Effectively building a large virtual proposal writing team located across continents is among the major challenges in the bid and proposal world. Imagine a multi-million dollar bid in which the prime contractor in America, with contributing authors located in the different time zones of Minnesota, Chicago, Washington and California, is teaming with a company in Hyderabad, India that’s providing vital technical expertise. The project’s IT provider resides in Bangalore and also the customer is within India. Additionally, the United States company has offices in Germany and also the UK: from both these time zones authors are submitting technical contributions and submitting queries. It is actually a nightmare – however with strong management and effective IT planning, it needn’t be.
Far reaching pow-wow with senior management and techies in the IT department is important: Critical to success. Risk assessment and risk mitigation are the most important discussion points. Where you can base the primary bid activity? What could fail? What’s the worst that may happen? How and also at what times during the day to speak with the team members across the world? What package to make use of for collecting contributions as well as for document management?
Probably the most popular package with this kind of project is Microsoft’s SharePoint® which supplies global internet access to some secure shared site for uploading drafts and managing documents. It really works perfectly if fully installed with all functions working effectively.
The most crucial function for virtual teams is establishing permissions to ensure that authorised contributors can check documents out, modify them and check them back in for others to determine and proposal review. It ought to be impossible for 2 or even more authors to be working separately on a single document simultaneously. Should this happen you might find yourself in the Ganges with no paddle, and also have to backtrack a significant method to disentangle the confusion.
The bid manager will have to be on his/her toes to ensure the different contributors get access to relevant areas of SharePoint® in which all of the latest versions of documents are updated regularly. (Not surprisingly in the new Web 2.0 world many companies are advancing products in the field of cooperative working. Improving the efficiency of teams where multiple people are working on or reviewing single documents. An Australian start-up company Codoxware Pte has interesting innovative technologies for supporting multi-user real-time collaboration across the Internet. Take a look at CodoxWord HERE).
Secondly, you’ll have the process of organising regular teleconferencing or other meeting arrangements when most associates can be found. Regarding the US-India example, the primary bid activity was located in India, with a single time zone. Therefore the daily telecon was arranged for mid-evening in India, which may permit the UK and Germany to dial in (getting towards close of business there) and also the US to link in too: American Eastern Standard Time (winter) is 11.5 hours behind, so at the start of the company day in America. It worked very well permitting the truth that the contingent in India was often yawning and ready for bed. The Bid Manager, however, stayed focussed and was able to fulfill the requirement for inclusion and control in the US.
The other technical hurdles might you come up against? The monsoon was just starting in India and power cuts were brief but frequent (sometimes six or seven each day). Power cuts might be just like frequent in India when it’s not the monsoon season. Probably the most disastrous technical hitch happened though when a surprise power cut in Minnesota brought down the servers in the American company headquarters. It even prevented graphic designers, who had decided to work overnight on exciting new graphics, from entering their building using electronic access system.
The requirement for support systems is apparent, but it’s always amazing what workarounds a committed bid team will dredge up! A lot for many from the technical joys and sorrows of the cross-continent bid effort – the cultural facets of building a virtual team stretching from California to Bangalore deserves articles of their own.
Share your experiences of proposal writing with virtual teams by commenting below.
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