Capture planning is the work you do before you write a proposal. You learn the customer, size up the competition, decide whether to bid, and understand the scope of work. Propivix has two pages for this, both in the Pipeline group of the sidebar: Capture Plans and Work Breakdown.
What each page is for
Capture Plans holds one strategy document per opportunity. A capture plan records the customer, the estimated value, your team's own win probability estimate, and eight sections of notes that follow a common capture plan outline: customer profile, opportunity definition, competitive analysis, win strategy, price to win, black hat review results, action items and teaming decisions. You can start a plan before any RFP exists. When the RFP arrives, you link it to the plan, and the plan then shows the bid decision recorded on that RFP instead of keeping its own.
Work Breakdown turns a statement of work, performance work statement or RFP into a work breakdown structure. It first pulls out the document's numbered headings, then builds a numbered hierarchy of work elements from them. You mark how well your team covers each element, export the result to a spreadsheet, and can start a draft proposal with one section per work element.
The two pages are independent. A capture plan does not create a work breakdown, and a work breakdown does not attach to a capture plan.
Who can use them
Capture planning is part of the Professional plan and above. If your plan does not include it, Capture Plans does not appear in your sidebar, and opening the page directly shows a message saying the feature needs the Professional plan.
Work Breakdown appears in the sidebar for everyone in your organization. Retrying a failed work breakdown needs a role that can write proposals, and deleting one needs a role that can delete proposals, as Work Breakdown explains.
A typical flow
- Create a capture plan as soon as you hear about an opportunity, and fill in what you know about the customer and the competition.
- When the solicitation is released, upload it as an RFP and run the analysis.
- Link the RFP to the capture plan, and use Pre-fill from RFP to draft four of the plan's sections from the RFP's analysis.
- Make the bid decision on the RFP's go/no-go page. The capture plan shows that decision.
- If you are bidding, generate a work breakdown from the statement of work to see the full scope, mark your coverage, and start the proposal.
Articles in this section
- Capture plans: Create a capture plan, fill in its eight sections, link it to an RFP, and let the RFP's go/no-go carry the bid decision.
- Work Breakdown: Generate a work breakdown structure from a SOW, PWS or RFP, mark your coverage of each element, and recover from a failed generation.