5 ways Bids and Proposals teams can benefit from Ideagen Huddle

Stacey Lewis Date published: Dec 15, 22

Requests for proposals (RFPs) are challenging to respond to. Your proposal can take hours to complete. In addition, you must get approval from a wide range of people, including external stakeholders outside of your organisation. Typically, successful bids depend on the intelligence gleaned from subject matter experts (SMEs).

What are some of the usual challenges of bid management?

The key to producing successful bids is how quickly, seamlessly, and securely you can collaborate with a global network of independent firms, their employees, and their clients. As simple as that can be, it is often not the case for many firms, notably in the accounting and advisory industry.

Baker Tilly International, one of the world's leading networks of accountancy and business advisory firms, faced that challenge.

“Many of the firms across the network were using their own individual platforms to share content, such as SharePoint, Box or Thomson Reuters’ NetClient CS portal technology. This reliance on a patchwork of different systems and processes led to potential delays and re-working. For example, a firm leading a tender or assignment would use their portal with all other parties involved.

It not only took time for teams to learn these new systems, there were also barriers to sharing the content across the independent member firms’ firewalls.”- Ria Aird, Business Development Co-ordinator, Baker Tilly International.

Matt Stone, a Manager at RSM Canada’s Capital Markets and M&A Advisory division faced a similar problem.

“Our client engagements routinely involve gathering, sharing, and collaborating on highly sensitive documents. Before selecting Huddle, we had a number of in-house tools that were overly complex, expensive and did not provide the quality of client experience we were looking for. Often, we would resort to sending and requesting documents in zip files via email. Sharing information securely without clogging up the client’s and our own team’s inboxes was an ongoing challenge.”

Some of the common complaints about bid managers includes:

• They’re constantly firing out emails
• Asking the same questions over and over
• Disparate communication
• No client background given to the SME
• Not enough time to provide a solution
• No feedback given

5 ways Bids and Proposals teams can benefit from Huddle

Now here comes the good stuff. Fortunately, we live in a digital age where there are tools that can simplify the process, with Huddle being at the forefront. By eliminating frustration and optimising collaboration, it creates the winning formula.

"There’s no doubt that Huddle has helped us to improve the quality and efficiency of our end-to-end bid and sales process." - Adecco Group Sales & Bid Director, Neil McLachlan.

In order to help your business better prepare for bids and proposals, we’ve highlighted 5 key ways your team can benefit from Huddle:

• You can improve communication and build better relationships with SMEs
• You’ll have full visibility and control of the proposal workflow
• It will enable your team to build and maintain a single source of truth for all proposal knowledge
• Your team will prevent time being lost on duplicate work
• Huddle will ensure your data is protected with robust, government-grade security

“Including Huddle in our tenders has been an influencing factor on several global deals,”- Ria Aird

Have you been thinking about transforming your workplace?

It’s time to create your single source of truth

Learn more on how Huddle’s cloud-based bespoke client portals with government-grade security, could benefit your team.

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