Knowhow Consulting Case Study

Building the Pegasus Proposal Management System - Award Winning Innovation

Paperwork is the bane of a salesperson's life. But good proposals win business. To resolve this dilemma, BOC Gases played to their strengths, saved £3½ million and won a Business Innovation Award into the bargain.

Writing new proposals means more time in front of the computer and less time out selling. The challenge is to decrease the time spent preparing proposals whilst simultaneously improving their quality, focus and presentation. The solution: get your best and most successful people to compile an encyclopaedia of proposal content and deliver it to your sales staff in a computer system that automates the proposal production process. However, building a system, which encapsulates the rules and logic for generating winning proposals, presents some tough technical challenges, so KnowHow staff designed and implemented a solution based on off-the-shelf software components.

The solution consists of two parts:

1. a centralised document management system that holds the 'master' versions of the professionally authored text/graphics and generates CD-ROMs for distribution, and
2. a desktop application used by sales staff to generate proposals.

Automated Proposal Generation

Now, creating new winning proposals could not be easier. Sales staff simply answer a series of questions about the customer and the challenges they face, select the products and services they wish to promote and choose the features and benefits most pertinent to their customer. Depending on the products selected, additional screens prompt for technical data, which is duly validated. The output is a professionally formatted 20-25 page proposal in which the sales messages are entirely focussed on the needs of the customer. The resulting Word document is complete with pricing and ROI tables, a table of contents and properly paginated with custom header/footer text. To ensure consistency of sales messages, the system also prepares a matching PowerPoint presentation, which highlights the salient features and benefits.

Instant Translation

With its global presence, BOC needs to remove the inevitable barriers imposed by language. For example, areas of Canada mandate all proposals are furnished in English and French. Thus KnowHow designed the system so sales staff can generate a French (or other) language version of the proposal that matches the English version in every particular. In addition, the main user interface can be presented in the sales person's native language.

Rules-Based Presentation

With BOC's sales staff being spread over a geographically dispersed area, updating laptop software is fraught with logistical problems. This presented us with an interesting technical challenge: how to design a solution, which could implement new proposal generation rules without, needing to install new software. "Our approach involved designing the proposal generation software so the screen sequence and screen population logic could be remotely configured by a set of business rules distributed on CD-ROM alongside the text and graphics" explains Tony Foy, Managing Director of Knowhow Consulting and designer on the project, "This avoids software updates and provides BOC with the flexibility to support multiple proposal formats encompassing a wide range of products and services".

Capturing Rules and Logic

The central document management system not only holds all the professionally authored text/graphics but also holds the rules and business logic by which proposals are generated. The system allows BOC staff to define proposals and their structure, group text into topic areas and to define rules by which text is created and managed by the system. The sequence of screens presented to the sales person during proposal generation is also held in the central system, making it easy to alter the software's behaviour. Custom editors simplify content creation and ensure integrity, and special import filters allow text to be authored off-site using Word.

Knowledge Enabled

Key to the success of the system is enrichment of the core knowledge base through constant positive feedback. This is achieved through several mechanisms. Firstly, the author of every piece of text is identified so sales staff can feedback their comments. Secondly, all proposals can be captured and stored in the central system and the win/loss ratio calculated. Since the system records exactly what text was used in each proposal, 'winning' and 'losing' text can be identified for future attention. Finally, detail of which markets are getting the most attention and which products and services are being featured in each region can be analysed by sales managers