Artificial intelligence (AI) models have progressed tremendously in just the past few years. Natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI have made it possible to parse, dissect, analyze, understand sentiment, and generate responses to documents that are dozens of pages long.  

That doesn’t put AI beyond reproach, however. AI models still trip up and it is necessary to have a human in the loop. This helps ensure outputs are correct and injects human intelligence into responses. 

Traditional methods of proposal writing are cumbersome and particularly challenging for growing government contracting (GovCon) companies trying to establish themselves in the industry. They may not have the experience or time to write IDIQ or GWQC responses, or comb through opportunities on SAM.gov to find good fits and then craft a compelling proposal to submit in response. 

Proposal managers are subject matter experts, but the proposal writing process takes time. This limits the number of contracts your business can respond to.  

There are many ways AI can aid the proposal process. Let’s look at how it can help and what capabilities are beyond its limits. Let’s start by establishing what the current process looks like for most GovCons.  

Traditional methods for finding contracts to pursue 

To begin the process of winning proposals, the first step is to identify the right contracts to pursue. Most GovCons start by researching websites that post contract opportunities and forecasts. This includes SAM.gov of course, and vehicle-specific websites for important task orders. And it should also include reviewing agency forecasts and attending industry day events. 

GovCons can search SAM for contracts by keyword, NAICS code, location, and agency and can also look for a specific notice ID or solicitation number. These are long and you have to know the ID or have it shared with you. You can save searches to your account and opt in for notifications.  

While this method helps you understand what contracts match your criteria, like a search engine, it has a flaw: it shows you contracts that might match abstract criteria, but it doesn’t allow you to evaluate which ones your business is best positioned to win.  

Seasoned professionals know how to navigate SAM.gov in conjunction with FPDS and USAspending.gov, and have a lot of contacts in the industry that could provide insight into upcoming opportunities and G2, but for other businesses that may lack the experience, the process can be very difficult to navigate. This leaves some worthy pursuits unpursued or wastes resources on poor-fit opportunities.  

While there are other software tools that pull data from SAM.gov to help identify the relevant opportunities, they only match criteria, not whether it’s a good fit for your business’ goals and objectives, past proposals. And moreover, they don’t offer proposal drafting capabilities.  

Traditional methods for crafting a proposal 

The traditional method for a proposal development involves creating drafts manually, which requires a significant amount of writing  and attention to detail. Some businesses have established good methodologies, such as designing proposal templates or using Excel to parse sections out that detail the requirements for each response (also known as a compliance matrix). Legacy proposal management tools currently on the market allow users to upload responses to a repository, where they can then copy and paste their responses into new proposals. But formatting that content to meet new requirements still takes considerable effort and resources. 

Regardless of how good a manual system is, developing proposal drafts is typically time and resource-consuming by its nature. Ensuring compliance requires meticulous proofreading. Additionally, collaboration like assigning tasks, tracking deadlines, and collecting input from experts and employees can be a challenge, making it difficult to review, build, and submit the best possible proposals on time. 

The modern, intelligent approach to finding the right contracts to pursue 

GovCons that want to work smarter – not harder – will take a modernized approach to finding the right opportunities for them. Here’s an approach you’ll want to take with the assistance of AI and modern technology.  

First, you’ll identify whether a proposal fits. Using your past proposals and past pursuit data, modern software tools can identify contracts your business should pursue. Using a scoring matrix, it can determine the fit level through key word identification, historical performance, and other proposal/company identifiers.  

This system presents contracts where your SMEs can then easily filter through each opportunity. Using AI, the solution can also summarize the contract, removing the need to comb through pages of text. This will allow your business to bid on more of the right opportunities.  

As your business looks to tackle new opportunities, you can upload new materials to your AI engine that will provide your responses with needed and impactful information that you may not currently have in your proposal library. Your SMEs can then inject additional information on why your business would be a good fit for this contract. 

Where AI excels 

When using AI, it’s critical to understand what it can do and what it can’t do. Here’s where it excels:  

• Parsing RFPs out by key segments: Federal RFPs often contain hundreds of pages across multiple documents. The key sections (C,L,M, or SOW, Instructions and Evaluation Criteria) are the primary focus for proposal writers. Identifying those sections and breaking out the others in a clean and easily readable format helps ensure that contract requirements are understood and met.  

• Identifying key requirements: Missing key requirements – which could just be how the proposal needs to be formatted – will result in the immediate disqualification of a submission. AI identifies these requirements and ensures outputs are formatted correctly and all necessary information is identified and addressed.  

• Injecting (generic or repeated and even customized) responses from previous proposals: Responses and requirements applying to multiple contracts can be re-used to save time. It can also ensure you establish a standard for your responses. Rather than simply copy-and-paste, it adapts this content to align with new RFP requirements.  

• Compliance controls: AI can be trained on federal acquisition procedures and contract and proposal data to establish a level of compliance controls.  

Keep in mind that here are areas in which AI is not as effective. This includes delivering unique insights about the client, stakeholder preferences, highlighting unique discriminators, and developing winning pricing strategies. Businesses could have relationships with the partners or the contract issuer where responses would benefit from injecting a bit of personal flavor. That’s where the human element comes into play. These will always require a personal touch.  

AI won’t replace your proposal team – it will help them focus on doing what they do best 

Your GovCon can use AI to automate the time-consuming process of identifying requirements and crafting drafts based on winning proposals your business has already used in previous proposals. This can be cumbersome work that currently requires hours of manual effort. With AI, you can cut that significantly.  

This then allows your team to use its experience, knowledge, and skill set to tailor its response to the specific contract you want to pursue. In short, you enable your people to apply the differentiators that help your GovCon stand out while making the tiresome elements of the proposal process run on autopilot.  

With the right plan in place – and the right software solution powered by AI insights – your GovCon can benefit from AI to help save time while also becoming more effective at crafting proposals to win the right work.  

Looking to make business easy while freeing up more time to do the work that matters? Learn how Unanet can help. Schedule a demo today.