CharismatiCopywriter
&
Nirvana Notary
Are you looking for a digital product owner?
Does your company have a digital product idea, investors, and a slew of ideas that they want to turn into a functioning platform? Do you need assistance determining which will go to development in which sprints? Who are your potential users? What types of users are there? What is your timeframe? What other products are there like yours?
BidBrella
BidBrella is Siemens-Energy Service Marketplace. This site is to connect Siemens-Energy customers to outside vendors so that they can do services for Siemens-Energy customers, that Siemens-Energy does not offer. User registration is restricted to invitation only, and a 10% referral fee is added to every deal.
At Siemens Energy, I used my SaaS Sales experience to create a service marketplace, as a revenue stream for Siemens. I managed ideation, wireframing, developer selection, sprints, platform testing, payments, competitive research, domain, lead generation, sales pitches, copywriting, supplemental marketing material, internal investor pitches, onboarding, demonstrations, trade shows, and likely much more.
Pictured below is the mock up my team was provided after 5 years of "development" with SAP
This modified version of SAP FSM, was supposed to match a customer to a vendor based on skills and distance. However, this was not possible as it was a Single Tenant product and could not handle multiple customers matching to multiple vendors
When I came on to this project in March of 2021, the team had suffered through three cycles of the loss of all employees but the leader, and lost all its members once more in 2022, with the exception of she and I. With that being said, the project began in 2016, when then Siemens, who has split off from Siemens Energy, decided to create a marketing project in its New Business Development Team to connect outside vendors to its customer base for urgent needs during outages, as well as planned needs that could be forecasted.
To save money the original team, choose to modify SAP, FSM tool to try to meet this demand. The photo above are the mockups provided to them for POC. During the duration of development with them (5 years and no published result) SAP changed the product from a multi-tenant to a single tenant product. The remaining team leader was unaware of how this change affected the ability to have multiple vendors match to multiple customers.
In March of 2021, the team leader was losing another employee, and brought on me and another person to take over role of product owner. As I had ample experience in software sales and demos, it was clear to me the product they were proposing was not going to work as a solution to our problem to solve for Siemens-Energy.
My team and I decided to pivot to a developer. I conducted competitive research on different sites that were connecting customers and vendors in the service and construction worlds. I researched new development teams we could hire to replace SAP. I created an MVP document with the help of my team members to present for quotes from developers. We used Scrum project management and agile methodology. After selecting a developer, I created workflows, and user journeys, user stories, reviewed wireframes, and participated in sprint meetings.
I also created revenue models for subscription, and transaction fees, as well as constructed a marketing and sales plan.
Our team launched the site 7 months after we started this project in October of 2021. I began vendor acquisition immediately, per instruction.
As of July 2022, there was only myself and the team leader. We had completed 7 Sprints. I participated in daily meetings, as well as planning, and publishing meetings. I had done internal testing and created a ticket system for issues that arise with the onboarded customers and vendors.
In the final months, I would cold call a list of vendors, and schedule platform demonstrations via Microsoft Teams. I onboarded 50 vendors in the end, which surpassed the goal set for me. I continued to participate in meetings with the developer but shifted my priority to vendor acquisition. Our team leader was working with our developer to meet our branding requirements.
This project officially ended in September of 2022, when Siemens-Energy deployed new management techniques, which required all employees to only have 7 managers between them and the President, Rich Voorberg. This resulted in my team leader losing her position, as well as her boss. The project lost momentum and sits on the shelf now.
Click the link below and feel free to create a vendor profile.
MVP
Pictured above is a Charismatic PowerPoint presentation I made regarding payment options to create revenue on BidBrella.
Sales Plan
Pictured above is a charismatic salesplan presentation I created, you can see some early branding ideas
Request for a Vendor meeting phone script
An initial request for a meeting:
Hi my name is Jessica and I am with BidBrella, we are part of a customer experience team with Siemens-Energy. May I please speak with the Owner, or name if we have it?
(If the receptionist does not transfer you, ask politely for the email address)
Hello, name, I am Jessica with Genius Connect, we are part of a customer experience team that works with Siemens Energy. Are you familiar with Siemens-Energy? Great.
We have interviewed several of our connections and have discovered a great need for a digital platform that can help facilitate the owners and operators of large power plants, get the services they need in a more timely and efficient manner.
That being said we have created BidBrella, an exclusive platform where Siemens has vetted the member vendors to provide quotes for a variety of ancillary services, to our plant operations teams in an easy, secure, and efficient manner.
At this point, the site is still in Beta testing, and we are not charging our member vendors for the advertising, we are taking a percentage of the connection created when you make a sale, or sign a business contract, using our site. Just like Morgan and Morgan, we only get paid when we win. I would love to set up a time when I can learn more about your business and offer you a demo of the platform so that you can easily see how this can help you win more business.
A typical demonstration takes 45 minutes, I have openings left on Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon, which time slot suits you better?I will send you a calendar notification for a 1-hour time slot.
Great I have sent you a calendar invite for a Microsoft Teams meeting. It was a pleasure speaking to you name, and I look forward to our conversation on ….day.
Pictured below is a mock up of the staging platform
This is the result of my teams MVP, workflows, and user journeys we created
Demo Pitch
Site Explanation
Walk-through Script
Thank you for joining me today to go over the BidBrella demo, and without any further ado, let's dive on in.
BidBrella is a platform that is connecting Siemens-Energy Customers to outside vendors to fulfill the needs Siemens Energy cannot provide.
As a vendor on the Bidbrella platform, you will have exposure to new customer types
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More RFP to bid on
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& Increased revenue as a result
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Who doesn't like increased revenue, Yeh?
Wait
Here are some of the main categories we will focus on during our beta launch, as our vendor base grows so will our category list. If you had to pick 3 categories, for your business to fit into, what would you pick?
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Now how are you currently finding RFP?
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How many do you find in a typical month?
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Are you the person that does this work?
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How lengthy is your process from proposal to close?
On our platform, you can search for RFP in 3 ways. Here, by entering the location, here by entering a keyword, or here, by selecting the category you are looking for work in. Customers can also search for you by clicking Search Users
So I am going to log into the site as a vendor
Fire Sprinkler Repair
12345678
I am going to bid on an item, so I will type Orlando into the search bar. Our search bar accommodates for word fuzziness, so your spelling doesn't have to be awesome.
So I will click on Sprinkler repair.
Here I can Favorite this job, see the details about the job, view a little bit about the customer, see where the job is, and see a similar RFP to the one I searched for.
Now if I am undecided on bidding I can send the "I intend to bid" notification, which sends an anonymous notification to the customer to let them know there is a party interested in bidding on their need. I can also select and bid now.
This brings me into a bid window. It shows the customer's generic information on the right, and the form to complete my bid is on the left here. So we scroll down, and type in the description and price.
$10,00. As you can see here it clearly illustrates your take home as well as the fees owed to the platform. Like I said those are 10%, and if your math is any good here, you can see this is not accurate here, but this is the staging playground where I can enter data that doesn't mean anything so my apologies, and I can assure that the actual platform is set correctly.
So I come down to the bottom enter a short description, accept the terms and conditions and it takes me to the next screen
Here I can see that my bid status is pending, and the total amount of money I expect to bring home on this bid. I can see the customer's contact information, the details of my offer, and an option to cancel the bid. We are providing you the contact information here, as we expect you may need to conduct a site visit for your project to move to the next phase.
Put in another bid to show the decline
Now briefly before I move this bid through the bidding process, I am going to show you a few other things that a vendor can do and see on their side of this platform.
Jumping over to "Dashboard" this is where we are displaying a few KPIs that are important to each vendor, such as several accepted bids on the platform, as well as purchase volume. This helps the platform justify itself. Neat Right?
The message center is where you can see all the messages sent back and forth between you and any other member on the platform.
The bids section is where you can see all the bids you are currently working on. As you can see, each bid has an individual bid number, and the date the bid was released is in the top left corner. You can also see the bid status and count-down timer to indicate when the bid will no longer be available.
The payment screen will show you the details involving money you as a vendor owe to the platform.
Reviews will house all the ratings and reviews that customers have given you. Our platform features something unique called machine learning. It ranks vendors on responsiveness to bids, as well as the ratings that have been given by each customer. Just a little something to entice you to use the system.
My profile is where you will put in all your company information, logo, and what the community knows you for. In the Settings section, you can delete your account completely.
Any questions so far? OK, I am going to jump onto the customer's side and move that bid.
Coal Power Station
12345678
So I am going to start here on the big screen, as you can see all the different bid statuses in the corner of each bid. I can also see the name of the company offering a service. Let's take a look at the bid we just put in.
We can see the bid amount, the company contact information, and how many jobs they have completed with our other customers. I can click on their vendor profile. From here I have decided to proceed with the quote. Notice the disclaimer, that this is non-binding, as we expect there to be changes upon your site visit.
When the Customer clicks Proceed it takes me to a bid confirmation window. I scroll down to make sure all the information is correct, accept the terms and conditions, and click continue.
This brings me to a new screen called bids. I can see the current status of my bid and can see the company I am doing business with and all their contact information
Now I am going to log back in as the Vendor. As you can see the bid status has been updated to awarded and planning and the others are automatically sent a decline notice.
From here, I will open the bid and indicate that this job was awarded to our team and we intend to start it. When I make this action it allows me a message box where I can enter any updated information about the job, such as a price change, I accept the terms and conditions and move the status forward.
Now several days later, I will log back in one more time, and mark this service as done. This gives me a final opportunity to put any final job details in and accept the terms once more.
As you can read here the notice was sent to the customer to confirm the service was complete. So let's log back in as the customer.
As you can see the job's status was moved to awarded and in progress. But this job as completed. So as the customer, I will log in to the bid. Once here, I will look over the details one more time and confirm the service is done, I also accept the terms again and click continue. The job now shows as awarded and completed on the customer end.
It also now shows as awarded and completed on the Vendor side. This is where Siemens will generate and send you the invoice for the 10%. Click Siemens -Energy to return to the home screen
Now are there any questions? So whoever can say the best bids on Bidbrella 5 times fast wins?
Brochure created by my team, first draft back from the branding team. These are my edits.