Proposal & Other Reviews

Proposal assessment is the process whereby a team of informed and objective participants performs a constructively critical review of a partially or fully developed proposal prior to its submission. CAI/SISCo is very experienced at conducting and/or participating in such reviews.

Among many other things, a proposal must be RFP-compliant. It must also provide the customer with a clear rationale for awarding the job to your team. It should exhibit a clear concept of operations and be believable and doable, too. Past performance and "best value" issues should be specifically addressed, not left to the reviewer's imagination.

CAI/SISCo always seeks to ensure that strategies, win themes and discriminators have been meaningfully implemented. These key thematic elements should be woven into the proposal as it emerges.

For major capture activities, CAI/SISCo recommends an incremental review process for storyboards, then Pink Team, then Red Team. Review findings are cogently communicated to the development team in a timely manner for incorporation into the next review copy or the submission.

CAI/SISCo assesses technical and management requirements compliance, provides award point earnings estimates, defines strengths and weaknesses, and provides a competitive threat assessment. Our proprietary product, The Evaluator™, is used to develop technical and management award point scoring tables for reviewed proposals. This mechanism shows the proposal team:

how the proposal earns evaluation award points;
how an enhanced proposal could earn evaluation award points; and
where to best apply resources when time and other constraints exist.

At the conclusion of the review period, CAI/SISCo stages a formal presentation to apprise the capture and proposal teams of findings.

Independent Review Teams: Most often, CAI/SISCo is hired to feed information to a capture team. There may be greater value, however, in using our services to provide management and the capture team another hand against which to clap. Our experience with particular government customers, specific opportunity environments, and/or competitive players often enables us to effectively and positively challenge assumptions, solution approaches and ideas, with a view to improving understanding and optimizing solutions and strategies.

CAI/SISCo fosters such working relationships by implementing our Independent Review Team (IRT) process. The IRT process melds a client's energies, management and capture talents with our own, forming a partnership focused on the real business at hand: winning the opportunity. The IRT's role in the partnership provides analysis and inputs that, under the aegis of management, validate or challenge assumptions at critical capture milestones, such as:

team development;
solution approach or solution development;
bid/no-bid decision;
pricing strategy development;
sales strategy development; and
proposal assessment.

At each review point, the IRT presents its view of key bid elements to the Bid Team, and the Bid Team reciprocates. Normally, these analyses are prepared for the Bid Team, not management. The IRT differs from the Bid Team in 2 major respects:

the IRT does not have to develop a team or write a proposal response; yet
the IRT must develop and support independent views (based on what the marketplace offers and what the key competitors are likely to be doing) of each "bid element" in advance of each "review" point.

The Bid Team and the IRT work to resolve their differences in views, approaches, interpretations, etc. and to develop consensus. The consensus view, and failures to agree, are resolved by management. The IRT approach seeks to focus the Bid Team on answering key questions at each capture milestone, such as: