I need the best minds on this one! PPT Proposals and Word too

Hi everyone. I need help with this one.

We have created an offline Proposal Library (a Word doc). My goal is to get this into RFPIO. I know what I need to do to do this, but I have a challenge.

Some of the sellers want to provide this content in PPT. Some will use Word.

Within the Section Template, I typically add the proposal content in the Description.

The challenge I have with this, users can't get to this content to bring it into PPT(I think that's a correct statement). IF I add this content in as a Q&A pair, then it would be in the Content Library, and they can use RFPIO Lookup to add it to PPT.

Is that how you would do it? But how would it work with the Question field for formatting?

Does all of this make sense?

Comments

Tiffany Ramos

@nicole@rfpio.com - Tagging you here since you know all about our history :)

Nicole Stanford

Hi @tiffany_ramos - this is a great question and it absolutely makes sense! You could definitely set up Q&A pairs in the Library that could then be leveraged via the LookUp for Powerpoint integration. However, I think you could go one step further and create a "template" in Powerpoint (whether that's a full deck or just a single slide) and then add it to your Content Library. Once there your team will be able to create a Powerpoint presentation by leveraging your Powerpoint Templates in the Library. In my opinion, this would provide the best formatting for that content, as it would be curated for use in Powerpoint.

This help center article shows a great overview of the steps once the Powerpoint presentations have been loaded into your Content Library.

I hope this helps!

Elaine Crann

@tiffany_ramos We too have a Word document we use as a Template. We've had struggles with Section Templates and Word, some graphics don't export accurately so I would be interested in hearing how PPT handles graphics. We use PPT for non-competitive responses when it makes sense so it's not too often but the sales team like PPT.

Tiffany Ramos

@nicole@rfpio.com - Ideally, the content for the Word doc and the PPT slides would be the same. In the same location.

Right now, I have the content in the Section Description. That makes the content not available for Lookup, correct?

IF I moved it to the Answer Library, that's going to mess with my formatting. Thoughts?

Fouad Jamoukha

@Tiffany Ramos, we too are in the process of looking into using RFPIO for our proposals.

We've tried Section Templates and it didn't work for us since the process of adding sections to projects, then exporting was too complicated and didn't match up well to how we do our work.

Instead, we are now working through a combo solution.

First, we've broke up our existing document template (200+ pages) into subsections and saved them as individual docs in the Content Library (e.g. Each product description gets its own document), then named/tagged them (e.g. Solution Overview, Product Description).

The second part involves using RFPIO Lookup to build the document within MS Office. Users start with a simple 4 page template that simply has a cover page, table of contents, and standard legal disclaimers. Users then use RFPIO Lookup, along with filtering/tags, they are able to create an entire proposal, from cover letter all the way to detailed product descriptions.

The beauty of this solution is that our teams are in an environment they're already used to (i.e. MS Office) and the formatting is already taken care of in the documents you upload into the Content Library.

You can follow the same idea in PowerPoint which is something we're considering once we're done the proposal content work for Word.

Oh, and a shameless plug ... One thing that would help improve the experience for us is to have the ability to use a folder structure for documents in the Content Library/Lookup. It doesn't exist today, so I added an idea for it. Feel free to upvote if its something you think you can use:

https://feedback.userreport.com/a8799856-5261-41a2-a0dd-cf1634ae6417#idea/407188

Effie Koutsoff

Thank you for sharing your experiences! I'll include mine as well. We have Section Templates that output to a Word document Template which includes elements that stay the same, like a cover letter, disclaimer, etc. We also use Project Templates, so the user only needs to select the specific scenario, and the required Section Templates are automatically added to their project based on the option they chose, along with any necessary files from the Document Library. And it's a fast and accurate process!

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