Lesson 5: Track and analyze your BD efforts
You will learn how to look at past and current BD efforts, review potential workload, and produce customized information for additional detail.
| Start here! | Manage your open BD efforts |
| Evaluate the success of your BD efforts | |
| Forecast potential workload | |
| Look at more detail for BD phases and marketing stages (optional) | |
| Test your knowledge |
Manage your open BD efforts
Use the BD Progress report to manage your tasks on open BD efforts in a variety of ways. An open BD effort is a BD phase that has a final disposition of Open. You can look forward at future tasks that need to be accomplished and look back on performance and tasks that have already been completed.
You can select options to produce the report in the way that best helps you to analyze the following:
- Projects your firm is pursuing
- Tasks that need to be performed
- Efforts by segments, such as department or market segment (project type)
You can even use the report as a report card of completed tasks.
How to get the most out of it
This report includes contract amounts from the production phases that are linked to BD phases. For the report to contain meaningful data, ensure that you entered contract amounts for the lowest-level production phases.
For a project's BD efforts to appear on the report, the project must have at least one stage that is in progress.
Where to see it
From the Reports menu, click Project > Business Development > BD Progress.
What it looks like
Evaluate the success of your BD efforts
The Win Rate report is a listing of wins and losses over a period of time, such as the last month, last quarter, or last fiscal year. It provides valuable insight to trends and information that help your firm take action to increase your win rate in the future.
Using the customize options, you can produce the report in different ways. For example, you can analyze performance for the following:
- A certain market segment (project type)
- A department
- An individual (project manager, principal, or marketing contact)
You can also use the Win Rate report for competitive analysis to determine your toughest competitors and the markets where you are losing to them. To do so, select to show only the lost projects and sort by Awarded to.
How to get the most out of it
This report includes contract amounts from the production phases that are linked to BD phases. For the report to contain meaningful data, ensure that you entered contract amounts for the lowest-level production phases.
Where to see it
From the Reports menu, click Project > Business Development > Win Rate.
What it looks like
Forecast potential workload
Use the Project Workload report to review a factored forecasted amount for work you are currently pursuing.
When working with the BD phase, you enter your percent chance of winning the work (on the Marketing Info subtab of the Business Development subtab). You also link the production phase to the BD phase by selecting the BD phase in the Marketing Phase field on the General subtab. Ajera then calculates the factored amount by multiplying the percent chance of winning (as entered for the BD phase) by the proposed contract amount and hours for the linked production phases.
For example, your firm is trying to win a job that requires 300 hours of work. Your firm is competing against two other firms, and it is a new client for all firms, so you expect you have an even chance of winning: a 1-in-3 chance or 33 percent. That 33 percent appears as roughly 100 hours of potential work on the report. It appears in green so you can easily distinguish projected work from actual work.
When considering just one project, the potential workload projection may seem overweighted; however, when the Project Workload report includes many potential projects, all with different percent chances of winning, this factored amount can provide a realistic forecast of future workload.
Where to see it
From the Reports menu, click Project > Project Workload.
Include potential workload in the report
Click 
(Customize) and do the following:
- In the Amount Type field, select Hours.
- Select the Include marketing effort check box. (unavailable in ajeraCore)
What it looks like
Look at more detail for BD phases and marketing stages (optional)
You can produce these inquiries to look at more detail for BD phases and marketing stages. As with all inquiries, you can customize the information by adding and deleting columns, as needed.
These inquiries contain detailed information in a format that is easy to print.
BD Phase inquiry
From the
Marketing Stage inquiry
From the
Congratulations!
You've completed the Marketing Specialist's Path through Ajera course.
