commbini version 1.0.0 is live
Why I built a business development engine for communications agencies.
After 7 months of collecting audience feedback, testing with beta users, refining, adding functionality, and building behind the scenes, commbini v1.0.0 is finally live.
I built commbini to solve common business development problems I encountered regularly when working in agencies, or saw from the other side in government:
a. Business development is critical to any agency (duh), but time spent on it isn't billable. The more you invest into it, the less you're covering your salary costs.
b. Because you're pulling people away from live projects, they're not necessarily in the right headspace to design strong pitches. People are keen to get back to their projects, might forget relevant projects, or might not know where to find old case studies.
c. The cost of writing a pitch means you get priced out of projects below a floor value. If it costs you $10,000 just to write a pitch, what's the point in bidding for a $20,000 project?
d. Not all agencies are good at capturing institutional knowledge. When experienced people leave, so does their knowledge of past successes and failures.
e. You might be so excited to win business from a new client that you overlook critical gaps in the brief or RFP. Then three weeks into a contract, you realise you'll need more time and money.
f. If you forget to check every site that tenders are listed on, you might miss great opportunities that would be perfect for your team.
To summarise: business development is expensive and inconsistent. But it doesn't have to be.
With commbini, I sought to solve these problems with advanced tools, a private knowledge ecosystem accessible only to your individual account or team, and rich features for discovery of new business opportunities. This blog post is already getting long so I'll share more info on what they are and how they work in follow-up posts.
Starting with commbini costs nothing for the base functionality. Give it a try, let me know your thoughts, and don't be shy about requesting new features. My goal is to build a platform that's truly built around the daily needs of BD teams in comms agencies.
~ Ziad