Issue 15 - Bid Technology: Stories of Triumph and Challenge

ChatGPT had barely started making headlines outside tech and geek circles near the end of 2022 when Martin proposed BQ15’s tech theme. Just three months later, it’s hard to have any conversation around tech without mentioning ChatGPT, then AI, and inevitably, the future of work.

It’s not like AI is new. It’s just that most of us – me included – had not quite realised how close that future (which we had been eyeing wearily from a distance) actually is. This was despite me being closer than most to the tech industry in the bid profession.

We’ve been hearing about the possibilities and potential of AI for over a decade. But up until a year or two ago, we’d only seen a fraction of these go from ideation to practical application. An even smaller fraction trickled into the business software we use and rely on every day, with features that deliver tangible value. Some of these have been trivial, some very useful, and some have been called game changers.

Now though, with the emergence of ChatGPT and similar AI technologies in the mainstream, it feels like we’re in the middle of a monumental shift. It is not unlike when the first iPhone came out, with its absent physical keyboard buttons and its apps for everything.

Nothing was ever the same for smartphones after that; more importantly, it changed the way we live and work. There’s no going back. It feels like these new, incredibly smart and fast technologies have a similar potential to disrupt. Some say for the better and others say for the worse.

I thought it would be interesting to have ChatGPT perform a sentiment analysis on BQ15’s articles. The result would give a sense of where the panel of contributors stands (in terms of their real-world experience with technology as bid professionals) and where they see all this going.

Of the 19 articles analysed, 53% are positive or mostly positive.

That’s not very high when compared to the promises made by the makers of bid and proposal software. To be fair though, 36% of articles took a neutral position, and only 11% leaned towards more negative sentiments.

I then asked ChatGPT to extrapolate a bullet point list of all the common positive points, negative points, and recommendations from our various contributors.

The result was a total of 13 negative points, 21 positive points, and a whopping 35 different recommendations around various aspects of bid and proposal software. These ranged from best practices for content libraries, to bid and proposal software implementations, to selecting the right tools, to embracing technology. You can rest assured this edition of BQ is PACKED with good advice!

While I consider myself to be about 65% pragmatist and 35% enthusiast when it comes to technology in general, I wholeheartedly agree with those who stress technology is not a silver bullet that can magically solve all problems, particularly not people or process problems. Technology still needs people and process solutions which can then be enabled (or not) with technology. Otherwise, those problems will only be amplified and you’ll end up doing more of the wrong things faster.

And as for the massive shifts we’re seeing in AI, there are some legitimate concerns – but mostly a lot of cautious optimism. The future may be here but it is still early days. There are many more lessons to be learnt as software providers beta test new AI capabilities with real life professionals, and see if it performs as well in practice as envisioned in theory. Most agree humans are not likely to be replaced any time soon but will instead see a shiny new set of tools augmenting their toolbox.

It has been staggering to see the volume of existing software categories as we develop BQ Tech, the ultimate A-Z tech guide for bid and proposal professionals. It is a daunting task to catalogue the growing list of features and normalise feature descriptions. We don’t want to standardise everything. We do want to make it easier to match capabilities to business requirements, figure out if a piece of technology is the right one to help implement best practices where they are needed most, and elevate your business to new heights.

We can’t wait to put BQ Tech in your hands. Until then, BQ15 does a fantastic job of sharing relatable experiences, disseminating wisdom, and hopefully shaping the right conversations for those who are considering embarking on (or re-inventing) their journey into Bid and Proposal tech.

Bid Solutions disclaimer: The content of several articles has NOT been edited as AI has been used.