When assembling project teams for a new bid or proposal, having a central repository of employee data is key. With a single source of truth, bid teams can rapidly identify colleagues who possess the required skills, experience levels, and qualifications to meet the specific opportunity's needs.
In an attempt to solve this need, many firms turn to their customer relationship management (CRM) system as a place to house employee data. Teams may opt to store their employee data in contact fields, simply attach a resume to the record, or some combination of the two. However, while CRMs provide value for certain data processes, they’re an inefficient solution for storing and maintaining employee information. In this blog, we’ll explore why CRMs aren’t the one-stop answer to proposal productivity, as well as look into an alternative solution.
The challenges of CRMs for hosting employee data
Data fields not built for employee profiles
At its core, a CRM stores data in flat fields and is ill-equipped to handle the depth and dynamic nature of a professional's resume. As employees gain new skills, complete projects, and earn certifications, capturing these ongoing updates in a platform that wasn’t built for this becomes increasingly difficult. Even with custom fields set up, metadata such as competency levels, or years of experience in specific skills is impossible to track. Moreover, user license costs generally prohibit every employee from having access to the CRM, meaning users can’t update sections autonomously, adding friction and confusion to the process.
Limited search capabilities
Even if you have your employee data saved in CRM fields (rather than a static resume doc), when it comes to searching your CRM, the filters are incredibly basic. You can't easily find a colleague with 5+ years experience in a specific software, or a team member with a PMP certification plus Agile experience in a Finance role. In general, the search functionality is built for prospect data, not the intricate details and logic required for finding niche skill sets that your colleagues possess. This means that you may not be able to locate that one employee who has the specific attributes that could set your proposal apart.
Inability to tailor without versioning challenges
Another major limitation of using CRMs to house resumes is the inability for proposal managers to tailor and customize profiles to resonate with specific opportunities. Resumes stored in CRM fields are static, with no way to reorder content, add custom bios, or tweak the messaging. If bid teams attempt to tailor content by copying and pasting from the CRM into Word docs, this creates versioning nightmares. With multiple copies of each person's resume now existing, it becomes impossible to track which is the latest and most accurate version.
Difficult to package and share content
If you do manage to identify the ideal team members and tailor their content, exporting their profiles into client-ready formats is another arduous process. In the best-case scenario, content will just need to be reformatted into branded documents, so that you can present your team as a cohesive unit. However, in most cases, the content will need to be restructured to meet the needs of a client-specified format, such as a government form. Often, this means meticulously copying and pasting data from field to field, a thankless task that’s not only prone to error but one that can take hours per employee.
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Lack of standardization and visibility
Last but not least, with everyone working from static resume files, your company lacks visibility, and therefore control over the quality of content. With no standardized rules, there becomes a free-for-all over what terminology is used, how resumes are structured, and how related projects are described. This introduces inconsistencies across your documents, reducing the level of professionalism of your overall proposal. Additionally, there’s no way to oversee your firm’s holistic skillset, since skills, certifications, and courses are not standardized, not to mention they’re lost in fixed documents.
The solution: A specialized resume database
As a dedicated platform built specifically for housing and leveraging resume data, Flowcase tackles the shortcomings that we describe above. We solve these challenges in the following ways:
Intuitive profile building
Rich resume sections allow users to easily add project experiences, skills, courses, and more in granular detail. Years of experience are captured automatically based on profile data, while competency levels can be added with ease. Guided inputs and company-validated skills and roles ensure everyone's using the same terminology, essential for discoverability. Furthermore, our AI features ensure profiles can be easily translated into a range of languages.
Powerful search capabilities
With all data structured uniformly, searching across your firm becomes a breeze. Sophisticated search filters can be used to narrow down hundreds or even thousands of employees to one or two that are perfect for the proposal. Filters can be layered with AND criteria, and attributes like years of experience can be toggled, making it easy to find niche skill sets.
Seamless tailoring
With Flowcase’s flexible interface, bid teams can easily tailor profile sections, such as editing personal statements or reordering role experiences, all without editing the master profile. Unlike tailoring static documents, this does not result in versioning issues since profile updates flow into these tailored profiles.
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Streamlined resume formatting
Once again, because all data is structured predictably, it can be easily formatted to fit a range of document types. Our templating functionality converts dynamic data into branded resumes or client-specified formats without endless copying and pasting. This saves countless hours, especially when putting forward large project teams.
Skills overview
Get a bird’s-eye view of your firm’s holistic skill set with data reports. Understand your firm’s core competencies and learn where you need to improve.
Store projects too
Yes, Flowcase stores projects too. Just like resumes, projects can be stored, tailored, and exported into a range of formats. Teams can also push project data to the employees who worked on them, ensuring a connected system. Plus, you don’t need to move away from storing other project data in your CRM; our REST API enables you to seamlessly integrate with your existing systems, helping you to maintain a single source of truth.
In summary
While CRMs are a great tool for bid managers, they fall short when deployed as a resume management tool. Since showcasing your employees is such a crucial part of the proposal process, it makes sense to invest in a purpose-built platform. To learn more about how Flowcase can help you win more bids in less time, reach out to us.
