Product
Solutions
Resources
Knowit delivered a large 4 part bid for a frame agreement using the CV Partner feature "external proposals" to collaborate with 26 consortium partners. CV Partner was used to deliver high quality, tailored CVs and resumes, exported directly from CV Partner in a custom made template for the bid requirements.
Knowit was established in 1990 and has around 3,800 employees at locations in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Poland. Knowit AB (publ) is listed on the Nordic Exchange in Stockholm. Knowit consists of four key business areas:
“Experience” who are targeting digital presence and enriching user experiences via web and social media, and help companies and organizations to achieve their business-critical objectives.
“Insight”, with its almost 300 employees, who are one of the stronger digital management consultancy firms in the Nordic region.
“Solutions” who are cutting-edge expertise in all parts of the system development process – from ideation, architecture, and project management to system development, implementation, testing, and security.
"Connectivity" who connect, digitalize and secure what you value, by high-tech software engineering in agile teams, on embedded, cloud and applications, for a more humane and sustainable business.
The bid was in four parts, each with a different competence area. Knowit was already providing services to the client and the new bid was for a new frame agreement.
Knowit submitted bids for all four areas, and all of them required high quality, tailored CVs and resumes. In total we collaborated with 26 consortium partners, each submitting the CV and Case Study content in a collaborative fashion within the CV Partner SaaS tool.
Had to deliver a large 4 part bid with custom specifications
”The process was both streamlined and allowed us to get the data we needed in a much faster way compared with our legacy tool, or doing the same process manually.”Bid Manager at Knowit, Per-Olof Vallin
Early in the process we decided to build a custom CV template for the bid. This was designed to meet the requirements stated in the RFP document. This was quickly implemented in CV Partner by the CV Partner template team.
Secondly, we added our own CVs and resumes and tailored them. We then shared links to each of the 4 proposals with our partners, who would add their CVs and tailor them in the shared collaborative proposal.
The proposal was at the end QA’ed in CV Partner and exported as a finished document. The final submission was put together by the Knowit bid team. The process was both streamlined and allowed us to get the data we needed in a much faster way compared with our legacy tool, or doing the same process manually.
"We decided to be fully transparent, and that each partner had direct access to each other's CVs as well as the final version of the submitted bid. This made the entire process easier."Bid Manager at Knowit, Per-Olof Vallin
How did you collaborate with the rest of the consortium in the process?
The overall bid submission process took around 30 days. We had identified our partners, and met with them prior to the bid being issued. We had a shared Sharepoint as well as Microsoft Teams room where participants in each of the 4 main areas had access. We decided to be fully transparent, and that each partner had direct access to each other's CVs and resumes as well as the final version of the submitted bid. This made the entire process easier for all participants. We had two QA stages, and in total 4 people have reviewed each CV and resume.
How did CV Partner assist you in this process outside the tool?
The CV Partner template team did a quick and good job creating the template. Also, CV Partner assisted in setting up demo/trial accounts for participating companies who had not yet started with CV Partner. This allowed them to add their data in CV Partner and share the data with us easily.
Overall bid submission process took around 30 days
We prefer to use best-of-breed, specialised tools which have the features we need to win bids (such as the collaborative proposals feature!). In total each user does not require any training. Sending them the link (either to the proposal or as an external user) will enable anyone to easily add their data in the right place. Once that is done the bid team can create the tailored version in the bid.
End users (the consultants themselves) do not need training, but the bid team or super users might benefit from a quick 30 minute training session, if they are to use the more advanced proposal features. That said, it was the first time we used the collaborative feature and we could get started with it without any training.
"We are definitely using this feature again for new bids."Bid Manager at Knowit, Per-Olof Vallin
We had some feature requests after the bid was submitted. As it was our first experience delivering such a large bid with many collaborators using CV Partner, we therefore booked a call with the Customer Success Team and provided feedback. The feedback was primarily minor features that could further improve the workflow. We wanted an easier way to share proposals with multiple partners at a time, as well as ability to easily highlight the contributing partner (the company name) in each CV and resume. We are definitely using this feature again for new bids.
Having used CV Partner for almost 3 years, the responsiveness of the team, both for meetings and the support chat is by far the best we have experienced. We also enjoy the fact that it is specialised and designed for winning bids and proposals. We do not miss our legacy, in-house CV tool, but enjoy the user friendly and responsive CV Partner SaaS tool.
"Having used CV Partner for almost 4 years, the responsiveness of the team, both for meetings and the support chat is by far the best we have experienced."Bid manager at Knowit, Per-Olof Vallin
