At this time of year, it’s easy to imagine how busy Santa must be. Such a global delivery operation is no joke – but since your LinkedIn feed will provide plenty of cringy analogies comparing that to proposals, I won’t do that here.
A better gift for 2025 is to think about what’s new in the AI bidding tech space. I’ve called this “Santa’s Upgrade” and that’s as cheesy as this article gets. (Believe me, it’s better this way; I’m more of a direct-insights guy).
Since late 2022, everybody has been busy trying to land this “AI thing” into their respective fields – me included – and we have cracked part of the puzzle with tools and chatbots. But the overall feeling (and real-life implementation) can be summarised as “meh”.
It seems that’s about to change.
A new type of AI solution, which we who sell software insist on calling “agents”, has already been born and will likely define how teams work with AI in the coming years.
The funny thing is that, at least for now, AI agents are not much smarter or more capable than your current AI. They just integrate much better into the workflows everybody has in place, which I bet will rocket-ship implementation by erasing learning curves.
Most bidding peers are currently disappointed with AI because they haven’t found useful ways around its inherent limitations. Struggling to select the right set of inputs so you don’t overwhelm it, working with that two-page cap for a single request, the hallucinations hiding in your drafts, and the out-of-the-box robotic style – these are examples of current AI limitations which can be overcome if the time (almost) no one has is invested.
We are entering a year where you won’t need to work around AI limitations anymore; just assign some tasks as you’d do with a remote colleague and wait for the AI agent to figure it out. Even with the same level of intelligence, this change in user experience is big and for the better. That’s what I believe anyhow.
The first part of this article’s gift is the raw insight: AI agents are already a thing you may want to have a look at. Here’s a start: https://deeprfp.com/blog/category/agents/
The second part is opening the conversation so you have a chance to think about this: how can these new tools (that feel more like working with remote colleagues) improve your bidding and proposals?
Now, for closing, let me try to put that in a more holiday-like tone.
Sometimes, the most valuable gifts aren’t physical objects but ideas that transform our way of working.
Happy bidding!
Javier Escartin
Javier is an aerospace engineer who has climbed the corporate ladder from engineering to business development. He is a full-time freelance Proposal Manager and has recently launched a business to make our work easier with artificial intelligence. He is the founder of DeepRFP.com, runs the proposals newsletter jescartin.com, and manages proposals for worldwide technology companies as a consultant.
