Measuring Technical Results

As we defined them, technical results are the direct consequence of improvements to the infrastructure. These improvements result in greater productivity, better utilization of resources, lower costs of operation, or similar measures related to time and effort. Here are some ways of measuring technical results:

1. Decreasing the Cost per Page

How much does it cost to produce a proposal? One way to measure the costs is to calculate how much you spend per page. For example, let's look at two years' operation in a large proposal operation:

2002:	Proposal Center budget = $850,000 Total proposal pages produced = 50,000 Cost per page = $17
2003:	Proposal Center budget = $850,000 Total proposal pages produced = 60,000 Cost per page = $14.17

The cost per page has gone down considerably, an interesting measurement, but it ignores issues of quality and effectiveness. Producing 20 percent more garbage isn't necessarily an improvement. But if you couple this kind of metric with careful tracking of business results, you will have a useful insight.

2. Decreasing the Cost per Outgoing Page/Incoming RFP Pages

This is an attempt to account for the complexity of the proposals being handled. The assumption behind this is that responding to a twenty-page RFP is probably less demanding than responding to one that's 200 pages.

3. Reducing Access Time to Existing Information

Good proposals require good information. A proposal operation that can find the right information quickly will be more efficient than one that struggles to locate the information needed for a proposal.

2002:	Finding an RFP answer among existing proposals: 42 minutes average
2003:	Finding an RFP answer from redesigned database: 3 minutes average