How to use AI in tender and RFP management in 2024

More than half a year later it is clear that Artificial Intelligence will significantly transform your work in tender submissions. The question is where do you start?

I would like to take you through what you can expect. Let me briefly introduce myself. I’m Matthijs Huiskamp, founder and CEO of Altura, the full-cycle bid management system.

Impact of AI

Let's first look at the market. The freelance platforms, Fiverr and Upwork, saw a decrease in assignments and lower payments following the introduction of ChatGPT.

Additionally, there was a recent news report about Fintech Scaleup Klarna: "Klarna freezes hiring as chief bets AI can do the job instead."2

Is the CEO of Klarna correct? That remains to be seen. However, the impact of using AI for efficiency has been widely measured.

A study3 by Harvard and Boston Consulting Group revealed that consultants from BCG are significantly more productive and perform better with the help of AI. They could complete 12.5% more tasks, were 25% faster, and also increased quality by 40%.

On the stock market, the impact is also noticeable. Nearly 40% of all S&P 500 companies have used AI or AI-related terms in their quarterly earnings presentations4.

The best-performing stock in the S&P 500 was, of course, Nvidia, which soared by a staggering 235% this year, thanks to their AI chips5.

There are plenty of reasons to understand why you must use AI in your work. But how exactly does it work?

Introduction to AI in bid management

AI, or artificial intelligence, works by analysing large amounts of data and recognising patterns. These systems learn from the data and use this knowledge to make decisions or perform tasks, often in a way that mimics human intelligence.

People often think that AI only generates text or images, like ChatGPT. But it can do much more than that. There are many different ways you can use AI; here are 5 concrete applications for bid management:

1. Generating text, code, images or videos.
2. Analysing and reading text, code, images and Excel datasheets.
3. Generating ideas for strategies.
4. Performing tasks such as making a plan.
5. Communicating with people, like answering emails.

Bid management and the associated complex deals are ideal for AI. This is due to two factors: the process is continuously repeated in a comparable manner and it involves written documentation or data. Types of data include:

• Public data: government announcements, awarded contracts, market and sector reports, public regulations and jurisprudence.
• Qualification data: logged bid/no-bid decisions.
• Performance data: submitted proposals, award decisions, feedback per quality criterion. Rejection conversations, prior customer discussions and sales insights.
• In-process data: who does what and how they do it.

How can AI be utilised by tenderers?

Traditional bid management processes involve many manual workflows and data analysis. These processes are time-consuming. AI, on the other hand, can process vast amounts of data in a fraction of the time.

Think of it as an assistant that helps you work more efficiently at every step of the process.

• No more manually reading through Tender Direct.
• No more performing manual tasks.
• No more hours searching in SharePoint.
• No more dependence on a data analyst to gain valuable insights.

In each of the 9 overarching steps in the bid management process, you can use an AI assistant. This looks like:

1. Signalling new tenders

• Automated collection of new opportunities.
• Automatic forecast of expiring contracts in a dashboard with calculations.

2. Evaluating the tender

• Asking documents questions to get answers more quickly.
• Automated summary highlighting subjects relevant to your organisation.

3. Bid/No Bid

• Automated Bid/No-Bid decision.
• Automatic impact analysis of old Bid decisions.

4. Analysis of documents

• AI reads documents and provides an analysis of the tender.
• Automatic notes with a task list.

5. Strategy formation

• Automated overview with market and competitor insights about the tender.
• Your brainstorm is automatically summarised and action points marked.

6. Questions to ask

• Question tool that automatically shows relevant previous questions and automated collaboration with stakeholders.

7. Project management

• Automatic planning.
• Automatic task management.

8. Proposal Development

• Semantic search tool for old proposals and information documents.
• Proposal writer for generating texts.
• Proposal reviewer to review texts.

9. Evaluation.

• Automatic archiving of proposals in the correct databases.
• Automatic evaluation of award decisions.

What types of AI tools are available for tender and RFP management?

Nowadays it's very easy to start with AI. Marion van Happen, CEO of HeadFirst Group, implements AI organisation-wide and does this mainly by sharing use cases.

General AI tools that are useful for tender and RFP management

Every use of AI can give your team a little bit extra. Below, you will find some general applications that are useful in bid management: 

• Research

Generate reports about your customers with AI trained on your product and the market.

Examples: Aomni

• Notes

Ask questions about your notes and create content directly from your thoughts.

Examples: Mem

• To write

Altura's bid writer is almost ready. But until then, write the beginning of your proposals with the right prompts. Copywriting-related tools can also help you fine-tune your texts.

‍Voorbeelden: ChatGPT, Bard, Bing, copy.ai

• Generate images

Convert a prompt to an image and create images that enhance your proposal.

Examples: DALL-E 2, Midjourney

• Transcribe

Let AI transcribe your meetings and organise them clearly for you.

Voorbeelden: Fireflies, Airgram, Krisp

The main features of Altura AI tender software 

Read how Daan uses Altura for a professional and future-proof bidding process.

Altura believes in the future of AI in Tender and RFP management. We developed a full-cycle bid management software that uses AI to support the entire bidding process. That software is built to change the way you create and submit tenders and RFPs.

Altura is your virtual bid manager that automates time-consuming tasks for you. We are always inventing new ways to help, but below you will find what we can already do for you.

Immediately find the right piece for your tender

With the Proposal Search you can search semantically through your content library. This way you will not only find your search term, but also all text pieces related to your search.

Instantly find the best texts from your bid content library and quickly put together your first version. That saves frustration and ensures that you can work without needing information from your colleagues all the time.

• Optimise text pieces instantly
• Find the right piece in just a few clicks
• Build your bid content library within 5 minutes

‍Get all the crucial information from a tender or RFP with just a few questions

With the Document Chat you can directly ask the tender (and documents) what you need. Time-consuming analysis is reduced to just a few questions to filter out the risks and requirements. This way you know immediately whether your solution is suitable.

Don't waste any more time ploughing through documents when you can  immediately determine whether your solution is suitable.

• Quick answers to your questions about a tender
• Find what you're looking for in multiple documents at once
• See in just a few minutes whether you are a good fit to submit a bid.

Never type a tender or RFP summary again

With AI Summaries you can permanently cross an entire task off your to-do list. 

Summarising is no longer necessary. AI creates the summary for you based on your information requirement guidelines. This way you have the information that you need to know, right away. You decide to continue, or stop wasting time.

• No more digging through documents for the first review
• Monotonous and time-consuming work is now done by automation

Other features of Altura

Altura is a one-stop shop for the entire bid management process. From signalling to submitting the bid, you are always informed, you manage everything in one place, and you take care of your submission down to the last detail. In addition, you can monitor your evaluation and the performance of your competitors using clear dashboards.

Three use cases: where AI helps bid and RFP managers win

People in bid and RFP management are busy but would like to be more strategic. Meanwhile, there are many time-consuming tasks in bid management that prevent them from doing so. Because AI does many simple tasks for you, there are many applications. We started with three use cases:

Use Case 1: Grow 10% with the same team

Use Case

Your management wants 10% more turnover from tenders and RFPs, but there is no budget for new people.

Goal

Save time, to do more with the same team.

Solution

Our research shows that a bid manager spends an average of 5 hours per week finding the correct texts in old proposals. 

‍ If you use Altura AI you save your team members time. 

Step 1

Reduce the time spent searching through old proposals using the Proposal Search. If you can reduce 3 hours of that search time, the productivity of a full-time worker will increase by 7.5%.

Step 2

AI Summaries ensure that your team no longer has to open a document to see whether a tender is relevant. 

Step 3

If you are still lacking information after the AI ​​summary, you ask the Document Chat directly what you need. This way you will have to read through fewer texts and you can complete the first tender qualification quickly. 

Use Case 2: Professionalise organisation 

Use case

You want to professionalise your organisation.

Goal

Standardisation of as many tender processes as possible: text optimisation, planning and step-by-step verification.

Solution

Step 1

Make an inventory of where the greatest profit can be achieved. Investigate where you will optimise your bid management based on the current maturity of your process. 

Step 2

After you have determined your next step, you can start.

For example: start setting up a bid content library with qualifications, received award decisions and information from assessment interviews. This feeds the platform data for use in dashboards and AI applications.

With AI you always have the correct basic texts at hand. Without having to know exactly where they were.

Step 3

Get your writers together and improve your standard texts based on quality scores. Discuss why something could be improved and make sure everyone understands why adjustments are needed.

Incorporate reflection on bid performance into your standard workflow and planning, so that you continuously develop.

Use Case 3: Save time

Use Case

You notice that a lot of time is lost during your bid process. You've heard a lot about AI and want to apply it.

Goal 

Spend less time on unnecessary tasks that are easy to automate.

Solution

Step 1 

Sit down with your team and identify which tasks take too much time. At the same time, read up on what is already being done with AI and make an overview of this. 

Step 2

Combine the overview of the tasks that take a lot of time and AI tools that are available. Find AI tools that will help you work faster. Check what the prices are and further dive into what using them would mean.  

"You can use AI in a variety of processes. What we did was first look where it might fit in the product journey. After that it came down to testing and sharing results internally.” - Marion van Happen, CEO - HeadFirst Group

Step 3

Set a budget and decide where to start. Test the performance of the tools through  predetermined performance indicators. See if the applications work. Adjust or try new tools where necessary. 

Curious about what AI can do when applied as a full-cycle bid management solution? Schedule a call with Altura.

Opportunities for you as a Tender Manager

In my daily conversations with bid directors, tender managers, and writers, I hear it all too often. They are unhappy with all the routine and administrative tasks, deciphering Excel sheets, searching in SharePoint, and chasing stakeholders.

This is where AI comes into play; it will do part of your work, so you have more time to add strategic value to the most crucial step in winning the tender: What is our proposal's strategy for winning?

Do I think AI will take over your job? No, quite the contrary.

The arrival of AI will drastically improve bid management: bid managers and teams will have more time to focus on what they really want, which is adding strategic value.

As you read all this, you might have become either excited or sceptical. I say: embrace the change. AI will not take over your job, but a bid manager who works well with AI certainly will.

Take advantage of this and start now. In the world of tenders, this ultimately makes the difference between winning and losing.

Is there time for AI in your Tender and RFP management?

AI has what tender management has been looking for for years. A solution to combat all time-consuming mandatory processes. In the future, you will spend more time on strategy than ever before. At least, if you choose that future to be with AI.

Are you ready for AI in your tender management? Then we are happy to show you the possibilities it has to offer. Right on our platform. 

‍Book an introduction to see how we can take your process to the next level together.