Announcing Ruck - the digital business development assistant
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Business development is a major function of any company and when it comes to smaller businesses it can be a daunting task. Anomaly is no different in this respect and this responsibility falls primarily on my shoulders with support from our operations team. One of our challenges is constructing lengthy bespoke responses as each projects has it’s specific set requirements.
Like many services industries business development is a combination of:
- Responding to tenders and publicly available opportunities
- Seeking opportunities through professional circles and providing them quotes
- Responding to opportunities on marketplaces such as the DTA
Unlike traditional sales each opportunity requires us to either fill in great detail a template provided by the customer or a request for proposal which entails detailing a solution.
At Anomaly I am supported by our operations manager in identifying opportunities and prioritising them. This ensures we spend our limited time in responding to the ones with the greatest chance of success. Last few months have been rather involved in the business development side and we have been managing opportunities using spreadsheets, calendars, cloud file storage and the rare use of Kanban boards.
The primary challenges identified are:
- Organising prospects so we know where to focus
- Identifying the workloads as many responses are due in the same time window
- Collating responses and supporting documentation is a tedious process
- Archival of submissions for later reference
- Timely reminders so we can keep our eye on the prize
To help us with these challenges we decided to go ahead and build a platform that helps streamline the workflow, a digital assistant for our business development efforts.
Over a period of time we’ve refined the idea, sought feedback from business development professionals in a variety of industries and have decided to package up what we’ve been using as an internal tool as a product offering.
Ruck provides a workflow that will help thousands of businesses out there streamline their business development efforts.
We are releasing details of features, pricing over the next few weeks and will hit beta in the coming months. We would love to have you on board for early access so we can learn about your pain points and have Ruck can address them.
Visit Ruck and put your hand up 😀