One Team, Full Visibility: Aligning BD and Proposals from Capture to Submission

And welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Micheál McGrath. I’m the VP of Marketing here at VisibleThread. And I’m just so thankful to welcome everyone to today’s session. It’s going to be a fantastic session. We’ve got a great topic, some great speakers, and we’re very excited about it. And we have such a huge audience here today from all over. So we’re absolutely delighted. Before we get going, I have a little bit of housekeeping that I’d like to do. First of all, this is a live webinar. We have a Q and A box on screen. If you have any questions that you would like to ask, feel free to ask at any point. We will have dedicated time at the end to do a bit of Q and A. And we also have a attendee chat on screen as well. So if you want to interact with the other attendees, let us know where you’re coming from. I’m here in Cork in Ireland. So let us know where you’re coming from and joining us today. You’re very, very welcome. Today’s session is about BD and proposals, capture teams, proposal teams working together, the handover between different processes, how technology works between different processes. And we have two amazing speakers, plus some in house VisibleThread expertise as well today. So we’re very, very thankful to have Karin and Jamie Lee here from WPS. So without further ado, Karin, would you like to introduce yourself first? Sure. Thanks, Micheál. I’m Karin Olsen Held, and I’m located in Minnesota in the US. I have been working in proposals for over twenty years in some way, shape, or form, and I’m a sucker for a good process, a good tool, and let’s get the right people doing the right thing. I’ll hand it over to Jamie. Hi, I’m Jamie Lee. I’ve been in the federal space for twenty two years working with WPS in various roles. I’ve been part of the business development and proposal teams for the last three years and really trying to help build out processes and process as a whole. I’m very excited to present here today. Very good. And Allison, our kind of head of house, you’re you’re a very common and always very welcome, Allison. Sure. If you’ve joined anything VisibleThread, I’ve you’ve had to see me before. My name is Allison Ritz. I am the director of product marketing at VisibleThread. The excellent privilege of working with our customers as well as our product team and development teams making sure that we’re delivering a product that is working for you. So I’m excited today to talk a little bit about, excuse me, talk a little bit about what’s coming in our next couple releases and how that will support both the capture and proposal process and support some of the collaboration that Karin and Jamie will talk about today. Very good. And Allison, you’re out and about at the moment. You’re in APMP. Yeah, I am speaking at the APMP Midwest Symposium this afternoon. So I am joining from, not from Pittsburgh today, from Milwaukee. Good. So if anyone knows anyone at that event, feel free to pass into Allison’s way. I’m sure great conversations to be had. Just to kick the ball off and to start, it’s unique to get a proposal team and a BD team on a webinar together to talk about the processes. Normally, we’ll do one or the other, but it’s great to talk about the collaboration between the two. In order to start, I’d love to gauge the room here. You can actually click the slides themselves. So these are clickable buttons on the screen. And we’d just love to know what role do you sit in. So this will help us guide the webinar. I see almost half the people have actually selected already. So we’ll let it go for another couple of seconds, and then I’ll bring up the results. But you can actually click the slides and answer the questions. I’ll let it go for another little bit. We have just over fifty percent there. I’ll let it go one last thing. Okay, great. So, okay. So we have almost fifty percent of the group are in proposals teams. We have a quarter in the kind of BD capture phase like yourself, Jamie Lee. And then we have kind of a little bit of operations, a little bit of leadership as well. So if you have any specific questions to either Jamie Lee from a BD perspective or Karin from a proposal perspective, feel free to drop them in the Q and A box at any time. So right, Karin, Jamie, I’m to pass it over to you and let you start through. I’ll kick it off. We have development life cycles. So if I were a betting person, I guess that you’d maybe align with one or more of some of these challenges that our team faces. They’re not unique. Jamie and I are passionate about good processes. But processes have to work for the people, not the other way around. We do not serve a process. And so as we’ve been working with internal stakeholders over the year and building out the teams, we’re working with those business development leads, our capture managers, proposal colleagues. We all have pinpoints. Some of them are the same, some are different. And so we’re going to touch on just a few of these common ones and how we continue to work those with processes and tools. The first one that we have listed here is working in silos. And what I mean by that is when every individual has their head down, doing their work, what they think needs to come next, it’s worked before, not looking up or talking to others on their team, it’s a sign that we are certainly not communicating well enough. Maybe you haven’t put that infrastructure in place. So when we need to refocus, we look at what does the proposal need? We ask that game off of any one part of the team not doing or the feeling that someone’s not doing the right thing is what does the proposal need? And the proposal needs collaboration and coordination. And then we’re going to do that next right thing while thinking of how we can improve the process or cover the next few. All right. So one of the first pain points right out of the gate is pipelines and the lack thereof at times. So we got team members that say data entry isn’t their job, which is not uncommon. And because we’re all working to the top of our licenses, which is understandable, but makes for tracking of pipeline data tricky. Then you’ve got everyone trying to move too fast and the documentation fails, or the lack of a single source of truth making the team feel uncoordinated. Always got to love when the only pipeline that is out there is the random report that is sent up to executive leadership. Or sometimes there’s just no pipeline at all. These all contribute to the inability to plan and next steps, as well as not just plan next steps for the opportunity, but resource wise, resource allocations and things like that, which can just add that extra layer of pain when you’ve got a really important opportunity that drops on your lap and you’re already at max capacity, what’s got to give? But without having that clear pipeline, it’s hard to have those right discussions. Next, we’ve got no clear why us stories. When you got working in silos and you’ve got BD that is doing their own thing and capture that are doing their own thing and proposal that comes in after the fact, you end up with a potential opportunity that we don’t understand the customer’s pain points and we are unable to develop the why us story when we’re looking at moving into proposal. Opportunities that fit from a compliance perspective. I’m sure everybody’s had that. This looks like a perfect opportunity at face value, but there are no clear persuasion points available. Might fit on paper, but we don’t have a compelling story to tell behind it. So it keeps that probability to win low. Win themes that are too general, they’re more fluff than thought well defined and not aligned to customer needs or have clear differentiators. Then another pain point that we run into is asked to start proposal writing without a clear solution or capture it. Excuse me, sorry. Because capture isn’t complete, proposal clock is ticking and the organizing or the organization does not understand the value of capture at all, which leads to partner scope undecided, solution tools undecided, key proposal, key personnel undecided, unidentified risks or requirements. You got to love those requirements where everything looks beautiful and then you realize you don’t have a security requirement met. And then you have to have that tough decision whether you can close that gap in a timely matter or ends up being a no bid decision. And then this all introduces risks that the proposal narrative might not be consistent as decisions change on the go or a risk that the bid might not be priced correctly. The last couple, these are all connected in so many ways, right? So resource constraints, as we’re talking about, what does the pipeline look like for planning? Despite best planning, we still might be up against that who has capacity to take this on from BD to capture not just the proposal team, but also the subject matter experts that we rely on writers, editors, those supporting teams. We do not do proposals in a silo. We need to pull in our finance team, legal, and all those folks too. So what does that look like coming together? Where does the probability of win fit? How do these opportunities align to strategy? And we see that if there are challenges with the pipeline at the start, we’re going to have questions as it comes to resourcing. And then it follows to that we might be facing unrealistic timelines. Were we able to get in front of the customer early enough? Were we aware of the opportunity early enough to ideally influence how the RFP and the requirements come out. But at the very least, that we are starting to work on our solution well in advance and can think that out well, just as you heard Jamie say. So we know what we’re going to write about, when we’re going to start writing. But sometimes that backs us into a corner of unrealistic timelines. When do we learn about the RFP? What else is on the plate for competing activities? Internal deadlines start to shift. Oh I don’t have this piece of information yet. Can we push a color team review to next week? And at the end of the day, that submission date, proposal submission date to the customer doesn’t change. So then what? We have people put in the position of needing to pull heroics. Long hours. We’ve all been there, but that’s a band aid. That’s not a solution. And so we also are looking at what risk is introduced to the organization when we are working in the timely business solution, like Jamie said, price. Also, when people are working late nights, we end up in the position of maybe we need to skip a couple steps or move through things faster or tired eyes miss something. All of those are preventable, could be preventable errors, right? And we don’t want to introduce risk to the organization because we miss something. Financial performance, performance organization, or performance financial performance, performance just to the company. That’s what I was trying to get out. As well as just are we gonna be even compliant? So let’s not put ourselves in that position. What can we do to set ourselves up for success? So one of the things we can do is address those challenges with clear communication and the handoffs and that ideally the early positioning and capture. So that takes us into what we’ve started calling that relay race. It’s not a unique term but let’s move from working in those silos to embracing that relay race. Communication is key. The effective relay race is not a cold handoff. Right? When you’re watching a track and field event, a relay on the screen, the Olympics, whatever you’re watching, each runner does not start from still. We don’t have the person with the baton slowing to a a stop to hand off the baton, and the next runner then starts running. We’re running alongside each other so that we can maintain momentum. It’s more efficient, and then we’re going together. And so that’s how we think of these handoffs from business development to capture and capture to proposal. We run alongside each other. So when business development is doing that handoff to capture, capture is going to start intelligence gathering, leading solutioning, the business development lead is still in there. What what have we learned from the customer? What’s the download on that? What the customer is thinking? What partners that we’re talking to, etcetera? And similarly, when the capture manager is handing off to proposal, that capture manager is going to stay involved so that they can execute or see that the win theme, the win strategy is being executed in the proposal, even though the proposal manager is leading those day to day activities. So nothing drops or at least, maybe I shouldn’t say nothing, much less is dropped between teams when we’re running alongside each other. So, Jamie’s gonna share some more thoughts about that benefit of the Relay team mindset and approach. Before we move on to that, though, we do want to take a quick poll to see which of these pain points you guys all experience and identify with the most. Totally. And you can see on screen there, again, same scenario as beginning, you can select directly on screen. So Jamie Lee and Karin went through these items of whether it’s not having a weak inconsistent pipeline, whether there’s no clear YOs, unrealistic timelines, BD capture, proposals working in silos. It’d be really interesting to see from the audience today which of these you find the most hard hitting. And even just while the audience are filling this in, we have some great questions coming in already, Jamie Lee and Karin. This is a basic one for there’s someone here who’s just starting out and new to Capture. Is there any pre opportunity drop steps that you take that you find really helpful? Have you one tip or trick before an opportunity drops that you particularly like? I’ll start off and Jamie, you chime in, So as your organization is developing your overall growth strategy, maybe you have we work in the US federal government, we have specific agency strategies, agencies we’re watching. We’re looking at any intel coming out from those agencies about new contracts that might be coming, yet released for RFP contracts that are existing and maybe up for they they need to be re cured. And so all of those types of things are ideally where you are spending your time pre RFP release. Learning more about the customer, making sure you understand what’s important to them, understanding the opportunity. Is it new? Is it a reprocurement? If it’s a reprocurement, how is the incumbent performing? What opportunity does your organization then bring to your proposal into what you’re going to pitch to your customer? And so yes, those steps happen in the best of all worlds before the RFP drops. We also see sometimes a bluebird where we weren’t expecting to, we watched it, weren’t expecting to bid on it, something changed, and now we’re at a go. Might feel a little bit like we’re behind. We’re still not going to skip over what do we know about the customer, the customer intelligence, the competitive intelligence, the opportunity intelligence, and the self intelligence. What are our gaps? What are our strengths? What can we bring? And so even if we’re not learning about an opportunity until a little bit later, what do we need to do to get that basic understanding of the opportunity to inform a solid bid or no bid decision? Very good. That’s a great answer. And we’ve gotten some really good feedback from the audience here on your opening slide. A third, I think the biggest two, if I’m reading it correctly, is silos, teams working in silos, and no clear why us, so not really understanding why we’re going after this. And then kind of a joint constraints in terms of timelines or unrealistic reserves or unrealistic timelines or resource constraints. So those two are kind of equal there. Does this make sense to you, Karin and Jamie Lee? Is this kind of what you see on a regular basis? I would say that some of the most frequent ones popping up for us align here. Yeah, perfect. Jamie Lee, I’ll pass it right back to you now, because we talked about the Relay and the baton, which is a great kind of imagery to use when you think about this and running at one hundred percent speed. But I’ll leave it to you to actually give some real world examples of what those handoffs could look like. When BD and Capture are working closely together, you end up with teams that can make bid and no bid decisions much earlier on and that really align with the operational strategy and capabilities. So instead of taking an opportunity all the way to proposal, sometimes a no bid decision is made right before it even goes up to executive leadership for review, or maybe even right after. It just really helps to identify the right opportunities. You’re making sure that your opportunities are fitting with your operational capabilities. It just really enhances and make sure you’re focusing on the right things at the right time. Early conversations about solutioning. We often use the word phrase of solution first. Well, yes, everyone will we all need to know what that solution looks like before you can ever start begin writing to it. So when you’re putting that solution at the forefront, you identify gaps, allows enough time to address those gaps within the build or through build, buy, or partner approach. You end up having discussions. You’re not partnering just because it is a partner that you always partner with, but are they actually adding value to that opportunity? Closing gaps not only in technology and process or through key personnel, but also understanding the customer hot buttons. Those customer hot buttons really drive those conversations, help drive for those win themes and understanding whether your solution is actually adding value to that customer. When the right opportunities are being worked, you will see an increase in engagement and enthusiasm to pursue these opportunities, not through just BD, which always shows a lot of enthusiasm, but through the capture phase and all the way through the proposal. And that also feeds right out into your operation teams that are supporting these bids. Because at the end of the day, they are the ones that own the solution if they end up getting that work. Go ahead and sit on and go ahead. Next handoff, yes, from capture to proposal. When these two teams are moving together, we have a documented feature, benefit, proof statement, discriminators to share with writers for messaging, those win themes that can carry through. And because the proposal manager was involved in the capture phase, they’re hearing all about the solution, the whys, and then can effectively translate that and lead the messaging in the proposal itself. We also have the teaming strategy, the partners providing proposal input where needed. So the proposal team knows who the teaming partners are, that we’re coordinating data calls if that is part of the solution. And a solution and staffing model that support the YS, that we are bringing a solution that’s the people, that’s your staffing model, that is the technology you bring, that’s the processes that make up your secret sauce and forms that why ask. But we’re developing a solution that addresses the customer’s need and isn’t just here’s my package solution that I sell all the time. It never changes. It doesn’t matter what your needs. And I should mention that Jamie and I work for a company that is largely in services. We’re customizing that solution and the messaging to what the customer needs. That’s the why f. And then also as we are moving from capture into proposal and capture is doing that self intelligence, it’s evaluating fast performance. And so what is that past performance that sets the team apart, demonstrates that we’ll meet the customer’s needs, and perform it well. We can get all of that gelling together so that we have consistency in our proposal messaging. So next, let’s go a bit deeper into that transition from capture to proposal. So the way that we think of this handshake is not just a point in time, but rather an intentional handoff of work documented throughout that capture phase. So it’s more of a set of materials that allow both sides of this particular handshake to be successful. Like we said before, that proposal manager is involved in those capture solution discussions. They have context for the customer hot button. The end goal is for that capture manager to be able to step back from daily leadership of the opportunity and the proposal manager to step into the daily leadership of those proposal activities. Both individual, both leads can both on either side of this handshake and the deliverable, but the transition is ideally seamless to the rest of the team members because there’s no upward change. We haven’t talked much yet about how we use VisibleThread. Jamie is gonna pick up that next to share how VisibleThread supports our intentional collaboration today. Also, how we envision integrating new features into our work. Before we go ahead and jump right into this next, how VisibleThread is amazing from my personal perspective. I wanted to do a quick response to Daryl’s question in the chat, Karin. He puts in here, I’m interested to hear how much you think the challenges compound each other, e. G. Lack of resource limits the capacity for effective handoffs. Do you want to go ahead and respond? Sure. I think it absolutely does compound. Even when talking about those six challenges that we chose to highlight a little bit ago, it’s hard to talk about exactly what you stated, the lack of resources, the capacity for handoffs. We’ve all likely been in teams where people are wearing more than one hat. Maybe your business development and capture is the same individual or same small team. Maybe you have a proposal manager who’s also leading solutioning. All of that comes into account when you’re looking at what do we need to do for this opportunity, Who’s available? Who’s wearing what hat? What does the opportunity mean? And yes, I don’t know what else to say other than it definitely compounds and the early communication just cannot be understated. And that communication collaboration is shared understanding of the organization strategy of your overall business development or growth team’s strategy and getting really crystal clear on, Oh, this one popped up. That looks like a fun thing that we could do. Does it align with where we want to grow? Does that align with our agency strategies? If not, that becomes a different set of questions and a good conversation going, well, what do we gain by pursuing that? What’s the trade off? Do we have the resource capacity, the time available in and around our must wins on the pipeline. So again, this goes back to, they’re all connected, silos. It work well when everyone is just tunnel focused on your own thing, that we don’t have leadership sharing what the strategy is so that business development is identifying the best fit opportunities, etc. Jamie, what would you add to that? I’m just going to add that it turns an opportunity quickly into a dumpster fire. I’m showing a wonderful little thing that Karin has given to me and other team members. Just as a reminder, opportunities can quickly morph when we are not collaborating and working together as a team into that wonderful dumpster fire, but also tools really make a difference. This is a great opportunity to go ahead and segue right into how VisibleThread supports us today. And I will say, when I first learned of VisibleThread, I had been spending a week, many, many hours creating gap analysis charts from statements of work. And it was frustrating. And I was like, there’s gotta be a better way. There’s gotta be something better than me manually putting together these gap analysis charts. And so we were gonna start reaching out to IT and going, okay, can we build something? Can we do something? And then we find out that we actually have VisibleThread in another part of our organization. And Karin had used VisibleThread and she was starting to explain what it could do. And this moment of you’re kidding me happened. And I was like, we have something like this. And I got my hands on it and I couldn’t have been more excited. So today we are in capture. We are using the simple shred for the statements of work. We’re doing gap analysis with those. And I don’t mean just a simple gap analysis. Like we can make them as small or complex as the opportunity allows or is needed. It helps with enables our partner solutioning sessions as well. When an SOW statement work comes out, a draft, one of the first things we’re doing is literally of those requirements going through. We can understand whether we can meet those requirements and having those right key questions to fill out is what really takes it that opportunity and makes people feel confident and then that confidence builds and leads a stronger proposal at the end of and a stronger bid as a whole. In proposal, we shred the RFP to do the compliance matrices. We run comparisons. We have run comparisons actually against manuals. I don’t know if anybody’s ever worked in the TRICARE space, but they have a massive manual that’s all online. It is no set out there for anything. You literally have to download chapter by chapter by section. And we have worked in that space and we have done just that and downloaded it and then compared when we are going from one set of manuals to another. And we’re looking at opportunities going, what do we need to do as an organization to prepare for this next round of manuals? What are the differences? What is it going to cost us? What is it going to take an effort to build out to prepare us for those potential future bids? We also use it for the acronym dictionary. Everyone loves putting together that acronym dictionary, at least here at WPS, we use acronyms, I think for everything. And we will use the same acronym three times in three different ways. And the acronym dictionary with VisibleThread is a lifesaver because it will not only identify where the acronyms are, but it also if you’ve defined it, will provide that for you. And if you define it more than one way, it will go ahead and find that. It takes a very. I’m sorry, I think I’m hearing a little bit of feedback. Is everybody else hearing that too? Sorry. Then last but not least, the improved readability. So you can take a proposal and really go through and see if the readability is that one voice, is it too passive, is it too aggressive, all of those things, and it really enhances that. Next. Now that’s how we’re using it today. How we’re planning on using it going forward is even more exciting. I was lucky enough to participate in the early adopter program for VisibleThread. I love getting my hands on technology and just figuring out all the nuances and how I can use it for our organization. This really enabled me to see all the new features that they delivered in June, But it also allowed me to socialize that with the rest of our team. Our BD, our capture folks, our proposal folks, and overall. Because I work closely with every single one of them. Communication is key, right? And so when I started sharing them some of the features coming out, I’ve just seen the excitement build. And that is really half of any new technology that you’re trying to implement is getting that excitement, that buy in, that change management piece that you can just kind of go, yes. Because without any excitement, a tool’s gonna fall flat. But this made it easy. When I started going through and they have the ability to identify programs. So everyone I’m sure that works in the federal space has worked with GovWin at some point in time and they had their best fit score that I still haven’t figured out how it works and how it applies its logic. But with VisibleThread, you can see exactly how it’s applying that logic and it bases it off of what you’re putting into that tool, which makes it just so much easier and gives you a sense that I just don’t have in some of the other tools that I’ve used. In capture, it enables capture to use completed shreds. So usually with the first thing that an opportunity drops or we’re looking into and they go, Jamie, can you please do this shred? And it’s like, okay, yep. And we literally have gotten requests right directly from our operations when they’re like, hey, has Jamie done a shred yet? We really wanna get in there and start reviewing it. We want our teams to get there and review because then we can add columns for each of their individual notes and then consolidate that for good solutioning discussions internally. And so I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited when somebody actually asked me for these things. I’m like, woo hoo, it’s really starting to spread and the word’s getting out and what we’re doing is working. And then, so But I really like to see us begin to, instead of being just what Jamie does with VisibleThread, how everybody on the team can really utilize this tool. And then when I shared some of the proposal pieces, everyone is talking AI. If you’ve been to any of the other conferences, VPC or any of those, AI is the buzzword. And here it gives you what you can leverage. You’ve got your generative AI and your deterministic AI, which I did not know the difference until I started working with this team, and it gives you a level of confidence. Everything is high security. We were able to bring this to our IT team and still get it through even with our levels of security that we have at WPS through our federal contracts. We’re leveraging the tool to review proposal content against RFP requirements. And also it just gets us to a faster first draft. Everybody’s trying to figure out how to move quicker and respond to the timelines. And that’s what we’re excited for I think the most is just that being able to use the reusable content and using those AIs to get out that first draft. Faster? Faster first draft. Wow, so that completely backwards. So this will be a great opportunity to transition to Allison and going through all the other new features that I didn’t already brag about or steal your thunder on. No, thank you so much. And I want to ask a quick question. I know you talked a lot, you and Jamie, you and Karin have talked a lot through this about the handoffs and about making sure that there’s visibility into what’s happening with bleach team and what’s happened throughout the process. So we hear a lot about speed when you’re walking through kind of some of the steps. That’s one of the aspects of a platform like VisibleThread that is helpful. But we don’t want speed just for the sake of speed. I would like to hear your feedback on what you’ve experienced when it comes to the areas where you can make things quicker so the shred or identifying requirements quickly or things like that. Is that giving you more time to focus on some of those more analytic pieces that are more important in that process? Glad you mentioned that, Allison. Yes, absolutely. It allows, I like to say, let’s let the robots do what the robot can do, and then let’s bring in our people to meet up talented people in the analytics and looking what are we seeing here, where can we drill there. In the comparison, we see a requirement has changed from last time. That helps us triage in what order are we working. When we get to that, you mentioned faster first draft. It’s not so that we can turnkey a fast draft and put it right into a submission portal, right? It’s allowing our talented writers and editors to print and edit instead of picked through the content library. We need a curated content library to enable tools like this to work well, but this is a lot faster than going to be right about this six months ago or two years ago. What’s our best? We’re cutting through that noise faster so that our humans have the best starting content available to them. And then they’re gonna go in with what do we need to do with the wind themes? How do we connect this in and really let that, let the humans do the the thinking and let the tools cut through the the the tasks that can be automated No. Excellent. That’s super helpful. And that’s something that we hear quite often as far as let the systems and the tech work where it’s supposed to. Don’t apply it to everything, that there are things that can help and make it, you know, super effective. So that’s a good segue into what I want to talk about here. Are you still getting that background? I’m getting it a little bit. Before I kick off, I don’t want to A little bit. I’m wondering maybe Jamie Lee and Karin, maybe you might mute when Allison is going through her slide and see if that resolves it. Try to get Allison Can you hear me now? Is that better? A hundred percent better. Okay. Tech, you know, you got to snore anything to make it work effectively. Okay, so what I want to do quickly is talk about what’s coming in VisibleThread and where we’re taking the platform. This is a good segue and this is an excellent example with Karin and Jamie Lee talking about what they’re doing today. So what they’re doing today and the way that that is affecting the process, but some of the things that they talked about when they talked about the problems that they’re seeing or the universal problems that a lot of us are experiencing and how the platform can be even more effective in things like eliminating silos, helping handoffs, giving you process analytics, supporting your workflows. So those are some things that I’ll focus in on a little bit but I’ll show you kind of the six buckets here. So when we talk about these six buckets and these sort of development themes, this is for the short term. So for the rest of twenty twenty six there will be three to four additional releases this year and we’re going to continue to build on features. In a natural way, I’ll add that kind of building in a natural way that creates an improvement to the features that you’re using right now, not complete overhauls and retraining and those types of things. We’re being very intentional about the usability and the level of lift that this is going to take on the customers. And so we want each feature release to improve your experience not complicate it. So looking at the six buckets, the biggest one and I would say where most of the development items or cards are falling and this is in our next release, our seven point three release is teamwork flow and collaboration. So really looking at increased collaboration, some of the things that were discussed in the process. So as of today, you’re creating shreds or you’re creating requirements analysis or gap analysis within the platform exporting it. You’re it, you’re working in a spreadsheet that has there can be a lack of visibility like you said, sometimes a blocker. Folks are saying you know, hey we’re waiting for the shred. Is there a way that we can see that or a way that we can use it? So this is going to take away some of those pieces. So level of visibility with folks within the organization, the ability to not have to export to begin to change and leave comments and communicate with each other and call out things that are potentially risky or items that are of attention. So really increasing that workflow and collaboration. Then insights and analysis. So this is really enhancements in shredding compare, high fidelity redlining, additional contracts functionality, and then Visi everywhere. So the ability to layer technologies, that’s a big piece of the visible platform. The deterministic pieces, so repeatable same thing every time, one hundred percent accurate layered with those GenAI pieces because excellent job at creating content, doing analytics, analyzing overall themes, kind of poking holes in what you’re doing, and pressure testing some of the things that you created. So we want to make sure that we are layering those two effectively and supporting the analysis that folks are doing. Reporting and visibility. So, you know, when Karin and Jamie were talking in the front end, talked a little bit about, you know, visibility into the process. Where are things slowing down? Where are bottlenecks within the system? How can we combat things like lack of resources or tight timelines by really looking at where we may be falling down in our workflow or where we can improve you know handoffs or information sharing. Market intelligence. So this is a big piece of the rest of the year as well. So right now we have you know connectivity for US federal folks to SAM and eBuy. So that is going to increase for additional federal resources. Also adding sled resources and some international portals. So there are a multitude of portals that will be continued to add to continue to enhance that experience so you can source your opportunities Or even if it’s an opportunity you’re aware of, obviously there are a lot of things, know, your must wins and your things that you’re forecasting that when those things drop, you don’t have to upload the packages and set everything up. You can pull it right in from the portals and you know, get to work and get to analyzing. And then usability and enhancements. This is really just we’re continuing to make it faster, make it smarter, make it better and incorporate your feedback from our early adopters, from our folks that are using the platform. So really this is the focus for the rest of the year. So thinking about kind of the biggest piece of that and the one that relates the most of the conversation today, talking about teamwork flow and collaboration. So what does this mean? VisibleThread right now or VisibleThread, I won’t say right now because seven point zero is out, but legacy VisibleThread is a powerful set of individual tools. So you are running a shred, you are running an acronym report, you are running a readability report, and you’re exporting that information out. So there are individual tools used in different ways in different organizations. But we want to make sure that we support the way you’re really working. So how you’re really working and how you ideally want to be working is collaboratively, is with visibility, is in a way that you can communicate effectively. So within the new platform in the seven point three drop, you’ll have the ability to kind of move the whole workflow inside of the platform at whatever level is appropriate for you. So that’s looking at you know quality gates and stage transition for ops and proposals. So where are we in the spaces? What do we have done? What do we need to get done? What do our checklist look like? Who’s assigned to these items? All of those things. The ability to assign tasks. So if I come in, I break down solicitation and pieces, there need to be specific folks that are reviewing items or I need specific feedback from folks. Can at them, I can assign tasks to them. We can have a conversation right in the comments and the notes of the document that we’re working in. So it allows you to really kind of bring all of that in house and nobody is waiting for what’s the next step because everybody can see it. Everybody in the work space and an opportunity can see it. Ownership and assignment. So then when you do go to, okay we’re going to start create an outline, start a proposal, we’re going to start writing sections. We can assign sections to folks. We can assign reviews to folks. We can have comments right within the documents. And with the Word add in, you can do that right in Word and still have the same visibility, still have the same connectivity. And then being able to integrate with Slack and Teams. That will be later in the fall. But Slack and Teams integrations and then Excel add ins as well. So what we’re trying to do is create a platform that has the foundation of VisibleThread that works really well, that folks rely on that they depend on and layer on Gen AI, layer on workflow support to give you the ability to have visibility across the board. So if our BD folks can hand over, you can see the intelligence, you can see documentation, you can see shreds that have been run by capture, you can see positioning and win themes and all of that information is visible when the proposal folks take over because you’re all working in the same opportunity. So we want to enhance collaboration, enhance visibility, and make sure that as we continue to make the process faster and more efficient, we’re also making it better and also continuing for it to be something that you can trust. The next piece with insights and analysis. So additional things that we can do here, of a revised approach on the compliance matrix where I know that there was a mention of adding columns and adding notes and adding those types of things. Being able to do that more easily within the platform, being able to customize things more within the platform, and all of that of course can still be exported. Additional kind of contracts functionality and review functionality, kind of multi doc and multi shred approach cross for more cross reference matrixing. So additional analysis and then I mentioned that Vizi Everywhere piece. So the ability to kind of call up and interrogate solicitation using GenAI as well. So I could run a shred. I could run some of the acronym reports, things like that. I could run gap analysis. I could work on my wind theme. And then I can bring in GenAI and layer it in and have my chat and start to ask questions and push you know testing my themes, testing my approach, creating content. So being able to layer the technologies on top of each other across the entire platform. So we really just want to make sure that we’re helping you do the things that VisibleThread has done best, which is break down documents, identify requirements, provide accurate risk assessments, and give you that effective analytic capability. But we want to deepen what you can do there. So really stretch and spread the wings of how much analysis you can do within the platform and what that does for the process. And then the last one I’ll say is reporting and visibility. So talk a lot about I am also somebody that is passionate about processes and workflows. I think the thing that happens a lot when I talk to folks about AI and some of the technology that they’re bringing in is that they’re doing a thing called kind of like bolting on. So they have a process as of today and they’re just sort of shoving in an AI tool or a tech tool and they’re not changing the process to support that. So what happens to those workflows is you move the friction point downstream. So I’ve created content more quickly. I’ve come to an outline and structure more quickly, but it’s I have inaccuracies or I have issues and I need reviews or I need reworks and I need all these other things. So my creation friction point turned into an editing and review friction point and I didn’t actually save any time. So people start to get frustrated if you don’t really look at what’s happening with the workflows. Again, we also talked about constrained resources, tight timelines. So this can really help you from a dashboard perspective and a time savings perspective. You know we’re assigning things out to folks. How long are they sitting? Why is that? Do we have a slowdown in certain spaces? Where are our bottlenecks and how can we address that? So really giving everybody visibility to what the tool can do and how it can benefit you most effectively and really support your workflows in a meaningful way. And then the last thing I the last point I’ll make is that the theme overall with the development of VisibleThread is traceability. So the main kind of the main sort of big piece of the puzzle with the SREDS and with the requirements analysis work that we do is they are one hundred percent accurate. Everything that you are asking to see, any version of with wildcards and pattern matching and all the things you can do, it’s repeatable. You can do that every time. What you’ll see when you use a new platform is that theme is carried throughout in traceability. So if I’m giving you a fit score, you can trace that back to the documents in the source material that it came from to really justify why that’s accurate. If I’m telling, if I’m creating content, you’re grounding it. You can take it right back to where you found that content. If you’re creating an outline, you can take it right back to the requirements that make up that line and the reasoning for having this in the outline. So the theme overall is traceability and we want to make sure that we’re building this for how you work and how you win because in this line of business there is no guessing. We have to be able to prove things, we have to be able to have referenceability, and the platform is built with that workflow in mind. And we have a little piece and Micheál, let you jump in on the poll here. Yeah, sure. Allison, that was fantastic. And Allison went through those four areas in detail. I know she had six at the beginning, but she went into detail in terms of this topic on four, workflows, insights, reporting, and continued AI traceability. I’d love to know with the audience today, which of these is the most interesting to you? So if you want to pick your most, like the thing that you’re most focused on that you found interesting, I’d love to get the feedback here. But Jamie Lee and Karin, I’ll direct the same question as you out of what Allison went through there. Is there a particular section there that you, oh, that’s fantastic, that’s solving a problem? Maybe you’re on mute, I’ll go ahead and jump in on this one, Karin. I’m going to say the insights and analysis really are the big things, right? And so it really, I feel like they all feed on top of one another though. So it’s going to be those insights and analysis, but they impact the collaboration with working with the rest of the team, the visibility. And so, that’s my I would say B would be my one, but they feed into all the rest. Karin? When I was talking on mute, I was about to say I want them all. I’m excited for them all. But I’m going to go into continued AI traceability. I think as our organization is I feel like we are flying the airplane while we’re building. We are learning right along the team, and it’s just one step ahead sometimes and being a more With that AI traceability, I think that that’s only going to increase confidence in not just the tool, but also the processes and that we’re integrating the tool in the right places, and we have the human in the loop all the way through, and just overall testing it out, showing, hey, we can trace this back to the citation. That’s right. That’s what it is. And building the trust and I think not just in AI but also in the tool and then trusting ourselves to use it and continue to explore more. Absolutely. And that’s a really good call out that and my example that I always give is that if I was creating a proposal and was part of my technical volume, was responding to something in the outline and Gen AI is sourcing my information and it’s saying that we can perform x y z and this is our uptime, downtime, response time, whatever. My first question is where did that come from? Like is that approved? Is that accurate? Using VisibleThread, I can then click on the citation and it will take me directly to the document exactly where it’s pulled that information from so I can really quickly determine if I need rework or if I have any issues. So that’s going to make that process faster and more efficient but again keeping the quality and keeping the confidence in what you’re producing. Brilliant and I think it actually answers Cynthia’s question directly in terms of do you find that the tools that VT provides are still reading the entire document or are the outputs so reliable that you can trust the BT outputs? I suppose what Allison is trying to get it across is it’s showing you where those outputs are coming from. It’s always showing in that traceability layer. I think that’s kind of the point. Lots of questions about the recording. The recording, of course, will be available tomorrow. So all those questions are very valid, but we’ll be able to pack all this up and share afterwards. One question, Allison, maybe directly to you, an easy one, the future of scraping eBuy, GSA eBuy. That’s happening now. So well, now in the sense if you’re cloud or if you have depending on the version that you were writing on prem that yes, as of right now you have the capability to obviously connect it’s with your password logins so you’re getting your feed. But you can access your eLive feed through this. Awesome. Might ask you to do the same thing with the last time with your microphone. Okay. You’re going up again. To Jamie Lee or Karin, if that’s okay. The idea of doing a shred and capture, and traditionally a lot of the genesis of VisibleThread was very focused on proposals, but now we’re expanding into BD in a big way and seeing a lot more BD users like yourself, Jamie Lee, using the platform more. But what are the benefits of doing shredding in Capture? What are the real goals that you’re trying to achieve there? It’s really that gap analysis expanded, right? So you’ve got your gap analysis when I’m doing the shreds, we’re asking these types of questions. Does our organization meet the requirement? Yes, no. If no, what is the effort to be able to meet that requirement? Is it a large, medium, high, or extra large effort to meet that requirement? It allows us to then also at the requirement level, have folks review and go through those requirements for their specific areas of SMEs and add comments. This allows us to know whether we need to seek a partner to fill this gap because the effort’s gonna be extra large and the timeline to be able to implement is much too short in order for us to build that out ourselves. It allows us to then facilitate those partner discussions, allow us to cater those requests out to gather information back from partners. Sometimes you’re like, okay, we’ve got three potential partners that we could fill this gap. Let’s go ahead and send this out and get feedback on all of them. And then we can synthesize that information. And then that also feeds into pricing. When we know what kinds of tools that we’re going to be utilizing to satisfy that, the effort level behind that, then we can start to answer those questions of how much is it going to, which resources do we need to apply here? What is the, our estimate opportunity, which all directly feed those BOEs for pricing. So it really just starts there and just kind of expands out in a nice way. Does that answer the question, I hope for our person. Indeed, If you have any other questions, absolutely drop them into the feed and we’ll get to everything afterwards. There is a survey on screen. I would love to get feedback on this session. And if you have any other questions, we’ll follow-up afterwards and we’ll be able to connect everybody. I really want to thank Jamie, Karin and Allison for your contributions today. It was an excellent webinar, really good discussion of how BD and proposals need to work together in clever way and a lovely segue into technology. Any parting words before we finish? All good. We’ve said it all. Oh, I’ll say I’ll train myself. Yes. Oh, yes. That is a very good message. And I’ll plug myself. I have my biweekly office hours are running. You can sign up on the website if you haven’t, just haven’t gotten enough of me yet. Our session tomorrow, we have a session tomorrow is on what true adoption looks like kind of a year end and usage doesn’t equal adoption and what that actually looks like in metrics you can use to see if AI is really helping. Then we have some other fun things coming up as well. Brilliant. Then, Allison, thank you so much for that. I’ll shoot, Jamie. That’s alright. Last but not least, I’ll leave you guys all with a fun fact. I often do this work for our teams. And do you realize that, squirrels lose over fifty percent of the nuts they hide? So let’s all try not to be on the squirrels and lose half of our opportunities in a nonexistent pipeline. We’ve seen dumpster fires. We’ve seen we’ve seen all sorts of handovers, and we’ve talked about track we’ve talked about the handover in all all different types of segues. Really appreciate that. That’s fantastic. Karin, any final words on your side? Nothing else for me. This is a great this morning. If you wanna on LinkedIn. Okay. Thank you so much to our speakers today. Thank you to everyone who attended our next webinar. As Allison said, we have content coming tomorrow, so feel free to register for that. Just thank you for your time and we’ll talk to you very, very soon.