Microsoft Gold Certified partner Mint has developed Proposal Accelerator, a proposal authoring solution to provide organisations with a mechanism for efficiently and speedily creating proposal or request for proposal documents, thereby streamlining the tender-creation and response-to-tender process.
"All proposal documents are required to contain volumes of standard information, and businesses waste countless hours on determining exactly what must be included, finding a document where something similar has been used and then entering it into the document," says Grant Hodgkinson, business development director at Mint.
"This information does not relate to the technicalities of the solution, yet no proposal may be considered complete without it. Through the interface we have built, authors save time so they can concentrate on creating the proposal with meaty information about the proposed service that will result in a deal or agreement, rather than wasting time finding other mandatory information."
The solution enables users to upload information such as collateral, images, specification sheets and case studies into Microsoft Word, where a research pane allows access to a database containing standardised content.
Information visible through this research pane is maintained in Proposal Accelerator. Each document fragment is stored in a master repository and users with the correct permissions can add information or edit existing fragments through an administration console.
"Mint understands that the creation of complex proposals or requests for proposals is not the job of one person in the organisation alone," says Cyril Belikoff, Information Worker business group manager at Microsoft SA. "To be definitive, a proposal is best completed with the involvement of numerous parties and divisions. This is achievable using a simple interface such as the Proposal Authoring Solution Mint has built as well as the Microsoft technology platform on which it is built. It improves consistency of responses delivered to the marketplace, and the speed at which proposals can be submitted. It also enables organisations to generate proposals more cost-effectively. Image, speed and cost are three crucial elements in a successful tender process."
The solution is currently in use at Microsoft South Africa`s bid desk.
Hodgkinson says the solution empowers organisations to easily access information contained in customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning systems. "With this information at their fingertips, users can create complex proposals that produce results," he says.
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Mint helps its customers become more productive and reduce costs in their businesses. Its focus is in the consulting and adoption of solutions for collaboration, knowledge management, document management, content management and workflow solutions, all addressed through portal technologies. Mint is a Johannesburg-based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. For more information, visit www.mint.co.za.
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