Proceedings of STPIS'17



                                     Case and the challenges
                                   Proposal process adesso AG

    adesso AG / adesso group = European Company
    ► More than 2.100 employees
    ► Group sales 2016 →260 MM
    ► Expactes sales 2017 → 290 MM
    ► Various awards as top employer
                                                                              Organisation
                                                                              Board of managers → Leader Line
                                                                              of business → Area manager →
    ► IT service provider
                                                                              Leader Competence Center →
    ► Full service
                                                                              Team
         >    Employees with mixture of educations/ tasks (testers,
              developers, consultants)
                                                                              Remuneration structure
         > subsidiary companies → cover various business areas                ► Project employment allocated
           (agencies (design, content etc.), hosting, personal                   on customer projects
           mediator etc.                                                      ► Creation of proposals additional
    ► body leasing                                                               to project employment
    ► Various technology partnerships (Microsoft, Nintex etc.)                ► For creation of proposals no
    ► split in different business focuses “lines of business” →                  extra budget
       insurance, public, automotive, utilities, health, lottery,             ► Time for creation of proposals is
       banking, “cross Industries”, Microsoft, IT Management                     not allocated on customer
       Consulting ITMC                                                           projects



Proposal process
Proposal manager = expert for creation of proposal → responsible for the formal correctness
Bid Manager = expert for topic / technology → responsible for the content

                                                                   Main challenges:

                                                                   ► Bid decision - process not done correctly
                                                                      – Bid-Excel is not filled or the decision
                                                                      was made too late
                                                                      (deadline gets too close)
                                                                   ► time (set up infrastructure (SharePoint),
                                                                      CRM entry, create a proposal template
                                                                      with the structure – is all done
                                                                      manually)
                                                                   ► searching in the reference system
                                                                      critical - use of references not permitted
                                                                      (or just in parts) – finding appropriate
                                                                      references/profiles/texts      –     done
                                                                      manually


©Copyright held by the author(s)                                                                      112
                                                Proceedings of STPIS'17




The adesso AG / adesso group (adesso) provides custom and customized IT solutions for a
variety of different public and privately funded organizations from fields such as utilities, health,
lottery, banking, IT Management and Consulting, insurance and automotive. adesso has more
than 2.100 employees in mainly European but also non-European countries and has received
various awards as top employer for several years. One major part of our operations is the
creation and management of project proposals. This process – which is oftentimes initiated by
successful previous collaborations – involves a variety of different personnel from different
departments and on different hierarchical levels. It consists of seven main steps which are
outlined in figure XYZ. The process requires close collaboration with technical staff (experts of
the object of the proposal), sales staff, lawers and proposal managers (formal experts). Due
to the diversity of knowledge involved and due to the fact that the process requires contribution
from people that are already booked full time in customer projects it poses a number of unique
challenges. The main challenges that we will aim to tackle during the workshop are:
► Timing of bid decisions
► Inadequate technical support
► Coordination between organizational units




Edited by S. Kowalski, P. Bednar and I. Bider                                                    113