Introduction
Pre-award is a powerful, user-friendly application designed to streamline and optimize the pre-award contract lifecycle for both government and commercial contracts. This will walk you through detailed workflows for using Pre-award to manage Solicitations.
NOTE
The Pre-award feature can be accessed from the Pre-award application home or the Opportunity Record page. To launch the Pre-award application, search for Pre-award in the App launcher and open it.
Prerequisites
TechnoMile's Analytics package must be installed and configured. The version of this package must be 2024.3 or higher.
To use Pre-award within Growth or Contracts, ensure that TechnoMile's Growth or Contracts Suite is installed and configured. The version of this package must be 2024.3 or higher.
Solicitations
For effective management of multiple Solicitation requests from the government, it is recommended that you allocate a new Solicitation record (type: Market Research, Sources Sought, RFI, RFQ, RFP, Special Notice (SAM.gov), Presolicitation (sam.gov), Solicitation (sam.gov) or custom) for each government Solicitation you receive. This ensures consistent tracking of every request type throughout the entire process.
For Solicitation types like Market Research that don't require a response, the system won't automatically create Proposals. However, all Solicitation types, regardless of whether they require a response, follow the same workflow within the Pre-award application.
To begin pursuing a new government Solicitation, create a Solicitation record from the Pre-award application homepage (Proposal Management Home) or the Solicitations tab within the Sales Opportunity record.
Solicitation for a Government Contract
Creating the Solicitation
Navigate to the Solicitations page from the Proposals Management Home page.
Click New.
Specify inputs for the fields such as Solicitation Number, Solicitation Type, Opportunity to link the Solicitation to, Solicitation Description, and the Return By date.
Click Save.
The Solicitation record is created and a Proposal record for this Solicitation is auto-generated.NOTE
A Proposal record is automatically generated only for Solicitations with a specified Return By date. The absence of a Return By date indicates that no response is required, and consequently, no Proposal record is auto-generated.
Details of important fields in the Solicitation record are listed below:
Field Name
Field Description
Solicitation Number
The unique government ID for this Solicitation, usually an alpha-numeric value which will be listed on the documentation (ex: RFQ000000, 00TU00-24-Q-0000, HQ0000R0000)
Solicitation Type
The type of the solicitation record. Values can include RFI, RFP, and Sources Sought or values from sam.gov such as Presolicitation and Solicitation.
Issued Date
The date the solicitation was released.
Opportunity
The Opportunity linked to this Solicitation, if applicable.
Solicitation Description
A brief summary of the solicitation's requirements.
RFQ/Quote Status
Current status of the Solicitation - currently open (accepting bids) or closed (no longer accepting bids and/or cancelled).
Status
The current status of this Solicitation for the internal team.
Return By
The date the responses to this Solicitation are due to be submitted back to the customer.
Submitting the Solicitation for Approval
Navigate to the Solicitation record created in Creating the Solicitation section.
Click Submit for Approval.
Note: The Solicitation status must be In Review before submission for approval. If not manually set, it will automatically change to In Review upon submission.Specify your comments and click Submit.
In the next step, select an approver from the Choose Next Approver drop-down list and click Submit.
The Solicitation is submitted for approval.
Approval of Solicitations
Go to the Approval History section under the Related tab of the Solicitation record.
Click Approve.
Specify the approval comments and click Approve.
The Solicitation is approved and the stage changes to Bid Approved.
Approval Workflow
Case 1: Solicitation is rejected:
If the Solicitation gets rejected, it goes to the No Bid stage. The linked Proposal status changes no bid and this effect cascades to all related records. An email notification regarding the No Bid status is sent to all Proposal Team members.
You can also return from the No Bid stage to the In Review stage and resubmit the Solicitation for approval. For example, if you get a Solicitation Amendment that changes the requirements on the Solicitation, you can change the stage to No Bid. After factoring in the amendment, you can manually change the status back to In Review and re-submit the Solicitation for approval.
Once approved, the Solicitation moves to the Bid Approved stage.
Case 2: Solicitation is approved: The Solicitation moves to the Bid Approved stage and all the members of the Proposal Team receive email notifications about this update.
If the Solicitation is approved, the focus shifts to working on the details of the Proposal and getting it approved for submission to the Customer. For details on the Proposal workflow, see the Pre-award Proposals User Guide.
Solicitation Amendments
When a Solicitation Amendment is generated, all Proposal Team members are notified to enable them to perform Proposal tweaks and adjustments based on the amendment.
Navigate to the Related tab of the Solicitation record and click Solicitation Amendments.
Click New.
Specify the Name, Solicitation Amendment - Type, and Solicitation Amendment - Description, and click Save.
All Proposal team members are notified by email about the Solicitation Amendment.
Submitting the Proposal to the Customer
You will be notified once the Proposal handled by the Contract Manager is approved (see Handling Approval or Rejection section of the Pre-awards - Proposals User Guide). Once notified, you can submit the Proposal to the Customer. After the submission is made, update the status in the Solicitation record as shown below:
Navigate to the Proposal record for which the Approval has been received.
Click the Solicitation linked to the Proposal.
Click Bid Submitted in the stage ribbon and then click Mark as Current Status.
The bid is submitted and you will be notified of the outcome of the bid evaluation process once the decision is made.
Handling a Proposal Win
After Negotiation, if you win the bid, you must update your Solicitation status and inform the proposal team about the win.
Navigate to the Solicitation record.
Click Closed Won and then click Mark as Current Status.
An email notification about the win is sent to the owner of the Proposal.
The Proposal owner must update the closed reason in the Proposal record and generate the Contract.
Commercial SOWs - Creating a Proposal of Type SOW
Ideally, commercial SOWs must be proactively sold rather than solicited. In this case, the bid process is initiated with the creation of a Proposal of type SOW from the Pre-award application home or from the Proposals tab of the Opportunity record page.
If a new Proposal of type SOW is created, the system auto-generates a Solicitation record for the user. If the Proposal of type SOW is linked to an Opportunity record, the Solicitation generated from the Proposal is also automatically linked to the Opportunity record
NOTE
For commercial SOWs, auto-creating a Solicitation record upon Proposal creation ensures stakeholders can track the bidding process, field/status changes, and bid outcomes from a centralized location.
Once the Solicitation is autogenerated, the bid process for commercial SOWs follows the same workflow as government contracts.