Karin Olson Held and Jamie Lee decided to fix the handoffs rather than add more meetings. They rebuilt BD, capture and proposals as a relay team, with VisibleThread underneath as the shared system of record. Here is what changed, and what it took to get there.
WPS's BD, Capture, and Proposal teams were working in silos, with a lack of shared understanding of priorities and "why us" story. Karin and Jamie collaborated with their team to envision the three functions as a relay team instead, with VisibleThread as the shared system of record underneath.
The Challenge
For WPS, disconnected BD, Capture, and Proposal functions weren't just inefficient. They were costing win probability before writing even started.
Working Without a Shared Picture
Business Development, Capture, and Proposal each moved independently, but without clear alignment. That made resourcing and prioritization guesswork.
No Clear "Why Us"
Opportunities that looked compliant on paper were less compelling, because the team hadn't clearly connected the customer's pain points across the handoff.
Writing Before the Solution Existed
Proposal teams were sometimes asked to start writing before the solution was finalized, introducing proposal risk while the clock was running.
From Silos to a Relay Team
An effective relay team doesn't have one member stopping before the handoff. They overlap, which maintains speed and ensures the baton isn't dropped.
Capabilities in Action
Amendment Tracking Without the Risk
WPS uses Doc Compare against solicitation manual revisions, including full federal contract manual updates, to catch every change between versions without a manual, document-by-document read-through.
Gap Analysis That Starts in Capture, Not Proposal
Capture runs Simple Shred on statements of work to do gap analysis before a bid decision is even made. Proposal then shreds the RFP itself for the compliance matrix and acronym dictionary.
A Faster First Draft, Grounded in What's Approved
Proposal reviews content against RFP requirements and drafts faster using reusable, approved content as part of bid writing.
The Impact
A week of manual work, gone
Before VisibleThread, gap analysis charts from statements of work took days of manual effort to create. Now it's a repeatable step anyone on the team can run.
Faster first drafts
Reviewing proposal content against RFP requirements and drafting from approved content gets teams to a first draft faster than starting from a blank page.
Confidence in "why us"
Understanding requirements earlier, in Capture, gives teams the clarity to build a real, differentiated story instead of a generic one.
Adoption that spread on its own
What started as one person's tool in Capture is now something Operations asks for directly. "Has Jamie done the shred yet?" is a request the proposal team gets asked, not one it has to push.
"We found out we already had this in another part of our organization, and Karin started explaining what it could do. That moment of 'you're kidding me' happened, and I got my hands on it and couldn't have been more excited."
Why VisibleThread
For years, BD and Proposal teams faced a choice between rules-based tools that were accurate but disconnected, or AI tools with no guardrails. VisibleThread ends that trade-off, and gives every handoff a shared system of record.
Deterministic Engine
Shredding, compliance matrix extraction, Doc Compare, acronym checking. Rules-based, 100% repeatable.
AI Writing Layer
Faster drafting, grounded in approved content rather than a blank page.
System of Record
From BD identification through Capture and into Proposal, one platform, one shared view.
The WPS story is not about adding process. It is about removing the guesswork between stages. Once BD, capture and proposals were working from the same requirements, the same win themes and the same solution, the handoffs stopped being a risk and started being a strength.
If your teams are still rebuilding each other’s work at every stage, a shared system of record is the shortest path to fixing it.
