On average, organizations spend approximately 30 hours when writing a single Request for Proposal (RFP) response. It's a substantial investment of a company's most valuable resources – its people and their time. When teams are tied up in responding to RFPs, they're not working on other critical tasks. In addition, the new EU regulations on sustainability and due diligence that entered into force in July 2024 significantly impacts the RFP process. Bidders must now prove their commitment to sustainability, human rights, and environmental impact, providing detailed reports and evidence of compliance.

To help companies in the Netherlands speed up the time needed to prepare RFP responses, while working on alignment with EU regulations, Bowmen Group and IBM have partnered to co-develop a pilot AI-driven RFP solution.

AI-Driven RFP Solution to Help Dutch Companies Unlock New Revenue Streams

The pilot solution leverages the capabilities of IBM watsonx, IBM’s flagship portfolio of AI products—specifically, watsonx.ai AI studio, watsonx.orchestrate, which helps create, deploy, and manage AI assistants to automate processes, and watsonx.data to help with efficient data management.

"With the new AI-driven RFP solution we co-developed with IBM, we are addressing a critical business need—helping companies automate the RFP response process and complete it faster. This enables them to respond more quickly while freeing up employees to focus on high-value tasks that can drive new revenue streams, such as talking to customers, engaging in other sales activities, or responding to RFPs with a higher chance of success," says Thomas Alderse Baas from Bowmen Group.

"In our latest IBM CEO Study, about 66% of Netherlands CEOs said the potential productivity gains from automation are so great that they must accept significant risk to stay competitive. Automating complex business processes like RFP management is a great place to start. The new pilot solution we co-developed with Bowmen Group, combines IBM watsonx—our flagship portfolio of AI products—with Bowmen’s deep industry expertise across multiple risk and compliance domains," says Valentijn Stolk, Technical Specialist AI Applications at IBM Netherlands.

Expected to speed up RFP response times by up to 60 %

Once the pilot is scaled into production, companies can expect to achieve key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:

• Automate and simplify the standard RFP process: Reduce manual workload and employees' work hours, automate the collection and organization of required documents, and help employees better understand the context of RFP questions.
• Speed up RFP response times: Reduce the time needed to submit an RFP response by up to 60 % (previously 30 hours on average) and accelerate the completion of first drafts.
• Save time on data entry and research: Automate repetitive tasks to free employees from tedious data entry, market research, and other time-consuming activities.
• Upload past RFP proposals and relevant information: Quickly locate relevant documentation from past proposals and analyze previous responses for greater efficiency.
• Meet regulatory requirements: Support RFP responses in meeting sustainability and compliance standards
• Find new revenue streams: Free up employees to focus on high-value tasks, such as driving other sales activities or responding to RFPs with a perceived higher chance of success.

The pilot solution is a result of Bowmen SMEs working hand-in-hand with local experts from IBM Client Engineering and the IBM Build Lab.

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Also, download the IBM CEO’s Guide to Generative AI for IT Automation
https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/ceo-generative-ai/ceo-ai-it-automation