Continuing from last week’s Blog on information organization, retrieving information quickly is extremely important when producing RFP responses. If you are in a real-time crunch, you need to find and extract information that is relevant to the RFP quickly and easily. Finding information quickly will allow you to revise content more efficiently and give you more time to work on other sections of the RFP. Achieving this goal requires a well-organized and logical directory structure on your preferred shared or local drive.
One way to achieve this goal is to set up a series of directories on your preferred shared drive identified by year. Create sub-directories by industry/business/organization (as it makes sense for your business) under each year. For example, under 2019, create sub-directories for Academic, IT, Energy, Telecommunication, etc. You will use these sub-directories to store your RFP responses and associated files.
But what should you put in the sub-directories? During the process of generating a response for an RFP, you will have created a folder that contains working documents, RFP issued documents, supporting documents, and the submitted version of the RFP. I find it useful to separate the RFP issued documents and the working documents. And, depending on the complexity of the RFP, you may need to split out individual sections of the response, e.g., forms, references, pricing, etc. Be careful that you do not create too many sub-directories within sub-directories, as this can cause problems saving and copying to other directories. Some people prefer to have all documents in one folder with only the submitted documents moved to a ‘submitted’ subfolder. The choice is up to you, but whatever approach you choose should allow you to find the submitted versions quickly and easily when you need to.
Once the directories have been organized, and the files set up, move the responses that fit into each category into the appropriate sub-director. You may decide to only move the submitted documents into the industry sub-directories and omit the working documents. However, I suggest moving the submitted, and the RFP issued documents over to the industry sub-directories because sometimes you may need to refer to an earlier version.
How you set up the RFP folders is a matter of company policy or preference; keep in mind that the folder structure should be logical, and the files within it easily found in case someone new takes over the task of preparing RFPs. The people responsible for preparing responses should be able to find the submitted documents, as these form the body of knowledge to be used in responding to future RFPs. They may also be needed at a debriefing, so you want to have the correct documents available at short notice.
It is very important that you organize your RFP responses for the reasons mentioned above. It is a task that can be done during slower periods, and once the directories and sub-directories are established, you can add RFP responses at any time. You can also update your RFP tracking spreadsheet when you move or add a response to the sub-directories...this will act as a quick reference of the responses completed.
Remember, the goal is to increase efficiency through information organization. You will thank yourself later!
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