Capture planning plays an important role when a company decides to respond to an RFP. The main purpose of the capture management team is to perfectly position your company to become the selection of the decision makers. It’s a complex process that starts long before the final solicitation is released by the federal agency you’ve targeted. Capture planning is about identifying business opportunities and developing winning strategies to improve the potential for a win.

Capture planning should be done on consistent bases in written form by involving practical action approach to find the solution for the problem issued in the RFP. The plan should be sound and able to demonstrate the critical thinking of the compilers. Depending on the size and the complexity of the opportunity, you should always develop unique, customized planning.

How to Implement Best Practices

It’s important to develop a framework in order to list Capture Plan elements that usually consist of:

Opportunity Description

Here you list all the facts about the new business opportunity you’re pursuing, including the name of the program and the Federal agency (customer) that is buying the service/product; background information; acquisition scheduling; your vision and customer’s objectives and requirements.

Customer Analysis

This section is about the assessment you’ve planned to do about the contracting agency and the buying office; buying and evaluation criteria; past contracting history; information about the decision makers, stakeholders, and their past satisfaction feedback.

Competitive Analysis

Define the points you’re going to focus when conducting the competitive assessment. The process includes the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats against customer’s perception. You should be able to identify the solution approach and the strategy they’re going to use.

Internal Analysis

Determine the points you’re going to focus on when you conduct the internal analysis of your company. Here you can list your possible solution, pricing, past experience, past performance, and risk assessment.

Capture Strategy Development

Capture strategy is the essence of the capture plan. Here is the part when you start practicing everything you have already put in the paper. You already have the whole picture of how your win strategy is going to be like. Contact plan is established and you have the gathered information from intelligence research you’ve conducted. Here you arrange how you’re going to organize your meetings, your team, especially key personnel, and the technology development you’re going to use in order to implement the plan effectively. Make sure to encompass everything including risk assessment, win themes, review achievement goals, proposal development, and P-Win.

Writing and Review

At this point, your capture manager is ready to deliver the plan to the proposal management team.  All they have to do is use the resources that your capturing team handed them and develop a compelling proposal that eventually positions your company to WIN.