Bid Software

Build Better Bids,
From Start to Finish

Deliver quality bids quickly and efficiently.
Keep reading to learn how Loopio’s bid software can help your team.

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Never choose between speed and quality again. Deliver a better bid by streamlining your tools—connect Salesforce, Loopio, and Seismic.

 

Seismic, Slack, Salesforce, Excel integrations of Loopio

 

What Is Bid Software?

Bid software helps to manage, effectively write, and track responses to requests for proposals (RFPs). Managing many complex proposals a year can be challenging—especially if you handle them manually.

Many companies are now turning to bid software (also known as RFP software) to write better proposals, collaborate more efficiently, and benefit from a smoother, less stressful proposal bid process. So, what advantages does the best estimating software hold? Keep reading to find out.

  • Bid
    Library

    Organize your content in one location so coworkers can access your company's best answers in a centralized library.
  • Automated
    Answers

    Use intelligent automation to suggest the correct answers—so you're not copying and pasting for every new tender.
  • Collaborate
    With Ease

    Assign the right team members to answer your bid questions with ease. After all, RFPs are a team sport.

The Ideal Bid & RFX Team Structure

It takes a lot of time and effort to build the ideal RFX team structure. But with the right bid managers in place, RFPs can become your team’s competitive advantage.

According to industry research, it takes 24 hours to answer a single bid for the average team. So, next to choosing a good bid tool, thoughtfully structuring your proposal team is essential to your success. Here are some of the most essential roles to include in your RFX team:

  • Bid Manager

    This person leads your bid process. They are responsible for creating high-quality proposals that win valuable company contracts. To succeed in this role, they need to be masters of time management and triaging between internal experts across various fields to create the best possible bid.

  • Bid Writer

    This person thoughtfully transforms a document from a basic bid to one with a clear story. They use words to convince the potential customer of their company’s unique value and articulate why they’re best suited to win this contract.

  • Content Manager

    The librarian of the group, a content manager is constantly maintaining and optimizing the company’s database of answers for RFPs. This role tends to be more common at larger companies, which may even have multiple content managers.

Want to learn more about proposal roles and responsibilities? Read this blog on bid team structure.

How Bid Management Software Works

Bid management can be complex and time-consuming, even for the best bid teams. That’s why utilizing the right bid management tools can often be the difference between winning bids—versus struggling to advance. If you can equip your proposal manager with the right resources, your company will reap the rewards.

The best bid management software can improve several different elements of the response process. For example, it’ll keep things organized through a customizable RFP answer library. Having bid library software means you’ll have a database of RFP answers available at your fingertips, so starting the first draft of each bid is easy.

Loopio offers bid management software that helps companies spend 35% less time answering RFP answers (see below for more customer success statistics).

37%
More Bids
Our users have higher response rates than ever before.
10%
Shorter Sales Cycle
Loopio users respond and close new business faster with our software.
35%
Time Savings
Customers spend much less time answering bids.

With this kind of software, you can make your RFP response process faster and more efficient. So, any company that is looking to create high-quality responses at scale would benefit from bid management software.

What's Tender Bid Management Software For?

The top estimating software can help make the tender management process easier and more efficient. Why? Because there are a lot of benefits to software that can help you improve your company’s bid response processand look like a hero by doing so.

While creating quality bids at scale is challenging, this is where tender bid management software can help. Easy bid software like Loopio simplifies the bidding process for sales and proposal teams in a few different ways:

Bid software helps you:

  • Simplify collaboration across your full team through a centralized content library
  • Leverage multi-language capabilities, customized categories, and tags to keep your answers organized
  • Iterate on competitive messaging in one central location (more on this below)

Fun fact: companies most commonly lose RFPs to a competitor with a better product fit. That’s why clearly articulating your company’s unique positioning is crucial in the bid process.

Using tools like bid leveling software or tender bid management software is one of the best ways to improve this process. By automating the tedious tasks—like searching for answers or formatting documents—you’ll have more time for strategic work, like developing strong messaging and positioning.

“The RFP software your company NEEDS. Loopio's platform is fantastic.”
Jonathan Ciccone
Lead Alliances Solutions Engineer
Clarabridge

How to Use Healthcare Bidding Software

One industry that finds Loopio’s software particularly impactful is healthcare bid management. A powerful example of this is seen through Aspen Medical, an innovative Australian healthcare solution seeking a more efficient way of making proactive proposals. Previously, they’d spend hours tracking down content that lived on various people’s desktop computers or hunting through past RFPs.

Aspen Medical looked for a healthcare bidding software they could use as a single source of truth to solve this issue. They wanted an easy way for their team to access high-quality proposal responses, in less time.

They chose Loopio for its helpful healthcare bid solutions. They love the platform because it’s easier to keep content updated and accurate through a streamlined approval process.

Case Study: Aspen Medical Results

  1. Faster bid writing: Proposals that used to take hours to put together can now be completed in 30 minutes or less. (Speed is a big benefit of healthcare estimating software.)
  2. Consistent bidding: With less time required for manual tasks like formatting, the team can spend more crafting and submitting bids. They now submit around 180 proposals annually.
“Loopio allows us to write proactive proposals that contain more accurate and timely information. We often need to respond quickly with tailored content, and Loopio allows us to do this."
John Kelly, Director of Business Development at Aspen Medical
John Kelly
Director of Business Development
Aspen Medical

Using Financial Services Bidding Software

Bid software for financial services cuts down the amount of time spent on repetitive tasks. Documents like RFPs or due diligence questionnaires (DDQs) can be extremely repetitive and time-consuming. But with solid financial services bidding software, your team can gather all the information they need in minutes—instead of hours.

This type of software presents great value to companies that regularly respond to RFPs. During periods when your organization is receiving a high volume of RFPs, bid software makes it possible for different departments to work together efficiently for a high-quality bid. Take HedgeServ, for example.

Case Study: HedgeServ Results

  1. Faster DDQs: Reduced due diligence questionnaire (DDQ) response times from three days to four hours.
  2. Eliminated version control issues: Collaboration is easier with content stored in one central location.
“Loopio provides a HUGE saving of time that creates a trickle-down effect for everybody on our team."
Michael Mannella, Manager of Business Development at HedgeServ
Michael Mannella
Manager of Business Development
HedgeServ

With a better financial services bid management system, you can also streamline approvals. This is particularly important for companies that handle a high volume of DDQs (like asset management organizations and insurance companies) because these usually require a thorough legal review.

Overall, financial services companies say that software speeds up the process, largely thanks to its automation tools that auto-fill the first draft of answers.

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