Using artificial intelligence (AI) to create tender bids and proposals can make the tendering process faster and easier – and possibly help your business secure lucrative contracts. However, there are pitfalls to avoid.
BizFunding does not offer AI tools or help write effective bids. But once you’ve secured a tender or purchase order, we offer easily accessible funding – so you can complete the work and pay suppliers on time.
How AI can help create tender bids and proposals
A tender bid is an opportunity to explain how and why your company is ideally qualified to meet the requirements for a project. How it’s written can mean the difference between being awarded the tender and having your bid overlooked or dismissed.
AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Grok AI can make it easier to find tenders, conduct research and compile a strong proposal.
Tender discovery
AI is a great way to source new tenders. AI can help you find online tenders, filter out the tenders that don’t match your qualifications or industry and show you the ones that your business is the most qualified to fulfil.
Research
AI can quickly compile and deliver research that could otherwise take hours to complete. This makes it easier to write with conviction.
Planning
AI can look at the tender requirements and help you plan your proposal so that it covers everything. AI can offer an outline to follow with a compliance checklist so that you know where to start and what to include.
Content generation
AI helps with streamlining content generation and can give your writing a more professional “voice”. An AI-generated proposal works well as a structured foundation that you can tailor to suit your bid.
Saving time
Using AI to plan, research and outline your proposal can save a lot of time. It isn’t typically a good idea to write the whole proposal with AI. However, if you start with a basic foundation that is well researched and laid out, you can significantly reduce the time it takes to write a bid.
Improved chances
AI can look at other proposals and see what characteristics are most likely to get your proposal noticed.
Question answering
When you first read a bid, there will be many questions about everything from the company putting out the tender to the job itself. AI can help you construct answer these questions, using key information you provide.
Pitfalls of using AI for bid writing
Creating a proposal in South Africa is a notoriously complex and time-consuming task – one that AI is not yet equipped to automate in full.
AI isn’t a magic wand that can take all the effort out of writing a convincing bid. Submitting a purely AI-written bid without tailoring it and double-checking accuracy could end up damaging your company’s reputation.
AI struggles with complexities. Some tenders are very specific to an industry or region, and might include terms or requirements that confuse AI.
Also, AI writing often lacks creativity and could make your bid stale. It’s important to tailor the writing to reflect your businesses values.
Last but not least, it can be fairly easy to detect AI writing, especially for people who encounter it often. This is because specific patterns or approaches tend to be repeated. If your bid includes a lot of pure, unedited AI content, it could hurt your chances of securing the work.
The bottom line about using AI for bids
While even the 100% free AI tools available today are amazing – and there’s no doubt that they can simplify tasks like writing bids – creating a strong bid or proposal is still a complex task that requires a good degree of human work.
Thorough research is needed to bring information together from different parts of your business and from suppliers, and to gather as much competitive intelligence as possible.
You need to carefully check the content of your bid or proposal against requirements in requests for quotations (RFQs) or requests for proposals (RFPs) to ensure you have covered everything.
Planning, writing and editing the proposal documents needs a human touch to avoid inaccuracies and robotic language. The tone of your proposal can play a big role in how it is received.
At BizFunding, we can’t help businesses use AI to create tender bids and proposals, but we can help businesses secure tenders by ensuring funding is a few easy steps away. Our profit-sharing model means your business can cover the upfront costs of a tender and you only have to reimburse us when you get paid. Contact us on 010 157 2499 to learn more or start your application now.
