APPLYING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE & KNOWEDGE MANAGEMENT
TECHNIQUES TOWARDS BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Presentation for the 2015 National 8(a) Summer Conference
Paul Johnson, President/CEO
Highliner Consulting Group, LLC
Hi

WHAT IS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE?
Wikipedia
Business intelligence (BI) is the set of techniques and tools for the transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes.
BI enables contractors to:
• Analyze project profitability, utilization, work-in-progress, AR aging, and business development effectiveness
• Analyze firm-wide data and drill down by organization, department, project phase, project manager or task
• Perform a “what if” analysis to determine potential revenue, profit and cash flow impact from changes in orders, job profit, or general conditions
• Simplify project planning and pricing analysis
• Leverage investments in existing resources and infrastructure by integrating data from existing sources
• Identify profitable partners and vendors to improve collaborative business processes

WHAT ARE THE COMMON TOOLS USED IN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE?
• ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS
• Provide project cost accounting data reports, financials, budgets and benchmarking
• ESTIMATING SYSTEMS
• Allow to draw from pricing data bases such as RS Means, assemblies and track pricing from vendors and vendor performance
• PROJECT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
• Allow to develop project schedules, WBS, and project resource planning and project performance
• BIDDING OPPORTUNITY SITES
• Identify solicitations based on industry (NAICS), identify competition, client/customer data and information
• INTERNAL PLANNING SOFTWARE
• Business planning and strategic planning

WHAT IS KN OWLEDGE MANGEMENT?
Wikipedia
Knowledge Management (KM) is the process of capturing, developing, sharing and effectively using organizational knowledge.
KM allows contractors to:
• Create, secure, capture, coordinate, combine, retrieve and distribute knowledge
• Reuse and share knowledge amongst all project stakeholders to improve processes, identify areas of efficiency and cost savings
• Reduce the time and costs to solve problems
• Preserve knowledge and lessons learned of both implicit and tacit knowledge as the property of the company
Explicit vs. Tacit Knowledge
• Explicit knowledge can be expressed in words and numbers and is easily conveyed
• Tacit knowledge is hard to formalize and convey, typically a “watch and learn” event

KEY KM COMPONENTS USED FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Contact Management Systems:
• Customer Resource Management (CRM)
• Contact Capture (Business Card Scanning applications)
Business Intelligence Services:
• Dynamic Search Engines – subscription and free services
• B2G/B2B Conferences & Networking
• Paid & public industry data and sources
Capture Management Systems:
• Pipeline Management systems
• Collaborative Workspaces
• Proposal development systems
Collateral Management Systems:
• Statement of Qualifications (SOQ)/Line cards
• Proposals and previous responses
• Resumes (individual & corporate)

HOW CAN A SMALL EMERGING CONTRACTOR APPLY BOTH BI AND KM?
First Things First: Take inventory of your current technologies and techniques
• How are you capturing contact information of buyers, clients, vendors and partners?
• Does your email system allow you to sort and apply rules to email contacts?
• How are you preparing estimates? Do you use an estimating program or spreadsheets?
• How are you identifying opportunities? Word of mouth, free list serves or paid subscription services?
• What is your go-no-go strategy? How do you decide which opportunities to pursue?
• How are you putting proposals and bids together? Do you bid similar types of work where you can reuse previous materials? Do you keep resumes of key employees current?
• When you submit, do you track success/failure rates? Do you perform “lessons learned” after bid/proposal submittals or project completions?

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CYCLE
“The Golden Opportunity”
Contact
Mgmt.
Collateral
Mgmt.
Opportunity
Business
Intel
Capture
Mgmt.

COMBINING HUMAN INTELLIGENCE WITH KM & BI
SCENARIO: Tracking Future Opportunity with the U.S. Navy in Guatemala
Face-to-Face Matchmaking Meeting at a Conference
• Met Mrs. Shawn Smith U.S. Navy Small Business Liaison at the National 8(a)
Conference in Orlando, FL
• Contact provided her business card as well as information regarding projected budget and spending
• Contact provided pre-forecast as well as historical spending in our NAICS code
• I followed-up with email and Statement of Qualifications (SOQ)
• Scheduled follow-up email and/or phone call in email calendar
• Identified future conferences contact we both will attend
• Scanned contact business card into our Contact Management System (CRM)
Business Intelligence Tool
• Entered opportunity title and solicitation number to track into our paid business intelligence subscription service for federal contract opportunities
• Researched other “interested vendors”
• Reached out to past teaming partners and key vendors to inform or confirm knowledge of future opportunity

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CYCLE
Contact Capture & Management
Contact
Mgmt.
Collateral
Mgmt.
Opportunity
Business
Intel
Capture
Mgmt.

KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL CONTACT CAPTURE & MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Contact Capture and Contact Management
• Is the solution available on multiple mobile devices and platforms?
• Ensure your CRM is compatible with your card scanning application?
• Does your card scanning application allow you to make notes?
• Does your card scanning application allow you to connect with your e-mail client?
• Does your card scanning application allow you to connect social media applications such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter?
• Does your card scanning application have an “enterprise” offering?
Popular Commercial Options for Mobile Devices
• CardMunch (LinkedIn)
• PowerContacts - ScanBizCard
• Neat
• CamCard (free)

Step 1: Contact Input - Power Contacts Snapshot from Mobile Device

Step 2: Scan Business Card with ScanBizCard

Step 3: PowerContacts Data Entry

Step 4: PowerContacts Contact Export to CRM

Alternative: Contact Management via Excel

KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL CONTACT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Utilize a Customer Resource Management System (CRM)
• Is your CRM compatible with your e-mail client?
• Do you have a central repository of corporate contacts?
• Is there a written policy regarding contact retention?
• Pros/Cons of not providing company e-mails/cell phones
• Does your IT staff or vendor have a clear understanding of your intended use, output and the basic compatibilities of the program?
Popular Commercial Options
• Salesforce
• SugarCRM
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Insightly

Step 5: Import Contact Management into CRM Application

Step 6: Contact Management –Communication Management (Email)

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CYCLE
Incorporating Business Intelligence Services
Contact
Mgmt.
Collateral
Mgmt.
Opportunity
Business
Intel
Capture
Mgmt.

Keys to a Successful Capture Management Program
Considerations
• Does your capture management strategy balance risk/reward and reflect your corporate risk tolerance?
• Have you identified your “Go/No-Go” strategies?
• Are you too reliant upon a single capture management approach or do you blend both human intelligence with business intelligence from subscriptions services?
• Have you identified a corporate strategy towards balancing your marketing strategies?
• Have you put your organization in the strongest and strategically advantageous position?
• Do you have a “lessons learned “ methodology and approach for evaluating both wins and losses?
• Does your system allow for collaborative workspaces in a corporate intranet space?
Popular Commercial Options
• GovWinIQ (Pipeline Management)
• EZGovOpps (Pipeline Management)
• Domo (Dashboards)
• Smartsheets(Dashboards)
• Klipfolio (Dashboards)

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CYCLE
Capture Management
Contact
Mgmt.
Collateral
Mgmt.
Opportunity
Business
Intel
Capture
Mgmt.

Step 7: Enter Opportunity into Business Intelligence Search Engine
Paid Subscription Service: EZGovOpps

Alternative: Enter Opportunity into Search Engine
Free Service: FEDBIZOPPS

Step 9: Import Opportunity into CRM tool

Alternative: Export Opportunity Details into Excel

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CYCLE
Managing Collateral
Contact
Mgmt.
Collateral
Mgmt.
Opportunity
Business
Intel
Capture
Mgmt.

KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL COLLATERAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Samples of Collateral
• Resumes, estimates, SOQs, past proposals, graphics, templates, bid documents, etc.
Strategic Capabilities
• Is your collateral management system dynamic? Does it allow search ability?
• Does your collateral management system have version control?
• Does your collateral management system allow for collaboration?
• Is your collateral readily available?
• Do you have an internal process to create buyer specific collateral?
• What do you consider collateral? (SOQs, proposals, resumes, graphics, etc.)
• Is your collateral management system compatible with your capture management , business intelligence and contact management systems?
Popular Commercial Options (mobile portability)
• Knowledge Tree
• Box
• DropBox
• Sharepoint

Step 10: Utilize Collaborative Workspaces to Collect Proposal/Sources
Sought information from Stakeholders (AMENDED)

Step 11: Manage the Proposal & Bidding Process – (AMENDED)

Step 12: Link Collateral Management & Contact Management
Communication via CRM System – (AMENDED)

Step 13: Collateral Management –CRM to Cloud Storage System
(Dropbox) – (AMENDED)

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CYCLE
All Systems Go!
Contact
Mgmt.
Collateral
Mgmt.
Opportunity
Business
Intel
Capture
Mgmt.

QUESTIONS – COMMENTS?
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME
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