When professional services firms consider their most valuable asset, they typically point to their people. Yet, despite this, many organizations store their people’s data in HR systems which underutilize this critical data. Traditional HR tools, while efficient for basic record-keeping, often become repositories where expertise is recorded but rarely leveraged.
But what if your employee data could do more than just exist? What if it could not only provide insights into your firm’s capabilities but also drive business growth?
In this blog, we'll uncover how proposal automation platforms like Flowcase transform employee data from a passive record into your firm’s competitive advantage, and how this in turn improves data quality.
HR tools vs Flowcase
To understand how Flowcase improves employee data processes, it’s first important to understand the alternative. Typically, traditional HR systems are used to track and analyse employee data. These systems perform this purpose reasonably well; they’re effective at recording job titles, managing certifications, and, in the case of more powerful systems, generating insights about holistic workforce expertise. However, this is where their capabilities end.
Now, let’s consider a proposal automation platform, such as Flowcase. By converting resume (CV) content into structured data, Flowcase also enables teams to analyze employee experiences, identify specific strengths and weaknesses, and generate holistic reports for company-wide insights. In this regard, Flowcase can compete with even the most sophisticated HR systems. And, while this is where an HR tool's capabilities end, this is where Flowcase is just getting started. Flowcase helps firms to not only record employee data, but to leverage it to win new business.
Using Flowcase, proposal professionals or business development teams can use their employee data to help assemble their project teams. Equipped with an employee database, teams can easily search across specific skills, experiences, and qualifications, and cherry-pick the best candidates based on the RFP’s requirements. Sophisticated search features ensure they can filter by experience levels or competency levels, and stack terms to find even the most niche skillsets. And, since this data is inherently linked to the CV/resume, they can tailor, and download the associated document in just a few clicks. This ability to leverage people data is a key differentiator between Flowcase and traditional HR tools.
How Flowcase incentivizes regular updates
One of the key challenges for HR teams, or anyone managing employee data, is securing frequent updates. Not only do employees often lack motivation to provide updates, businesses also often fail to follow up, relegating these updates to a 'nice-to-have', rather than a priority. With Flowcase, this dynamic is altered.
Because Flowcase powers new revenue, businesses have a pressing need to keep their employee data up-to-date. Without current employee information, they can't identify their best team as easily, nor be so confident that their team's CVs or resumes are updated. In extreme cases, if an employee is missing an important experience or certification, this can be the difference between winning and losing a bid. This creates a compelling motive for firms to stay on top of updates.
The good news is that with Flowcase, businesses rarely have to chase their people to get updates since there are natural incentives for employees too. While employees typically view HR updates as a tedious box-checking exercise, Flowcase makes updates more appealing.
First and foremost, updating their achievements directly influences their chances of being picked for new projects. Each update becomes an opportunity for increased visibility and career progression. When users add new skills and experiences to their Flowcase profile, they're more likely to be involved in projects aligned with their past experiences and interests.
Moreover, with a single source of truth for their professional identity, employees gain a complete overview into their career to-date. Unlike traditional CVs or resumes that contain key highlights tailored for specific opportunities, Flowcase gives employees a complete summary. We often hear that this makes employees see their Flowcase profile as a point of pride. Additionally, because your colleagues, or at least proposal teams (depending on your account configuration) can view your profile, there is a sense of accountability too. All of this results in more frequent, and better-quality updates, compared with HR systems.
How Flowcase facilitates data freshness
One of Flowcase's added benefits is that when a proposal is won, the new project can be easily created within the platform. This new project can be linked to team members who worked/are working on it, automatically populating those profiles with contextual data. Since all the employees are linked to the same underlying project data, this introduces consistency across all CVs and resumes. Ultimately, linking people to projects mitigates error-prone manual data entry and helps to remove friction during content updates.
Summary
Flowcase revolutionizes the way professional services firms utilize their employee data, transforming it from a static record into a dynamic tool for winning new business. In turn, this incentivizes regular updates and facilitates data freshness, ensuring that employee information remains current and valuable.
To learn more about how Flowcase can improve your people data and improve proposal quality, book a demo with our team.
