Starting over - Slightly OT

[Joseph Sims]

Framers, 

It's been a full three months since I last saw a Frame doc, having
changed careers, companies, industries and most things that were
familiar. I'm now tasked with managing the proposal process at a new
place.

Our proposals are 50-100 page documents (8-12 per month) with a mixture
of original sales writing, stock content, and responses to questions.
The deadlines are tight, and involve multiple, fairly willing
contributors. It's like technical writing on speed, IMO. Deliverables
are about 60% PDF and 40% paper. I think paper is declining rapidly. 

The process I inherited is Word-based. So my nice, clean template gets
fairly polluted right away when pasting in client RFP questions, stock
answers, and material created in Word by people who aren't in the
document business.

The good thing is there are few boundaries on change here. This process
can literally be scrapped if I have a superior replacement that makes
good sense. So if you could do it all over - what would you do?

My thoughts:

A. Office 2007 Word - This is supposed to have structured authoring.
We'll wait for a demo. 

B. Structured Frame - I've never designed a structured template, and
would I have to buy seats for all contributors? 

C. Structured Frame with Frame Server - I haven't heard a lot of people
here mention it. We manage a file based, and growing content repository
to help with proposal questions. Does it make sense?

D. Arbortext - Pay to have all document issues resolved. 

Did I miss any? Did I miss the point of some? 

Thanks, 
Joe
 

D. Joseph Sims
Communications Group Manager
Sutherland Global Services 
1160 Pittsford-Victor Rd. 
Pittsford, New York 14534 
Office - (585) 586-5757 *2447
Cell - (585) 967-4187