Whether it’s fears that the printing press will replace typesetters or anxiety over the proposal automation software replacing the bid and proposal specialist all together, technology has always surrounded us.
As the proposal industry continues to evolve, it’s important to understand these fears and address them directly. Rather than ignoring industry experts’ concerns, companies should work with them, helping them explore the benefits of new technology while reassuring them that their expertise is invaluable and irreplaceable.
We’ve spoken with professionals throughout the industry while attending conferences like BPC New Orleans or just in our day-to-day interactions with our customers. In all these conversations, a few core areas of concern have been raised regarding artificial intelligence (AI).
So, we’ve rolled up our sleeves, spoken to our internal experts, and taken it upon ourselves to highlight key areas of fear professionals have around AI. We’re identifying these common fears and quashing them for all professionals by providing clear guidance, strategies, and tips around using AI to improve human workflows, not replace them.
Fear #1 AI will replace human talent
The rapid rise of generative AI has some professionals feeling nervous. In their minds, if generative AI can produce content in seconds, it’s hard for professional writers or experts to compete. Many bid and proposal specialists worry that as more and more tools incorporate some form of generative AI into their functionality, there’ll be less and less need for professionals.
However, while these worries can be justified, generative AI is just like any other technological change how you use a technology matters more than the technology itself. Professionals are still needed every step of the way to ensure content is successful and accurate.
AI can never replace professionals
Qvidian has been around for a while now. We have over 40+ years of experience and helped build the automation industry from the ground up. Throughout those years, we’ve worked tirelessly with bid and proposal specialists across all industries. At our heart, we know that the bid and proposal specialist, proposal writer, or proposal expert cannot be replaced. That’s why we firmly believe the key to good human-AI collaboration is working with humans, not replacing them!
Professionals provide too much expertise to not remain as a crucial leader of any proposal process. Rather than spending hours drafting content, professionals’ time is better spent reviewing information for accuracy, polishing paragraphs to make them perfect, and making key decisions on what opportunities to apply for.
Generative AI tools are great for brainstorming and quickly drafting content. They can also help professionals get deeper insights into key data and performance metrics. However, they’ll never fully replace the finely tuned human eye.
Fear #2 : AI makes your Content Library obsolete
The highest performing proposal teams have long recognized the benefit of a content library: a single source of managed and maintained, high quality bid content. The Library is the beating heart of Qvidian Proposal Automation and many customers have built comprehensive repositories with tens of thousands of Q&As, slides, case studies, solution descriptions and much more. But, if AI can generate all of this on demand, then is the Library dead?
Your Library and your content are more important than ever
The truth is AI cannot simply recreate your content. At best, it can guess at a likely generic answer, but it won’t be your answer. Instead, your Library becomes the gold standard by which AI understands and generates responses about your business, people, systems, policies, and solutions. Your Library is still your trusted center for proposal information, and your content managers remain the gatekeepers and curators of that trust.
Fear #3: AI content is inaccurate or prone to hallucinations
Let’s be honest: stories about inaccurate or hallucinatory generative AI models have been all over the news lately. It’s no wonder that professionals are concerned about implementing generative AI into their existing workflows.
Keeping your content accurate and up to date is critical to winning business. After all, it’s hard to win business when your proposal is filled with services you don’t provide or data that isn’t accurate. Many professionals in the bid and proposal industry are already worried about the time and effort it takes to keep their current content accurate and up to date. Now, we have to ensure that all our generative AI models are consistent and accurate, too.
It’s a heavy lift that makes many bid and proposal specialists less than enthusiastic about getting started with generative AI. But never fear, the key to ensuring consistent and accurate responses starts with the content you use to train the model.
Using the right content to train data can help
If you’ve been working on proposals for any time, you already know one thing to be true: you’re only as good as the worst content in your library. The real key to ensuring consistent and accurate generative responses is to only start with the best, most up-to-date content you have.
At Qvidian, our generative AI feature only pulls from the existing content found in your content library. That means we’re basing all our answers on the content you’ve already provided. Rather than relying on external databases of content from all corners of the internet, our model focuses on the content you already trust.
By ensuring that only the best most accurate content lives in your library, you can improve your chances that all generative responses are consistent and accurate. We still recommend reviewing every piece of content you generate though. We’ve even made it easy for users to quickly identify generated responses by auto-flagging them with an AI-generated response label.
Fear #4: AI-generated content isn’t secure
Companies know that their most valuable asset is their content, and they want to ensure that content is kept secure. As generative AI models rise in popularity many companies are worried their content might leak out, being used by external companies to train their large language models (LLMs).
Additionally, many companies keep sensitive customer data in their content libraries and worry that by implementing AI into their workflows they’re risking keeping their entire organization compliant with all local laws and regulations.
Keeping your data secure involves strategic partnerships
Here’s a not-so-tiny secret: keeping your data secure when it comes to generative AI involves the exact same steps you’d take when using any other piece of software. Before you jump into using a new generative AI software, do your own research, asking yourself a few questions:
- Where does the data I put into this model go once I hit submit?
- Is my data stored and if so where is that storage?
- Will my data be used to train large language models?
- What other privacy or security features does this software offer?
The gold-standard for secure generative AI models is a company that stores data internally, doesn’t use it to train LLMs and provides a robust set of additional privacy and security features. At Qvidian we never use user content to train LLMs, we store data securely internally, and we never pass off sensitive information to be stored in any external source. Additionally, we provide robust privacy and security options like setting custom user permissions, limiting generative AI access, and more.
Fear #5: AI-generated content is obvious or inauthentic
As more and more generated AI content appears publicly, many professional writers have noticed that content can sound…well a bit robotic. Bid and proposal specialists know that the key to winning business is standing out from the competition, not blending in. As they start using generative AI, they’re rightfully worried their own content might start sounding more robotic. The solution: personalize, personalize, and personalize some more!
Personalizing your generative responses is the key to success
Personalized proposals perform better. It might sound simple, but it’s true. While many professionals worry about producing content that sounds bland and inauthentic, they already have the tools they need to kick personalization up a notch!
To avoid robotic generative AI responses, lean on your existing personalization skills to tweak generated responses for clarity, industry, or to highlight your company’s overall voice. Think of your generated responses as quick-to-produce first drafts. By quickly generating an initial response using existing content, you can spend your already valuable time really homing in on crafting the perfect personalized response.
With all your extra time, you could research more about target companies like:
- Past projects they’ve completed
- Past and current partnerships they’ve formed
- What voice or tone do they use on social media
- What style of writing do they use on their website or public-facing press releases
Additionally, you can take deeper dives into your own company by:
- Analyzing past proposals to see what content performs best.
- Fine-tuning company mission statements or biographies.
- Perfecting your service explanations, ensuring they’re always clear and consistent.
Whatever path you take, what’s important is that with the routine or mundane content generation parts out of the way you can focus on the high-level work you do best.
Fear #6: AI is only for big tech companies
Large Language Models (LLMs) have been the preserve of large technology companies, including Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others. They require hugely expensive hardware, specialist AI software engineers, enormous power, and time to learn how to generate human-like writing. But using AI? Well, that’s been accessible to individual users almost from the start.
AI has generated a level playing field
Advanced technology solutions have always been an investment most easily accessible to those with the financial and human resources to gain the maximum benefit. Generative AI tools, while still requiring financial investment, have flipped the paradigm because they offer access to resources and capabilities previously unimaginable for smaller organizations. In the proposal world, AI can augment small teams with virtual specialists and experts contributing answers, reviewing content, and editing for compliance, tone of voice, and persuasion.
Fear #7: AI needs advanced computer skills to use
Algorithms, machine learning, large language models, prompt engineering, chain-of-thought—AI has already created its own confusing jargon, making it sound complicated, inaccessible, and cloaked in mystery.
AI literacy in the modern workplace
While it helps to understand these terms and know how to instruct generative AI systems to achieve the best results efficiently, AI tools for business are becoming increasingly easy to use. By focusing on the main tasks users want to perform and simplifying prompts into preconfigured buttons, many AI features have become simple, one-click actions.
Wrapping it up
As artificial intelligence continues to be implemented into more parts of our daily lives, we can expect professionals of all types to feel anxious. But, as with any new technological change, it’s how we use the tool that determines its ultimate impact. By continuing to keep humans involved in the bid and proposal process, personalizing generated content, and following our same diligent practices for content security, AI will feel less scary and a lot more helpful.