Reviewing proposals

Experts on the InsightGig platform will respond to your Public or Private Brief (insight requirement) with a proposal for the project. You can review the proposal(s) received and either proceed or decline them. 

Reviewing proposals

• When you receive a project proposal, you will be notified by email with a direct link to review it. Here is how the email looks. 

• You can also open the project on your own by logging in. Go to your Inbox on the top right of your screen and clicking on the chosen project. The Inbox works somewhat like a mailbox, with each 1-1 interaction having its own link with details like brief title, when it was posted, and so on.   

• Once you open the proposal, you will reach the collaboration page, which has both the brief that you sent and the proposal sent by the expert.  

• The proposal will have the following fields, along with an attachment with more details.

A short description by the expert on why they are suited for your project. This will help you understand why you should choose that particular expert for the project. We recommend experts to keep this short, explaining the core reason(s) on why they are best suited for the project. 

The scope of work. Here, the expert provides a summary of the scope of your work. Are they proposing to take full charge of the project or certain portions of it? Does their scope include specific activities like fieldwork, data cleaning, data modeling, report writing? Do they need anything specific from you for executing their scope of work? We recommend experts on the platform to provide a summary in this field and explaining further in a separate supporting document. There is a provision to a document with every proposal.

Project approach/methodology. In this field, experts provide a summary of the specific approach/methodology that they are planning to follow to achieve your objective. Are they planning to use a specific market research or data modeling technique? Again, we recommend experts to provide a summary in this field and explaining further in detail in a separate supporting document. We recommend clients to be wary of proposals without the requisite details!   

Supporting documents. We strongly recommend to our experts that they should attach a document in their proposal outlining their scope of work and specific methodology/technique they intend to use to achieve the objective stated by you. 

Fee. Experts can indicate their fee in INR or USD inclusive of all taxes. We also recommend to expert to provide a full breakup of the fee in the supporting document. 

Payment terms for the project. There are six payment options that expert can choose to offer.  

• 100% on project completion
• 25% payment upfront, 75% payment on project completion 
• 50% payment upfront, 50% payment on project completion
• 60% payment upfront, 40% payment on project completion
• 75% payment upfront, 25% payment on project completion
• 100% payment upfront

Proposed start and end dates for the project. The expert can indicate when they propose to start and finish the project. In some cases, expert may be engaged and can commit only to starting at a later stage. At other times, they might be available to start immediately. The end date would be based on the time it takes to execute the project. 

• These details would allow you to take an informed decision on the proposal that you prefer to go ahead with (or not). There is a messenger available on the collaboration page, where you can chat with the expert in case of clarifications or questions or edits required in the proposal. 

• You can discuss the proposal with each expert and ask questions or clarifications. The expert can edit the proposal any number of times based on your requirements till the time you accept or decline the proposal. After your acceptance or decline, the final version of the proposal cannot be edited.  

Typically, you would choose one of the proposals received and proceed further. It is also possible that you choose none or in some cases, commission more than one expert! The next article will explain how you can collaborate on projects that you have accepted from experts.