As an Environmental Engineer in the Civil Consulting Engineering industry, I have a ton of experience writing proposals including Request for Proposal (RFP) responses. These range from short letter proposals for private clients to massive RFP responses that span dozens of pages. Regardless of the client or the type of response, one thing remains true: errors can be costly.

I’m not just referring to obvious errors, like as omitting a mandatory form or exceeding a specified page limit—mistakes that lead to automatic disqualification. There are subtler errors that can also jeopardize your chances. One common mistake is submitting a response that fails to compellingly articulate why your firm is the best choice for the project (a strong narrative). Often, the lead on a proposal may deeply understand the client’s needs, reading between the lines of the RFP. However, with contributions coming from various team members—from engineers to principals—the central narrative can become obscured in the rush to meet submission deadlines.

When I worked on proposals, we did not use specialized software. Instead, assembling relevant content was often a matter of memory, typically involving senior team members recalling which projects to reference. This process usually resulted in multiple versions of a document being circulated via email and stored on various desktops, miraculously coming together at the last moment.

However, with the advent of AI and large language models (LLMs), the landscape has shifted dramatically. It now seems incredibly inefficient not to utilize AI in the proposal process. Leveraging AI tools is a no-brainer, though it comes with one significant caveat: security. It’s crucial to ensure that our most valuable assets, such as intellectual property, are protected as we incorporate these new, AI-powered tools.

This article will explore the security concerns and other factors to consider when evaluating proposal/RFP response software, comparing two tools: Loopio and Responsive.

When it comes to proposals and RFP responses, AI is a total game changer. Imagine, 10 years ago, a solution design to find relevant content from a company’s library of materials involved a lot of manual effort—tagging content, curating the library, and writing precise scripts to retrieve specific pieces of information. Search capabilities were limited, and organizing information was a constant challenge.

Today, Modern AI systems use natural language processing to understand and interpret the content’s context and semantics directly. This allows for dynamic categorization and sophisticated search functionalities that adapt over time, learning from user interactions to refine results and recommendations.

As a result, AI not only enhances discoverability of content but also significantly streamlines the organizational processes, making content management more efficient and less reliant on manual processes.

In short, leveraging AI on proposals and RFP responses means that the work that is typically spent searching for relevant content, summarizing background documents and requirements goes down to virtually zero!

Imagine the time savings! For the consulting engineers reading, you know how valuable billable time is and how too much time spent on proposal preparation can cost you.

It depends! Every industry tends to have different workflows for proposal creation. We recommend mapping out your typical tasks on a matrix, in terms of time vs. complexity (example below).

Once you have everything mapped out, consider, how much are various tasks costing your organization? For example, is it worth it to have billable consulting engineers working on tasks that require a lot of time, and are low complexity (such as digging through folders to find content)? Probably not! Once you have a sense of what kinds of tasks you would like to streamline, check out the features that would make your life easier. Above, we compare Loopio to Responsive on AI-Enabled features.

When comparing security features, consider the following categories:

1. Access Control: Ensuring that only authorized users can access and interact with the proposal software is critical. Inadequate access controls can lead to unauthorized viewing, editing, or deletion of sensitive proposal documents.
2. Data Breaches: The risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information contained within proposals, such as financial data, intellectual property, and client information, is a primary concern. Data breaches can occur due to hacking, malware, or insider threats.
3. Data Integrity: Maintaining the accuracy and consistency of data throughout its lifecycle is crucial. Threats to data integrity include unauthorized data alteration and corruption due to software flaws or malicious attacks.
4. Data Loss: The potential for data to be lost due to system failures, accidental deletions, or catastrophic events requires robust data backup and recovery procedures to be in place.
5. Compliance Issues: Proposal software must comply with relevant legal, regulatory, and industry standards regarding data protection, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or industry-specific guidelines. Failure to comply can lead to legal penalties and damage to reputation.
6. Intellectual Property Security: Protecting the unique proprietary data, content and innovative techniques used in proposal software from theft, reverse engineering, or unauthorized exposure.

If there is a data source that would improve your ability to create winning responses, then you probably care about integrations! For example, historic cost data from your project tracking software, or client data from a CRM.

Some firms do not need or care about extra integrations, and that’s fine too. In this case, be careful when reviewing proposal software options to ensure you are not paying for features you don’t need and won’t use!

An excellent onboarding and support system meets customers where they are, seamlessly integrating into their solutions and workflows. This ensures that help is readily available without the need to scramble when assistance is required.

To assess the onboarding and support for the solution you are evaluating, consider the following questions:

1. How easy is the software to use?
2. Can users easily self-educate and upskill using the software?
3. Do you want your team to have to attend in-person onboarding or have the option to onboard asynchronously?
4. When issues arise, is the support documentation clear and easy to navigate?
5. When is your team typically working on proposals, and when might they need support when stuck?
6. Does the onboarding and support team bring industry-specific experience and value to the discussion?
7. Do you want a dedicated account manager to be your team’s consistent point of contact?

Once you have mapped out your wish list from an onboarding and support perspective, check out the comparison between Loopio and Responsive above.

Pricing plans should align with the value that the customer derives from the product. There are various ways to price proposal software, including per user, per team, or based on the number of proposals. Comparing these can be like comparing apples to oranges, so it’s crucial to establish a common baseline for comparison.

Consider how your organization will actually use the software once fully operational. Evaluate the costs based on the number of users or the estimated number of proposals you expect to handle, and the expected return on investment given the benefits promised.

A good trial provides just enough exposure to the product and its results to help you understand how the benefits will manifest in your organization and what the likely return on investment will be.