I work in a company that delivers software related tailor made solutions to our customers.

Often happens that the customer does not have had time to read the .doc or .pdf or .ppt proposal. The proposal includes Exec Summary, State of the Art, Requirements, Pricing and Conditions basically.

I'm wondering if those formats are out of date and customers would engage in reading those if in other more atractive formats such as flash or web based proposals.

Best Regards,
Oriol

Hi oribera! Welcome to the forum. :)

Welcome Oriol!

Are you referring to proposals? I do mine in PDF and they seem to work fine. I guess it matters how long they are or how 'technical' the lingo is.

Hi Oriol,

A combination of simple and sophisticated can often be the best approach. Give people alternatives, so that they can invest as much or as little time, effort, and energy looking at your products as they want.

Present information twice - a summary view, and then a more detailed view. The care you use in preparing your proposal reflects upon your company. If everything is very well organized, easy to read, and allows people to find the specific information they are looking for quickly, it makes that document more likely to be something that succeeds.

I've seen some multimedia presentations, and I'm not sure that I'm sold on them as a potential replacement for a proposal. Maybe in addition to a document, but not as the only source of information. There's a lot to be said for paper when you envision a conference room filled with people discussing your document, and they all have copies in hand, with notes scribbled upon them.

I recognize and understand that busy folks have troubles reading long documents in addition to performing other aspects of their jobs. But, if the proposal is something important to them, chances are that someone will read it carefully. A well written and organized proposal can really make a difference.

The PDF format is so ubiquitous that if you are delivering a document to a client with unknown capabilities, it is the preferred format.

You may also want to put up a web page or two with the "flashy" presentation (whether you use Flash or not) that the user can get to with a click on a link in the same email the PDF is attached to. That way they can keep on surfin' over to your info or stop the browsin' and take time to read the attachment.