AI in Proposal Management: Define the Need Before You Buy the Tool

The AI gold rush is well underway, and proposal teams are squarely in the path of the stampede. The promised land beckons with automatic draft generation, real-time compliance checks and smarter knowledge retrieval. The message is clear: adopt AI or fall behind. But before you sign a license agreement and start onboarding your team, stop and ask one essential question:

What do you actually need AI to do?

This isn’t about resisting innovation. It’s about making smart, needs-driven decisions to avoid buying a tool that has been oversold and then doesn’t deliver what you’d hoped for. Particularly in defence and high-stakes bidding environments, where security, accuracy, and strategic insight matter as much as speed.

Define the job to be done

Before you get blinded by a sleek interface or a captivating sales demo, sit down with your team and list out your real challenges. Are you looking to:

• Accelerate research: Automatically extract relevant data from dense RFPs or client documents?
• Analyse and shred complex requirements: Map out compliance matrices and spot gaps at speed?
• Generate content: Generate compliant first drafts of responses rapidly?
• Assess quality: Grammar, tone, readability, structure, compliance?
• Manage a reusable content library: Searchable, taggable, up-to-date?
• Orchestrate workflow: Assign, review, version-control, and track contributions?
• Translate documents: Translate your draft proposal into another language?

You may want all of the above. But some needs are more urgent than others. Prioritising them will steer you toward the right tool, or tools.

Inventory what you already have

Documenting your current tech stack, content assets, and knowledge management practices is critical.

• Do you already have a library of past proposals and reusable content?
• Is it structured and searchable?
• Can it be imported into an AI system, and if so, how will you host it? On your servers or in the vendor’s secure cloud?
• Who owns the data, and what are the access controls?
• What can be weeded out, is duplicated or incorrect?

Especially in defence, where IP and sensitive data are non-negotiables, knowing where your data lives (and dies) is essential.

Match use cases to tools – not the other way round

The mistake I have seen many teams make is shopping before scoping. They fall in love with a UI or what seems to be a great set of features and try to retrofit it to their workflow. But the best tools don’t make you change how you work. They fit into how you already do it or want to.
When assessing a tool, ask:

• Does it support the full lifecycle of proposal development, or just one slice?
• Can it handle both classified and unclassified workstreams?
• Is it trainable on your content, or is it a closed system?
• Can SMEs and non-technical users actually use it without six weeks of training?
• Does it integrate with your existing systems (SharePoint, Teams, CRM, etc.)?

Prioritize breadth and depth

It’s easy to get impressed by a tool that does one thing really well. But proposal work is interdisciplinary and cross-functional. You need breadth (many capabilities) and depth (robust execution).

An AI writing assistant that can draft an answer is great. But if it can’t reference your data, maintain formatting, or distinguish between a MOD spec and a commercial RFP, it’s just clever filler.

Similarly, a content management system that uses AI to tag documents is helpful. But if it doesn’t support access control or compliance tracking, it’s not much use in defence.

Avoid the sales dazzle

Vendors are good at selling AI. They know what you want to hear: “This will save your team hours.” “It writes like your best proposal lead.” “It’s secure by design.”

Sometimes it’s true. Sometimes, it’s not. Your job is to separate fact from fiction, so:

• Ask for use-case-specific demos, not generic ones.
• Request trial access with your content, not theirs.
• Test performance on real proposals – the complex, messy ones.
• Dig into the roadmap: What’s coming, and when?
• Talk to other users – not just reference clients, but unfiltered peers.

Consider security early and often

In defence and adjacent sectors, security isn’t a checkbox; it’s the table stakes. Ask the following questions:

• Where is the AI model hosted?
• Who has access to your data, and how is it encrypted?
• Can the tool be air-gapped or deployed on-premise if needed?
• Does it meet your client’s security requirements, not just your own?

A great tool that can’t meet your InfoSec requirements is a non-starter.

Remember: AI is a tool, not a transformation

The best proposal teams aren’t just efficient – they’re rigorous. They don’t confuse automation with quality. AI can accelerate tasks, surface insights, and standardise formatting. But it won’t:

• Understand nuance like your top bid director
• Replace strategic decision-making
• Catch political or interpersonal dynamics between stakeholders

What it can do is free your team from repetitive and time-consuming tasks so they can focus on what actually wins proposals: insight, strategy, and storytelling.

A final thought: Buy for the team you have (and the one you want)

The best AI tool is the one your people will actually use. Flashy functionality is meaningless if it gathers dust. So when choosing, ask:

• Will this make my team faster, better, or both?
• Will they adopt it, or resist it?
• Will it scale as we use it more?

Write down your list of needs. Prioritize them. Stress-test them with real proposals. Then, and only then, start shopping. That’s how you avoid AI buyer’s remorse.

Article published: July 2025