Facts tell, but stories sell.
The storyline is often lost in the scramble to churn out a steady stream of competitive proposals. Winning proposals tell a persuasive story. They engage our imagination, connect with our experiences and arouse our emotions.
“One of the biggest issues in preparing an effective proposal is convincing engineers that proposals are marketing documents built around a consistent storyline, not technical briefs,” says Jeannie Shackleford, SMA Associate with 30 years engineering and proposal management experience.
Organizing and tracking all the information and technical documents can be quite a challenge, let alone turning all that information into a compelling storyline. The old method is to post documents on an actual wall to create the foundation for the storyline. Team members and reviewers can “walk the wall” and comment on each other’s work and quickly identify gaps or inconsistencies.
But in today’s 21st century virtual environment, it is no longer practical for companies to collocate teams in program war rooms and proposal centers. Shared folders and collaboration software help but offer only partial solutions. But how do they ‘walk the wall,’ see the latest version of the entire project and build a consistent story?
Enter the SMA’s latest innovation, the No File Found with id - 657 !
SMA’s Virtual Wall recaptures that lost productivity in today’s virtual business environment. It is a web-based application that helps teams recapture the benefits of colocation. It allows distributed team members to easily and quickly view all the documents, zoom in to a particular page, add sticky-note comments, or highlight a range of text and add a comment. Users post documents by dragging and dropping files to the Wall. They receive notifications when another team member adds a comment to one of their documents, and they can easily respond to comments via the Wall.
Ms. Shackleford is one of early adopters of SMA’s Virtual Wall. “I wish I would have had this tool when I ran proposals at Lockheed Martin. It ensures that the baseline is set and that everyone remains on the same page. The “Wall of Truth” is always current and always available.”
Ms. Shackleford credits SMA’s Virtual Wall with helping her team to reach conclusions much more quickly than ever before. “The Virtual Wall allowed team members to play off each other in real time, greatly reducing rework.”
Learn more about the SMA Virtual Wall No File Found with id - 657 !
SMA Virtual Wall.
Log in to the SMA Virtual Wall here
To request a demo of the SMA Virtual Wall, please contact us at info@smawins.com, or call us at +1 (949) 975-1550 Ext 2
