In order to keep your company sustainable, opportunities need the same level of management as projects you have won. BQE CORE includes features that make staying on top of opportunities easy and effective, so you can get the projects you want.
A project is a scope of work you have contracted to do. In contrast, an opportunity is a scope of work or project you want to do. Managing an opportunity involves timely communications and providing the right information in your proposal.
Often the information you need is found in past projects. The information contained in CORE includes time and expenses, job cost, prior budgets, and profitability. With it, you can deliver not only a quality proposal, but also one that you are confident will generate the desired profit.
Tracking Opportunities in CORE Pursuit
If you have CORE Pursuit, you track opportunities on the Opportunities screen:
- Card view: Shows your opportunities in a column for each stage. Each column shows how many opportunities are in that stage, with their total Opportunity Value and Weighted Value. Drag a card to another column to change its stage.
- Overview tab: Open an opportunity to see the client and primary contact, the team, pursuit costs, to-dos, notes, and recent activity on one screen. You can change the stage, probability, opportunity value, priority, and key dates on this tab, and CORE calculates the Weighted Value for you.
- Pursuit Project: Record the time and expenses your team spends pursuing the work on a CORE project linked to the opportunity before it is won. CORE sets it up with the Marketing contract type, so its time and expenses are non-billable by default.
- Execution Project: When you win the opportunity, create the active billable project for the work. You can fold the Pursuit Project into it as a phase, so the cost of winning the work counts toward the project’s profitability.
If you already track opportunities as projects, as described below, you can link an existing project to an opportunity as its Pursuit Project from the opportunity’s Settings > Related tab. Its time and expenses then show on the Overview tab. Check CORE Help Center for details.
Tracking Opportunities
CORE’s Projects screen is the main area for tracking opportunities if you do not have the CORE Pursuit subscription. Key project information you will use includes:
- Group
- Notes
- Marketing contract type
- Contract amount
- Status
- To-Dos
- Documents (attachments)
- Budgets
- Estimates
Depending on the nature of the opportunity, you can also use resource allocation, submittals, RFIs, and drawings.
To get started, create a project group called Opportunities. As you create project records for opportunities, assign them to this Opportunities group. You can filter reports for opportunities by narrowing them down to this group.
Similarly, create a note category called Opportunities. As you add notes from communications and other items that come up, assign the note to the Opportunities category. You will have a complete history of issues, conversations, and so on for the opportunity.
In the new project record, select the Marketing contract type. This tells CORE that the contract is non-billable. To save time with future opportunities, save it as a project template.
As you conduct research, talk with the prospective client (lead or prospect), run calculations, and perform other tasks, you will charge the hours and expenses to the opportunity. The value you invest might be factored into the proposal. The costs will also be available in the future when you bid on similar projects. Another reason to track time and expenses for an opportunity is to report on how much time you spent working on the business, not just in the business.
The Contract Amount is your bid total. After you complete the proposal, enter the value in this field. This adds to your business intelligence when you compare it to costs and other values.
Status is also very important. While working on the opportunity, set its project status to Active. When you win the project, change it to Completed. If you lose the opportunity, change its status to Cancelled. Along with group, you can filter cost and other information by status. You can see won and lost opportunities as well as costs, profits, and so on.
Most proposals have a due date. In fact, you have a due date for each task that needs to be done for the proposal. Use To-Dos to track each step in the process of developing the proposal. The tasks can be assigned to yourself and to staff (even outside vendors). On your dashboard (and everyone else’s dashboards), add the To-Dos widget. Everyone can stay on top of the work necessary for the proposal. You can also email a to-do to whomever it is assigned.
For more complex opportunities, use Task Allocation to schedule tasks and time frames for completing the work. In fact, many CORE users who use Task Allocation for all their projects also use it for a single-source schedule of all work to be done in the company. You can view schedules by project and by employee. Vendors can be included if needed. Like to-dos, allocated tasks can be emailed to whoever is assigned the task.
Many situations include documents, drawings, and other materials needed to complete a proposal. Attach these documents to the project/opportunity record. Everyone can review the files when needed. Also, analyzing the attached items after losing a project might provide insights on how to win a similar project in the future.
As you and your staff work on the proposal, keep notes about issues, conflicting information, conversations and emails with the client, and anything else associated with the work. It is also helpful to add memos to time and expenses. Like other information captured while working on a proposal, notes and memos provide greater insight when reviewing won and lost opportunities in the future.
Finally, when the preparation work is complete, create an estimate for the proposal. In CORE, you can create an estimate for services and expenses from scratch... or convert a budget from another project into an estimate. When bidding on similar projects, pulling the budget and comparing to actual hours and expenses provides insights for improving the proposal. It also saves a lot of time. With more time, you can bid on more projects.
After completing your estimate, use one of CORE’s estimate reports and export it to Word or Excel. Drop the estimate into your proposal template, and you are ready for final review.
Bottom Line: Effective management of opportunities is as important as managing projects. Having costs and other information available for won and lost opportunities provides deeper business intelligence for developing market strategies and improving company operations.