As corporate writing becomes ever more complex and competitive, and technology improves at pace, the introduction of language engines for bids is great news for bid teams who are under immense pressure to produce high-quality bids in short timeframes.
How AI is Helping Businesses Write Better Faster
Though seen by many as a new and cutting-edge innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) has been helping writers produce better content for years – in fact, we take numerous AI tools for granted. The spelling and grammar check in Word, for example, automatically corrects errors and suggests improvements, making it easier for writers to express themselves clearly. More recently, tools like Grammarly and Hemingway have built on this model to offer real-time feedback and suggestions on more complex grammatical issues like antecedents, subject-verb agreements and modifiers.
Savvy users take heed of AI-generated advice to identify their common mistakes and improve the overall quality of their writing. For example, AI tools help writers identify areas where they tend to use passive voice, and suggest ways to write punchier, more impactful sentences. AI can also help writers to better understand their audience by providing data and insights about which keywords, topics and content are most popular with their target readers, lessons writers can absorb and implement in their future work.
As corporate writing becomes ever more complex and competitive, and technology improves at pace, AI is likely to play an even more important role in helping writers to produce their best work.
AI for bid writing
Bid writing is one of the most competitive types of writing in the corporate world. Barely known outside corporate circles – try telling someone you are a bid writer at a party – the bidding process is fundamental to the workings of businesses, charities and local government. Critical to an organisation’s success (or demise), tens of millions are spent every year on bid writers, consultants, solution designers and estimators.
A typical bid consists of a written response to a series of questions, as well as a budget for the project. The bid is then scored by the commissioner, balancing price and quality to ascertain best value for money. Bid writing is more formal and technical than other forms of business writing such as marketing content, focussing on the specific requirements of the project and meeting the needs of the commissioning body as detailed in an often complex specification.
A successful bid thus requires deep understanding of the commissioner’s needs and requirements, and a clear demonstration of how these needs will be met. Clarity and precision are therefore essential. Moreover, in competitive sectors like construction, defence, education and outsourcing, and commoditised markets like energy, transportation, and water, the slightest error, inconsistency or poorly communicated idea can be the difference between winning and losing a multi-million-pound contract.
An immovable deadline combined with the need to evidence every statement and explicitly explain how each process is delivered, can make bid writing challenging and stressful. To meet these deadlines, bid writers are sometimes tempted to use old bids or copy text from company marketing materials, resulting in mundane bids that lack the evidence or relevance to win the contract.
Using AI to improve the quality of bids and destress the process
Large Language Engines are trained on every word written on the internet, and produce content by predicting the new word based on its predecessor. AutogenAI’s new generation of AI-powered language models – built on 175 billion parameters – can generate text in the style of a bid or proposal, produce relevant ideas and explain how these ideas can be delivered. These models can be fine-tuned for specific organisations based on previous successful bids and other relevant material like annual reports, government strategies and tender documents to produce written content that matches an organisation’s corporate tone and the priorities of specific commissioners or tenders.
The introduction of language engines for bids is great news for bid teams who are under immense pressure to produce high-quality bids in short timeframes. At the click of a button, the bid writer can generate and select new ideas, turn them into paragraphs and manipulate the text, for example by expanding or compressing, and incorporating examples and evidence. This will speed up the process and reduce reliance on subject matter experts in the initial stages of drafting and solution design.
By freeing up more time to focus on shaping the text to the precise needs of the project, bid teams will write better bids faster, and organisations can reap the benefits of producing more bids with the same number of staff.