5 More Must-Know Proposal Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools of 2020




A few weeks ago, I posted an article that highlighted ten must-know proposal automation and artificial intelligence (AI) tools, including: Zbizlink, Patri Bid Score™, Loopio, VisibleThread, reDock, RFPIO, DraftSpark™, Privia, VirtualProposal Center (VPC), and UplandQvidian. The article sparked great conversation and brought to light some additional proposal tools that should be highlighted. In this week’s article, I provide an overview of five additional proposal automation and/or AI tools available, including their major features and benefits.

Atebion LLC. Atebion provides a proposal automation tool that leverages AI and automation capabilities to shred requests for proposals (RFPs); generate compliance matrices and cross-reference compliance matrices; identify Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) clauses; identify risks; support bid/no-bid decisions; perform gap analysis; generate responsibility assignment (RACI) matrices; customize tasks, templates, and libraries; analyze content; and improve readability. Their redesigned Professional Document Analyzer leverages AI Natural Language Processing (NLP) for enhanced content analysis and advanced readability. Their recent redesign simplifies the user experience (UX) with a common user interface (UI), delivers enhanced settings for creation and maintenance, and provides enhanced flexibility and reduced complexity to empower both casual users and super users.

RFP360. RFP360 improves proposal response efficiency through better knowledge management, collaboration, and automation. Users can centralize all of their latest and greatest RFP answers in a knowledge library, streamlining their access to reuse content. Users can also save time and effort by importing RFPs, using answer intelligence to suggest responses, and exporting proposals in key Microsoft Office formats. Proposal Managers can use RFP360 built-in functionality to assign tasks, manage deadlines, collaborate on copy, and approve responses. Dashboards and reporting functions enable users to evaluate time spent and saved working on proposals. Additionally, RFP360 integrates with Salesforce, Microsoft Office files, as well as online questionnaires and forms.

Xait. XaitPorteris a cloud-based team co-authoring and automation software solution that provides complete control over the document production. The co-authoring and automation capabilities support critical efficiencies and savings in proposal development time. Key features include built-in workflow, easy content reuse, and automatic formatting, layout, and pagination. With every proposal response, the cloud-based corporate content library is enlarged and refined, making the next proposal even easier and faster to develop.

FedSelect. FedSelect is a dynamic software tool that guides capture teams through electronic evaluation forms where proposal strengths and weaknesses can be documented easily and efficiently. FedSelect adds a critical component to color team reviews by isolating and mapping proposal content against the requirements and evaluation criteria for streamlined and more objective evaluation. Leveraging FedSelect, color team reviewers can document ratings and rationales that reflect unique evaluation criteria. Because contributors work collaboratively and online, their documented findings are instantly accessible to key stakeholders.

Bidhive. Bidhive’s end-to-end process enables business development teams to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their bid process. Bidhive’s pre-bid phase lays the foundation for success with tools that help to build capability in strategic opportunity pursuit. Pre-bid functionality includes opportunity registration, capture planning, and bid/no-bid decision making. Bidhive’s bid phase supports critical time-saving steps in the bid and proposal management process, including planning the proposal, holding the kick-off meeting, and developing the proposal. Their post-bid phase provides hindsight into key insights on success records and compounds the value of resources and knowledge. Lessons learned/debrief tracking capabilities provide insights for implementing targeted change. Further, by tracking win/loss data, teams can uncover key trends to improve outcomes by conducting win/loss analysis to identify correlating factors that help teams make informed strategic and tactical decisions.

What is the Future for Automation and AI in Proposals?
As I mentioned in my original article, although automation and AI tools have already started to impact existing proposal processes, we have only begun to scratch the surface of their true potential in the field. Because of their unemotional capabilities to make predictions, these tools have huge potential in further supporting bid/no-bid decision so companies can more effectively target the opportunities with the highest probabilities of win. In addition, with their capability to quickly analyze massive amounts of data to make predictions and decisions, these technologies can likely help improve price analysis, price-to-win, and price development processes. What's more, these tools also seem to have huge potential to support the selection of proposed products and solutions.

Will automation tools and AI eventually replace all of us and independently write the proposals for our companies? I think most of us agree that this will never happen in our lifetimes. However, I do believe that enhanced versions of these AI and proposal automation tools of will ultimately empower our proposal teams to focus our efforts on tailoring content to meet the needs of individual customers and other critical tasks. But to be more effective, these tools must become a seamless part of our established processes—they must be flexible and integrate with our existing tools and workflows while providing critical functionality that teams have become used to leveraging, including version control. And I think we are getting there. Leveraging these tools effectively in the future, I believe we will increase the efficiency of our business development and proposal process by automating some of the most time-consuming pieces of the process and helping us to make smarter, more-strategic decisions on the opportunities we pursue.


Written by Ashley Kayes, CP APMP
Senior Proposal Consultant, AOC Key Solutions, Inc. (KSI)
LinkedIn

Comments

  1. UnknownJune 1, 2020 at 1:07 AM

    Insightful Ashley gives an option to compare the features and choose the right tool

    ReplyDelete
  2. ankitAugust 12, 2020 at 2:30 AM

    Great article, The majority of apps give any help with relevancy. And, most content marketing tools are just a lot of unhelpful features. https://seo.app/uWnq4gBhZ I’d be interested in seeing what you think about INK for All. The accessibility features like the option to hide recommendations on grammar, spelling, etc. don't interrupt me. I’m able to get so much done. INK for All also gives notes on how to optimize your content for search.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Christina PorterMay 21, 2021 at 2:27 AM

    We are living in a data-driven and data-centric world that’s only going to produce more and more data with time. This new data is collected in an unstructured manner and processed into a structured form as per the requirement of a company. www.inetsoft.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

6 Strategies To Tackle Tight Page Limitations

Image
Tight page limitations are becoming a more frequent challenge as contracting officers continue to look for ways to streamline their acquisition processes. When faced with tight page restrictions, we often find ourselves struggling with trimming five pages of material into two pages of allocated space. However, sometimes the content we are working with is so long because it is simply overly wordy. Here are my tricks for removing the waste: Use Active Voice Eliminate Redundancies Strip out Empty Words Simplify Your Word Choice Use Graphics and Tables Strategically Focus Your Text 1. Use Active Voice. With active voice, the subject of the sentence comes first and performs the action in the sentence. Active voice is more straightforward and concise than passive voice. It typically results in shorter, sharper sentences. So not only does it take up less real estate, it flows better and is easier to understand. 2. Eliminate Redundancies. Remove redundancies that
Read more

10 Must-Know Proposal Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools of 2020

Image
Proposal automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are hot topics in the proposal field right now, particularly as we have transitioned to a largely remote workforce during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Some professionals have angst about the potential negative effects of these tools on the industry; however, many of us are more optimistic about the ways these tools can improve our work-life balance. As demonstrated by the number of Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) Bid and Proposal Con 2019 vendors, many companies are already leveraging proposal automation tools and AI to streamline and enhance the proposal development and management processes. For example, some of these tools are beginning to enhance the response process by pre-populating outlines with “smart” content, some provide basic language and tone analysis, and others support the proposal management process with streamlined document management and control features. In this week’s article, I p
Read more

Back to the Basics: Why Using Transition Words is Critical in Proposal Writing

Image
In proposal writing, the goal is to convince the customer that your solution provides the greatest benefits through clear and concise narratives. However, because of limited resources and time, we often find ourselves rushing to piece together content from various sources (e.g., boilerplate content, past proposals, notes from SMEs). Then you get to Pink or Red team, and the reviewers provide unsurprising feedback: The writing doesn’t flow well The section seems choppy The writing is disjointed The problem? You probably didn’t go back and add the necessary transition words. Transition words serve to establish logical connections between the sentences, paragraphs, and sections of the proposal. Effective transitions enable the themes, strength statements, important features, and customer benefits to flow together. Transitions should occur at a variety of places in the response to form cohesive paragraphs and sections. The main types of transitions inc
Read more