3. ’tis the season to be PLANNING

December 2019

(5-minute read)

Note to the reader: the term bid is used here for consistency but also refers to any other sort of proposal/RFP/pitch etc.; templates refer to template documents used to build responses/library content/case studies etc.

Instead of posting this at the end of the month as usual, it’s coming out just before the Christmas/New Year weeks. While I hope that you’ll have a gap over the holiday weeks (if you’re working through), I do know of a few teams who are facing early January deadlines. It’s quite often a ‘dead’ patch though and so rather than mulling over what to do next, after having cleared out all your unread email from the past year, and having filed all the read emails; here’s a job to do to build on the last two tasks of evaluating where your library is at and where it’s going to be set up. Step 3 is all about focusing on planning and outcomes.

a)      What is this library going to do for you? Clearly define the goal and purpose for your library – what you want to have in it, what folders you want, the hierarchy, the owners, the permissions, how much information you want to store there, what types of information, can you link to other source material to avoid duplication (and obsolescence)

b)     Location – this was covered in Step 2 – take a moment to revisit it. Make sure you’re still happy with your decision. Is there anything specific you need to be aware of? Is there anyone in particular you need to approach to set up the space you want, or any training you need to look into completing to be able to setup and manage it yourself?

c)      People – without involving the right people you won’t get this off the ground. Make a list of the people you need to speak to: stakeholders, Subject Matter Experts, management, the bid team, the sales team, budget holders even. Also make a list of the reasons/arguments you will need to employ to get them to buy-in to helping you make this work. These can range from time savings to increased win rates, better work-life balance and improved mental health and team morale.

d)     Get back to basics. Lay out the foundations of your library – write up a user guide for anyone who will be using the library telling them where to look for information, how to search, how to write content (here is where your corporate style guide can come in handy if you have one), pull together a glossary of terms, think about and propose review dates for different types of content (these should have been identified as part of ‘a’ above).

e)     Develop the process – think about and sketch out the process you want to follow to keep this library up-to-date. Where does a document start its life, what review/control gates do you want it to go through before it is approved to go live, how often do you want it reviewed/updated, who will own it, how you’ll let people know there is new/revised content available. Maybe even do a ‘test-run’ of the process with a few colleagues and see what they think.

f)       Templates – there is always place for a good template – even if only because they save time and make your work look great! In terms of a content library consider developing something that is as clean as possible and mirrors the style set that your organisation uses so that content is easily transferrable to bid response template documents without ‘breaking’ the response document in the process. Templates are also invaluable when you are developing or updating content as they can provide a set of checks via the heading structure to make sure that you have covered off all the important items. It’s also an opportunity to incorporate suggestions on writing style and tone of voice (e.g. using the active rather than the passive).

g)      Review and update – make sure you have thought about HOW you are going to incorporate content from new bid submissions back into the library. Whether you are able to block time out at the end of each bid to go through everything in detail, or just highlight the new/improved content to add back in at a later date (and book it into the diary), it’s important that you build this into your bid process or it simply won’t happen.

h)     Celebrate – now that you’ve worked through all that – sit back and celebrate with a nice hot mug of something and leftover mince pies (or biscuits, or chocolate). You have a plan and that is a step forward from where you were before you had the plan and celebrating things is important – even if it’s only what seems like a small step – because it makes it feel worthwhile and builds enthusiasm for the next step.

i)       Communicate – circulate the plan to the rest of your team – let that enthusiasm go viral and get everyone onside. At the same time now that you have a complete picture to share it’s a great opportunity to get their views and feedback on how it could be improved and if there is anything missing.

Now you have all the groundwork in place, you are ready to start tackling the building blocks in the months ahead. If it starts to feel daunting at any time – go back and look at the mission statement and goals you set for that library – what is it going to give you? That will help you to look at the current paper pile and problem in front of you with more purpose and clarity.

Remember – it’s all simple if you take it back to basics – one step at a time.   

4. Start BUILDING…

January 2020

(3-minute read)

Note to the reader: the term bid is used here for consistency but also refers to any other sort of proposal/RFP/pitch etc.

The evaluation has been done and you know what you need and want from your bid content library, you’ve spent some time figuring out where you are going to build it and locate it, and you have done some planning… Now it’s time to start building that library.

The great thing about this part of the project is that you start to see things take shape. You should have the location sorted – whether it was annexing a piece of the bid team’s shared drive or asking IT for a location on a SharePoint/Teams or other area that can be shared. Now is the time to put up the sign that says ‘BID CONTENT LIBRARY’ (or whatever you have decided to call it) in big letters, populate it with content (don’t worry if you have duplicates) and let everyone know where to go for up-to-date, organised content.

Be confident

If you’ve already collected all the content you have (or know about) into a folder(s) in your new space now is the time to start sorting that out. If you hadn’t been able to do that yet, now is the time to collect it all and start the process of sorting through it and dropping things into folders. If what you have was in lots of different locations and folder structures it might be simplest to drop it all into a clearly labelled ‘Collection’ folder, if there was already a good structure in place you may want to keep that together in a single ‘Old/Existing’ folder  Drop it into a single ‘collection’ folder to start with if that works for you

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Structure

Remember SLIC – Shared, Logical, Indexed, Central

With Shared and Central taken care of, Indexed and Logical are next.

LOGICAL

Let’s look at logical, a hierarchical folder structure is the most sensible way to go about organising information. Spend time thinking about what makes logical sense in terms of flow. Also remember you can always change it later if it doesn’t work as you’d imagined. Libraries, like the content that they contain are allowed to be dynamic. The best advice when planning it is to keep it as simple and clear as possible – LOGICAL.

INDEXED

Indexing is a little bit more work than simply having a ‘logical file name’. Bear in mind that some systems won’t allow very long and intricate file names, so best keep it short. Here is where tagging comes into it. Tagging is entirely independent of the file name and depending on the system you’re using you may be able to apply up to 50 tags to a file (again keep them clear and logical, have a set list).

The benefit – when a search is run using tags you can simply type in the relevant tag and every file that is tagged will be returned rather than every file that has the search term somewhere in the file or title.

Keep it real

Don’t attempt to shift all the information across in one day, unless of course you have a whole day free! The most manageable way to populate a library is in sections – decide which section is easiest or most needed and start there. Do a bit every day and it will be sorted out in no time at all

Up-to-date

Just as it’s important to keep the library up-to-date and current it’s important to let your team and library users know about what’s happening and where they can find the latest information. Ask them to give you feedback on the new structure, let them know how to search for tags (in the search bar type ‘tags:’ and the relevant tags and then search) and what the list of tags is that you’ve used, use their experience of the library to keep them interested in helping to keep it current and useful.

5. Rationalise and Prioritise

March 2020 

(2-minute read)

Note to the reader: content refers to all information whether text/graphics/case studies that is needed to complete a response document.

This month’s post is a short one, which is not to say that the task is as quick to complete as this post is to read. By now you’ll have started to sort information into the folder structure you’ve created in your central space, complete with permissions, owners and review dates. This should mean that people can look for the information that they need in one place and start finding usable content.

Having effectively put all your content into ‘piles’ in your folder structure you can start to rationalise and prioritise what’s there. Take each folder and go through it – weeding out the duplicates, assessing how current it is, delete what you need to (or archive it if you don’t want to exercise the full power of the delete button). Don’t hold onto duplicates unless there is a really good argument to, for example a 500-word answer and a 100-word answer on the same topic. Where there are two very similar answers pick the best one, tag it appropriately, rename it if you’re applying a new file naming convention and save it, archiving or deleting the other.

rationalising your content will enable you to identify the gaps

By properly rationalising your content you can get a much better view of what is missing and where the gaps are. This in turn allows you to prioritise what you need developed or updated to fill the gaps.

Where you have items that are used across multiple sectors, instead of having multiple copies, take a look at each piece and work out whether it could be made largely similar, with just a few tweaks rather than needing to be a whole piece of standalone content that is largely the same as something else. Always ask if something can be written more simply with a few more prompts, or even sector-specific paragraphs, saved in the same record.

Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are content libraries. Make it manageable, tackle it a folder at a time. Pick the topics that are quick wins and easy to update to start with. You’ll feel more successful as well as get valuable buy-in from others as they’re quickly able to find what they need.

positive changes happen faster if you start with quick wins

6. Renovations and improvements

July 2020 

(2-minute read)

The last job in the step-by-step to a better content library series was about rationalising and prioritising what you have. This forms the foundation of your new library. Now that you know what you’ve got you can build the outline of what you want it to look like.

Template, template, template

Templates should form the basis of any documentation that you create. Whether it’s an email or a piece of content for the library. Templates are not only about layout but also about fonts and formatting. These are the things that really make things quick and easy. We have all spent hours formatting a document before we have to make that deadline and rued allowing others to copy things across bringing through random styles and formats that have ‘broken’ the master document.

The library is the base – build a simple template with standard heading and list styles and use a corporate style guide for fonts and colours. This means that when you copy things across into your submission document, they will all follow the same structure and styles. This in turn means less time formatting at the end and less worry that the master document will break.

As a minimum, build a template for submissions, a template for content in the library and a template for appendices and attachments. Get someone who knows Word to do this for you if possible – there are lots of tricks and clever things in Word and if you have someone who knows their way around it, you’ll have a better and more efficient template.

‘Copy and Paste’ the good stuff

Now you have those templates for attachments and conten; copy and paste the good records across. Remember to ‘Paste Special’ and leave the formatting behind so that you have a clean document to work with going forward and no odd lurking styles and fonts. Follow the guidelines you developed for naming conventions and tagging when you save it into your central location.

Review and approve

Send that content in its bright, sparkling, new format off to the Subject Matter Expert for review and approval. If necessary, give them a crash course in using Track Changes and Comments. Have a call to go through any questions that they might have. Make sure that they know you’re there to make their lives easier too.

Create excitement and awareness

Congratulations! Your content has been reviewed and approved and a next review date set. Now you need to let everyone know that the definitive info on XYZ exists and where to find it. Put together a mailing list that includes everyone who uses the library. Write a brief, punchy email to tell them there’s new content, that the SME has approved it and it’s good to go. Let them know where to find it and that they should feedback any comments they have to you so that you can keep tabs on how the content is used, whether it meets the needs of what the writers need and also if it’s used at all.

Last but not least…

Borrow from technical authoring good practice and make a note on the content of when it was created, who has reviewed and approved or amended it and make sure that this is kept updated. You may prefer to have this at the end of the document rather than the beginning so that it can be found but doesn’t detract from the body of the document, or if your system allows you can add this to the version control e.g. SharePoint.

Have fun tidying up and giving your content a basic makeover!

7. Don’t leave it to a roll of the dice. Roll out the quick wins!

August 2020

(2-minute read)

Note to the reader: content refers to all information whether text/graphics/case studies etc. that is needed to complete a response document

Your content is looking better and you’re bound to be feeling more positive about it too. It’s been pasted into a new, clean template with the styles all tidied up. You’ve decided who owns what and how often it should be reviewed and updated and possibly even sent some of it off to the relevant SME to review and update. Now it’s the time for quick wins.

Quick wins in the content library sense can be remembered using SORT:

• Static – things that don’t change – e.g. the date of incorporation, tax reference numbers and registration numbers, audited accounts.
• Organisational – any standard information about your organisation – e.g. company mission statements, vision, roadmaps, office locations, organisation charts, annual reports, mergers and acquisitions.
• Reference – these are static but generally refer to a specific event, date or time – e.g. awards, commendations, case-studies. They may be updated in the future if there is something that needs to be added to a case study for instance.
• Time-limited – things that have regular expiry dates – e.g. insurance certificates, health and safety statistics, quality certifications.

These items are easy to check through and see whether they are up-to-date or need a refresh. It’s also generally a quick thing to get updated as they are items that need to be kept current for regulatory purposes, which means it’s often just a case of setting up a workflow that adds the bid team to the owner’s distribution list when a new version, or updated numbers, are released.

Often going through the SORT items uncovers interesting and useful pieces of evidence that can score useful points in responses. The other nifty result of uncovering and updating these items is that you can send out positive communications to your content library users letting them know about what’s been updated and if there is anything new and exciting what it is. Generating enthusiasm in the library and new content is key to getting people to buy in to updating it and being part of its success.

Remember to keep tabs on SORT items – while they may need less intensive looking after they still need to be kept current.

The next post will give you some tips on communicating the developments so far to your team and checking-in with stakeholders and SMEs.