Siebel Correspondence, Proposals, and Presentations Guide > Proposals > Creating Proposal Template Documents in Microsoft Word >

Planning the Proposal Template

Before you create the documents in Word, you must determine how the proposal should look and what type of information it should contain.

Begin by looking at previous successful proposals to see what sections they included. For example, did they all have a cover letter, an executive summary, and a quote? Also, look at the documents your company currently has on hand, and the customer questions these pieces answer. Then decide how to organize your information. What topics could be standard across all proposals? What topics are specific to certain proposals? What is the best order for the pieces in the proposal you are creating? Finally, decide what fields to insert to customize their proposals (for example, contact name, account name, and industry). You will use this information to create bookmarks in your Word documents.

As part of your planning, you should look at the sample templates that come with Siebel Proposals, which are described in Sample Proposal Data: Field Mappings and Templates.

NOTE:  Proposals use fields from only one business object. If you want to include additional fields, you must use Siebel Tools to add the business components that include these fields to the business object that is the basis of the proposal.