Speed up the approval process with Milestones Professional
Whether you’re in a role to build, sell, deliver, support, or manage your organization’s products and services, there’s no doubt you’ve seen your fair share of statements of work (SOW’s). Most of these documents are lengthy pages of requirements, pricing and deliverables that typically need to be reviewed by 2 or more company departments on both sides of the fence. And let’s face it, the entire process can take months to get final approval…not to mention the countless e-mail threads and headaches along the way.
Here are 5 tips Milestones Professional users can adopt to jumpstart their organization’s current SOW process and reduce the time it takes to finalize approval.
1. Provide visual clarity
People often use spreadsheet tables in their documents with basic data points and no reference to a timeframe. Consider all the unanswered questions from this common example:
•What’s the time span?
•What does the work entail?
•How many resources are there?
•Is it remote or onsite work?
2. Consolidate space
Stop forcing customers and co-workers to read through massive documents.
Too many pages will increase the time it takes to review your SOW, ultimately delaying the approval process.
Putting key data correlations on separate pages can make it harder to comprehend your SOW.
3. Streamline your change requests
If you’re using a spreadsheet or a Word document, you likely have to make several manual updates each time there are requested changes.
Simple schedule changes often impact several dependent tasks.
4. Sell your work
Avoid using bland document templates with basic tables and text. Instead, take advantage of Milestones to create eye-popping charts and timelines that make your documents stand out!
5. Track, communicate and drive progress
Use a separate Milestones chart to show everyone the current status and next steps towards approval.
Here are 5 tips Milestones Professional users can adopt to jumpstart their organization’s current SOW process and reduce the time it takes to finalize approval.
1. Provide visual clarity
People often use spreadsheet tables in their documents with basic data points and no reference to a timeframe. Consider all the unanswered questions from this common example:
•What’s the time span?•What does the work entail?
•How many resources are there?
•Is it remote or onsite work?
- A Milestones schedule communicates your work more clearly using a Gantt chart timeline interface. No questions are left unanswered.
2. Consolidate space
Stop forcing customers and co-workers to read through massive documents.
Too many pages will increase the time it takes to review your SOW, ultimately delaying the approval process.
Putting key data correlations on separate pages can make it harder to comprehend your SOW.
- Milestones allows you to combine task requirements, costs and scheduling…all on a single page.
3. Streamline your change requests
If you’re using a spreadsheet or a Word document, you likely have to make several manual updates each time there are requested changes.
Simple schedule changes often impact several dependent tasks.
- With Milestones, make simple click & drag changes to automatically adjust dependent tasks.
4. Sell your work
Avoid using bland document templates with basic tables and text. Instead, take advantage of Milestones to create eye-popping charts and timelines that make your documents stand out!
- Milestones Professional color themes allow you to use your company or client’s corporate look. You can also customize an existing theme and create your own.
- Use your company’s logo as a custom symbol on your SOW.
- Show your customers & co-workers the cost of not moving forward with your proposed work. And use symbol notes to make key points.
5. Track, communicate and drive progress
Use a separate Milestones chart to show everyone the current status and next steps towards approval.
- Keep progress moving by tracking the status and owner of each task. A stoplight and duration smart column can be used to provide a great quick glance update.
- Use initialize to current date symbol constraints to create task bars that automatically move forward with the current date to automate task tracking.
- Choose from a variety of ways to send your schedule to your customers and co-workers. Copy and paste directly into a document, an e-mail, or a PowerPoint slide. Save as a PDF or even have your audience download KIDASA’s free viewer so they can view, print, filter, and launch symbol hyperlinks from your schedule.
The next time you have a key statement of work or proposal that you need approved quickly, remember to use Milestones Professional and follow the above tips. You’ll transform painstakingly slow efforts into a clear, smooth and easy process that will cut your approval times in half.
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Save a schedule in an earlier version's format |
2019