AI RFP Software: 5 Ways That Loopio Uses Artificial Intelligence

Crafting winning proposals requires time, effort, and above all, accuracy. It can be a lengthy process, which is why in today’s world, proposal teams are using AI to streamline that response management process and give their responses a competitive advantage. 🎯

But what should you look for when using AI in RFP response software? In this article, we’ll dive into how Loopio uses artificial intelligence to help you generate responses and make your bid responses speedier and more accurate, to help you win more business.

In this article:

1. How AI Improves the RFP Process
2. 5 Ways to Use AI in Loopio
3. Harness the Power of AI-Powered RFP Software in Your Workflow

Integrating AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s a practical necessity. However, only a third (34%) of respondents to Loopio’s 2024 RFP Trends & Benchmarks report have used generative AI in their RFP response process over the past twelve months.

Early adopters are leveraging AI for summarizing information (61%), creating a first draft (44%), and editing (43%). But there are so many other ways AI (especially when incorporated directly in your RFP software) can support response management, including:

1. Save time on data entry & research: AI automates repetitive tasks, which can save your team hours on tedious data entry, market research, and more. ⏰
2. Analyze past responses: Use AI to analyze past RFP responses and provide insights to improve future proposals. 🔍
3. Complete a first draft, faster: Generate answers in seconds with the right prompts (just make sure you’re pulling from a trusted source, not the open web). 💡
4. Automatically identify internal experts: With specific platforms (like Loopio), you can use AI to quickly identify the best internal experts to answer specific questions—especially helpful in large organizations. 👥
5. Maintain consistent voice and tone: AI can be used as a powerful tool to maintain consistency across responses, specific to your brand’s tone and voice. 📝

Now you have an idea of some of the ways AI-powered proposal management software can help streamline the bid process. Next, let’s examine how it can fit into your existing workflow.

Loopio’s AI-powered RFP software fits into your response management process at every step of the way, from helping you assign answers to copy-editing the final result of your bids, security questionnaires, and more.

Time is of the essence when responding to RFPs, especially when your team may be responding to multiple at once. That’s why AI features like Loopio’s Intelligent Import can be a big help to quickly identify questions and answers in an uploaded document, supporting a variety of formats from Excel to Microsoft Word.

When you upload an RFP, Intelligent Import automatically parses questions that you’ll need to answer. This means you move more quickly through the process of setting your project up—so you can get to work writing your winning bid.

How it Works

Loopio’s Intelligent Import feature uses machine learning to identify what parts of an uploaded document are questions, and which are answers, speeding up the setup process.

For example: Imagine you’re working on an RFP response with a lengthy questionnaire of dozens of pages. Instead of manually inputting and categorizing the questions in the RFx, you can effortlessly upload this document to Loopio and our platform will help identify what questions and answers you’ll need to address. The best part? Our automation features will then populate answers directly into this RFP (more on that below).

Loopio’s response automation tool, Magic, leverages the power of AI to automatically pull in responses from your previous content. Some Loopio customers have automated upwards of 60% of responses. This allows you to pull together a first draft in seconds, while maintaining consistency and accuracy.

How it Works

Loopio’s proposal automation tool, Magic, leverages the power of AI to automatically pull in responses from your previous content. This allows you to pull together a first draft in seconds—while maintaining consistency and accuracy.

Imagine you’re facing a time-sensitive RFP that demands detailed responses across multiple sections. With this powerful feature in Loopio, you can access pre-approved content in just a few clicks.

Leah McTiernan, Vice President of Solution Engineering at DocuSign, shared how Magic Response Automation has improved their workflows. “A few months after we deployed, I received an email from an SE leader with the subject line, ‘Loopio saved my bacon for the 1000th time,’” Leah said. “They had just used Loopio’s Magic capability to respond to a security questionnaire in under 30 minutes—a task that normally took hours.”

Generative AI, which creates natural-sounding content using natural language processing, can speed up your ability to write answers in a proposal—especially if your RFP response software leverages your existing library of content. With Loopio’s ‘generate answer’ feature, crafting responses to complex RFP questions becomes as simple as a single click. The best part? You’ll only generate answers using your trusted sources of content to create quality, compliant responses to every RFP question.

How it Works

Using generative AI technology, Loopio will analyze the given question and craft a new response based on your existing library of content.

For example, let’s imagine you receive an RFP with a question about your company’s approach to project management methodologies. Instead of spending precious time crafting a unique response, you can instead have Loopio’s AI analyze the inquiry and generate a comprehensive answer that outlines your company’s approach in seconds.

For inspiration on what prompts to use, check out our article on using AI in proposal management.

When crafting a winning RFP response, tapping into the expertise in your organization is crucial. But when your team is working on a response, they may not always be sure who to turn to for expert input, slowing down the process as they hunt for the right person to tag in.

That’s where Loopio’s Recommend Experts feature comes in. By using previous responses provided within the platform, Loopio can determine who the right SME is to respond to individual questions, reducing the time spent on project management and avoiding last-minute scrambles for expert information—especially in large organizations where finding the right expert can be very challenging.

How it Works

The Recommend Experts feature suggests the top three internal experts best suited to answer a question in a proposal, and displays them automatically when you add an Assignee to a Project Entry. This cuts down significantly on the time it takes to find the right SME for each question.

A well-written RFP is one that is more likely to capture attention, stand out from the crowd, and ultimately win more business. AI can help in this mission by providing an additional layer of review on your responses. Loopio’s Content Recommendations scans your responses for readability factors, and offers suggestions on how to improve your response quality (think of it as the Grammarly for RFP responses).

How it Works

We analyzed 100,000 projects to identify over 70 different data points related to RFP writing best practices, which correlate to higher win rates. Using that data, we built Content Recommendations to help you identify how to increase your chances of creating a winning proposal.

Content Recommendations will scan your drafted responses and provide suggestions to avoid factors that can negatively impact your readability. This includes flagging too-long sentences and paragraphs that obscure your meaning, and the use of passive voice which can make your response less authoritative.

AI is changing the way that proposal teams tackle RFPs. By fitting into your existing workflows and removing previously time-consuming or frustrating obstacles, it can be a crucial part of your response toolkit and cut down dramatically on your response management workload. Finding an AI RFP software that enables you to harness this technology—while maintaining secure, compliant proposals—is key.

Loopio’s AI-powered features take care of the tedious tasks in proposal writing. You’ll spend less time on copy-and-pasting answers, and more time on what really matters—crafting winning responses. 🏅