What is a case study / reference project?

Reference projects are CV Partner’s unique solution for showcasing the full depth of experience in your company. A reference project is the fast, effective way for external stakeholders to view your previous project experience in the context of meeting and overcoming real-world challenges. 

Whereas Master CVs can be used to demonstrate individual contributions from employees and teams within your company, a reference project is formatted to demonstrate the success of your organisational processes quickly and efficiently. The reference project template is formatted to emphasise the most vital elements of the project:

• Project Challenge. A summary description of the challenge posed by the brief set by the client
• Project Solution. The necessary skills and solutions your company used to complete the project successfully
• Client Benefits. How your organisation managed to achieve the project’s final objectives and the benefits this provided for the client

With only a few short sentences you can summarise working methodologies and solutions, or include performance metrics, to offer compelling evidence of your company’s ability to get the job done and meet the client’s highest expectations.

How do I use a reference project? 

As a knowledge-based enterprise or service, there are two elements to selling your company:

1. Convincing a client of your knowledge and expertise
2. Demonstrating your ability to translate this expertise into successful execution

To meet the first criterion, use the Master CV search to find and add employees with specific skills to a new proposal. For meeting the second criterion, the reference project uses past projects to illustrate how your business functions collectively to reach project objectives:

• As you complete a project, add it to your reference project library, quickly building up valuable data 
• When your proposal team puts together a proposal, they can search for previous projects which are relevant to the prospective client’s project
• Search by category-tags, industry type, skills, etc, using our predefined field-search and free-text search functionalities 
• When you find the right project, simply add the reference project to the new proposal. This helps you efficiently add further insight to the bid; and more effectively sell your collaborative knowledge
• Adapt the text of a reference project after you've added it to a proposal. This means you can easily customise each proposal, whilst protecting the integrity of the data in the original reference project

What else can I do with Reference Projects? 

As CV Partner creates a single workflow for your entire enterprise, it becomes possible to use projects completed in one part of your organisation as a springboard for selling your entire operation. Each reference project you store is searchable by all stakeholders and system users, so the data for different departments and locations can be shared with optimal efficiency.

Imagine that your teams in London are bidding for a new rail project, but they haven't previously work with transport before. However, the team in Munich has worked on several transport projects, including rail. The London team can now simply add Reference Projects from the Munich teams to give their bid more authority. 

But the key is, that the London team aren't simply selling the specialist skills of the Munich team in isolation, but the collaborative knowledge of your company as a whole.   

Reference projects - don’t just tell people what you can do, show them.

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