields, then you will not see any indication of where the merge code was in the package documents.

We recommend that you use Show All Custom Fields the first time you build the package, so that you can view all the merge codes. Then after you have entered data for all the merge codes you wish to populate, build again and select Hide Empty Custom Fields to remove any remaining merge codes that are no longer needed, such an additional address line.

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