Bids & Proposals Use Case

Today, the bid and proposal process looks something like this:

Kristin, the team lead in a professional consulting firm, creates a draft proposal for a new client and e-mails that proposal to her supervisor Blake for input. Blake makes changes, saves the document on his hard drive and then e-mails it back to Kristin who makes his edits and saves the new document on her hard drive as ‘near final.’

Next, Kristin e-mails this version of the proposal to Robert in accounting who checks the numbers against the company’s billing guidelines and makes the necessary changes, saves his edits to his hard drive and then e-mails his copy back to Kristin. Kristin makes Robert’s changes and saves the document as ‘near final 2’ and then e-mails the document to Tamara, the firm’s internal legal counsel, to review the terms and conditions. Tamara makes her changes, saves the version of the document on her hard drive and e-mails it back to Kristin. Kristin then saves this document as ‘final’ and e-mails it to Blake, Robert and Tamara, indicating in her e-mail that they should, "use this version and replace all prior versions."

Kristin then sends the final document off to the client for review and approval. The client decides to make a few revisions based on his understanding of the engagement, saves the file on his desktop and e-mails it back to Kristin, who makes changes to the document one last time and then e-mails the 'final client-approved' version to the internal team as well as the client with a second request to replace any other prior versions of the proposal. This process results in too many different versions of the proposal (which may or may not ever get deleted), increases the risk for errors and multiplies the chances that the client will receive an outdated or inaccurate proposal.

With NextPage 2, the bid and proposal process looks like this:

Kristin completes her draft proposal and e-mails the document to Blake. Blake makes edits to the document and sends it back. Kristin is notified when Blake starts working on the document and when the new version arrives. Kristin merges Blake’s version and sends out the newer version this time to Robert and Tamara. They see the composite document in addition to Kristin and Blake. Both Robert and Kristin make their edits and e-mail their documents back, and the document is immediately viewable by the rest of the team.

Kristin merges their edits together and e-mails the final document to the client, who doesn’t subscribe to NextPage. The client makes comments, and e-mails the document back to Kristin. When she gets the document in e-mail with the client input, NextPage 2 automatically tracks it as another version, just like the prior versions created inside the firm. Kristin does a quick merge and e-mails the document, so everyone on the internal team has the latest version on their desktops. Finally, Kristin e-mails the final version to the client for his files. And when she looks at the Version History™ of the document, she knows that her client has a copy of the latest version.

In addition, everyone who has received a version of the document in e-mail has received the Document Signature™, which includes basic version information. Each recipient can click on a link to perform a Version Check™, which provides real-time version information about each document version.

With NextPage 2, no one questions whether they have the latest version. No one saves numerous ‘drafts’ of the document on a hard drive along the way. No one has to remember to delete incorrect or prior versions. No one struggles through e-mail attachments to find a version of a document. Everything stays within reach directly from each user’s desktop, and the client gets an accurate proposal every time.