Proposal Automation Explained: Why It’s a Must-Have for Your Team

Proposal automation is revolutionizing how teams tackle the proposal process. Imagine cutting down on repetitive tasks, improving collaboration, and speeding up turnaround times—all while enhancing the quality of your proposals.

That’s exactly what automation brings to the table.

In this article, you’ll learn how proposal automation is transforming the RFP game, making the entire process smoother, faster, and less of a headache.

Proposal automation is the process of using software to streamline the creation, management, and submission of responses to requests for proposals (RFPs). Essentially, it can help automate repetitive tasks (like finding RFP answers), enabling proposal teams to focus more on their response strategy.

Key benefits of proposal automation include:

⏰ Big time savings: By automating repetitive tasks such as data entry, formatting responses, and writing first drafts, proposal teams can significantly reduce the time spent on manual work. This allows them to focus on crafting tailored, high quality proposals in less time.

👪 Easier collaboration: Proposal automation tools help facilitate working with subject matter experts (SMEs) by automatically recommending the best experts to answer specific questions. No more scrambling to find the right SME at the last second.

🤑 A more integrated sales process: By integrating proposal software with other tools like customer relationship management (CRM) systems, you can connect the dots between your RFP strategy and revenue outcomes.

Proposal automation tools can significantly speed up the proposal process while improving the quality of your proposals—if you know how to use this technology effectively. To make the most out of what proposal automation brings, it’s important to first understand how it fits into your workflow, how to tweak content without sacrificing the human touch, and how to use data to guide your decisions.

Let’s take a look at the steps to creating proposals effectively with automation:

Jon Williams, Managing Director of Strategic Proposals, famously once said, “If you implement an RFP tool without thinking about the content, then all you’re doing is writing poor proposals faster.” In other words, proposal automation is only as useful as the content library it draws upon.

Since a centralized content library allows automation tools to quickly and accurately populate responses into proposal templates, it’s crucial to maintain the quality and relevance of your content. To keep your content library well-maintained, remember to:

1. Schedule regular updates: Periodically review and update your content to ensure it reflects the latest company information, compliance standards, and proposal writing best practices. Set a schedule for content reviews and assign responsibility to specific team members.
2. Establish clear guidelines: Develop and enforce guidelines for how content should be written and formatted. Consistent language, style, and terminology make it easier for automation tools to integrate content seamlessly and ensure uniformity across proposals.
3. Structure your content library: Organize content into clear categories and use tags to facilitate swift retrieval. This helps automation tools quickly locate the most relevant answers based on the specific questions of each RFP.

AI is all the rage these days. By now, you’re probably aware of the huge potential of AI when it comes to generating first drafts, but may feel a little unsure of how to exactly use AI for proposal writing. Thankfully, proposal automation solutions (like Loopio) come with AI already baked in.

Here’s how you can harness the power of Loopio’s AI RFP software:

✓ Identify questions in RFPs: Get started quickly with Loopio’s easy document uploading process that uses machine learning to identify which questions you need to address in the RFP.

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

✓ Complete a first draft: 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.

✓ Polish your RFP responses: Strengthen your response entries by tapping into AI to make readability suggestions based on proposal writing best practices.

✓ Rally SMEs for Input: By analyzing your previous proposals, Loopio can determine who the right SME is to respond to individual questions, so you don’t have to.

Many proposal teams struggle to rally SMEs to help answer questions. It may come as no surprise that this is a top challenge. SMEs are busy people and responding to RFPs isn’t in their job description.

That’s why it’s important to make it as easy as possible for SMEs to contribute. With proposal automation, you can:

1. Reuse answers for future proposals: Save their answers in a content library, allowing automation to pull up what they’ve already written for the next RFP (just be sure to have them review it for accuracy).
2. Set up automated reminders: Send timely notifications to SMEs about upcoming deadlines and required inputs, reducing the need for manual follow-ups and bombarding their inbox.
3. Enable real-time feedback: With automated workflows, SMEs can review, edit, and comment on their contributions as changes are made, ensuring up-to-date and accurate content.

Proposal automation tools provide vital key performance indicators (KPIs) such as RFP win rates, the average time it takes to complete a proposal, and which content is used in the most RFPs.

By tracking these crucial metrics closely, you can pinpoint where automation tools have made the greatest impact, and continually make improvements for even better results.

For instance, if you notice a drop in win rates, it might signal a need to craft more personalized proposals, rather than simply using automation to create boilerplate responses. On the other hand, if automation is speeding up proposal completion times without sacrificing quality, you can use that information to further streamline other areas of your process.

Regularly reviewing and acting on these insights ensures your proposal software is not only meeting but exceeding your expectations, leading to more successful proposals every time.

The right proposal software can significantly streamline your workflow, helping you track and manage RFP tasks, access and update content quickly, and ensure proper formatting doesn’t get overlooked.

But there are so many options to choose from—especially with new AI tools popping up everywhere. How do you decide which proposal automation tool is right for you?

Start by making a shopping list. 🛍️ Are you looking for a user-friendly interface your team can easily adopt? Is content management a top priority so you can rest assured automation pulls from a library of trusted information? Or do you want a solution that integrates seamlessly with other project management tools? It could be all three.

It’s time to think like a procurement manager and decide on your must-haves.

Proposal automation tools come packed with a suite of features designed to streamline the proposal creation process. Here are some of the top features to look for:

✓ Artificial Intelligence (AI): Write high quality proposals faster with AI by generating a first draft from pre-approved answers, or by improving readability with content recommendations.

✓ Customizable templates: Use a range of sophisticated templates that can be tailored to fit the specific needs and branding of your business.

✓ Content management: Organize and store your proposal content in a centralized library for easy access and consistent use across all documents.

✓ Analytics and reporting: Track proposal metrics with advanced data analysis that offers insights into your content performance and overall success rates.

✓ Collaboration tools: Facilitate teamwork with features that support real-time editing, task assignments, and communication among team members (and SMEs).

✓ Integration with CRM systems: Align proposal activities with your existing systems, like customer relationship management software, for a cohesive strategy with sales teams.

Proposal automation is a real game changer for teams who want to save time and work smarter, not harder. By cutting down on repetitive tasks, improving collaboration, and syncing up with your sales tools, it lets you focus on what really counts—submitting winning proposals.

Whether you’re using AI to knock out first drafts or relying on data to fine-tune your strategy, automation makes the whole process faster and smoother. Just make sure you keep your content library fresh, involve SMEs, and analyze the impact.

With the right tools, you’ll not only submit more proposals but win more deals, too.