What an Expertise Inventory is and Why You Need One for your Next Project
Anyone who has been tasked with putting together an engineering proposal knows it can be a frustrating experience. Time is of the essence; you want to put your best foot forward and yet – where do you start?
Do you know which colleagues are the right fit for the job? Where are they located? Are they available for this project? And if they aren’t – who else can do the work?
That’s why you need an Expertise Inventory. An Expertise Inventory is a readily accessible, constantly evolving list of what your colleagues do, where they are located, what their availability is, their areas of expertise and their level in each. An Expertise Management system can truly overhaul the experience of putting together proposals, making it an efficient and seamless process – and you’ll know that you’ve chosen the right people to get the job done.
Proposal generation eats into the industry’s bottom line to the tune of 5% of gross revenue, and a good Expertise Inventory can reduce this by a quarter or more
Why is this a game changer?
Grow revenue: Respond to more RFP’s by cutting down the amount of time it takes to put together proposals
Increase your win rate by making sure you have the right info on hand to put your best foot forward
Reduce Costs: Expertise Inventories enable companies to have maximum visibility into their employee’s capabilities. This enables you to maximize the utilization of existing resources before hiring new people
It also reduces the time and effort of actually putting together proposals, saving costs and resources. Proposal generation eats into the industry’s bottom line to the tune of 5% of gross revenue, and a good Expertise Inventory can reduce this by a quarter or more
Quickly solve Issues: Quickly and easily locate your experts to get help resolving issues that come up
Increase Quality: Leverage the whole team’s experience to produce the best quality deliverable for clients
Client Satisfaction: When cost and quality benefits combine, you know you are putting your best food forward to provide your clients the best experience and protect your company’s reputation
The old (ineffective) way
Our team has decades of experience in the mining, construction and engineering industries. We’ve been there – struggling to get a proposal in before the deadline, calling around to other offices desperately trying to find out who the expert in a particular niche skill is. It’s frustrating and it’s time intensive and you still don’t know if you have the most capable person for the job.
Most organizations struggle with this. They use one-off spreadsheets that aren’t kept up to date or intranet sites that allow users to self-identify as experts once but then never get checked again. LMS or training systems can be one dimensional and databases tend to be difficult to search through or analyze.
Most common? Informal networks within a company that rely on a few key employees who know the organization well and can suggest the right people for the job. This is risky though, because people change jobs or retire and the information leaves with the employee. It also doesn’t allow for maximum visibility due to turnover, new hires, acquisitions, and the continuous growth of employees within an organization. This situation is exacerbated by the current Covid 19 pandemic, where many employees have been forced to work remotely. Organizations continue to hire, fire and develop and there is no way individuals or even groups of individuals can stay on top of this continuous evolution.
Don’t make it so hard on yourself
A holistic Expertise Management platform works behind the scenes to provide the information you need when you need it. The platform scans resumes, aggregates data from projects and proposals, and pulls information from the content that employees share. From this information, the platform will auto-generate an expertise inventory in real-time so it is never out of date. The platform maintains this information by tapping into the workflow within the company, through projects, lessons learned meetings and other content.
Never waste time calling around again, wondering who is in the other offices or who is available for a certain project. With an Expertise Management platform, you’ll have all this information on hand so you can be sure you are putting together that winning proposal.
Have you struggled putting together proposals or maintaining visibility into your workforce? Connect with us at totaliQ to get a free demo for your organization.