At RWDI, a global engineering firm, I led an end-to-end redesign of how teams find past project references and build proposals.
Every proposal needs strong references from past projects, but finding them was slow and inconsistent. The problem touched more than 500 employees across 9 countries, and it was quietly costing time and proposal quality.
How might we make the right project references easy to find, so teams can spend their time writing winning proposals?
The new system improved proposal quality and win rates, and created change that lasted beyond the project.
Map the current state first. Everyone assumed there was one shared folder of past projects to grab from. Mapping the real process showed files saved on individual desktops and emails to the right department just to find the latest work. Seeing what was actually happening revealed the root of the problem.
Listen from every angle. Project teams wrote the project blurbs, project managers raced to pull them into proposals, and project assistants worked between everyone. Each group worked in different tools and needed different things.
Blueprint the systems, not just the steps. This was my first service blueprint, and my first wall of sticky-note clusters. Noting every system people touched showed how much friction came from jumping between SharePoint and everywhere else.
The simplest solution can win. We explored specialized proposal software like Loopio, then realized a shared database did the job. Test whether you really need the complex option before investing in it.