“The time you save goes directly into sharpening your narrative based on the feedback.”
For a proposal specialist with 18 years of experience at organizations like Capgemini and PwC, proposals are won on the details. Anne Marieke van der Meulen, independent proposal strategist at Beter Bid, specializes in understanding client needs and perfecting proposal content that addresses them precisely.
"When you're deep in the details of a text, you risk losing sight of the big picture," Anne Marieke explains. "You're so focused on perfecting a paragraph that you can miss how it fits within the narrative thread of your story." Add the time pressure of an approaching deadline and scattered requirements across countless attachments, and even the most seasoned professional yearns for a second pair of eyes. A tireless assistant watching 24/7 with the critical eye of an evaluation committee. She found that assistant in TenderRender.
From manual review to strategic confidence
Anne Marieke integrates the review feature into her workflow in two ways. "I use it during the writing process, but also retrospectively as an analysis tool to learn from previous proposals." For example, she had a complex 60-page proposal reviewed by TenderRender's review feature at various stages of the writing process. The first benefit was immediately tangible: oversight. TenderRender provided instant insight into the consistency of the narrative and clearly indicated where improvements were possible.
The review feature also provides oversight when an RFP consists of many documents. "TenderRender pays close attention to whether your response is complete and consistent," says Anne Marieke. "The fact that it includes all RFP documents in its analysis is an indispensable help with proposals that consist of many documents. That verification takes much more time manually and is more error-prone."
More than time savings: a leap in quality
But what's the biggest benefit of such a digital assistant? Do you mainly save time, or does the quality of the proposal actually improve? For Anne Marieke, the answer is clear. "I think both," she states. The real benefit isn't in the time she saves, but in the quality she can add with the extra time she has. "The time you save goes directly into sharpening your narrative based on the feedback."
A perfect example presented itself in a recent RFP. Anne Marieke had written a convincing story, but TenderRender put its finger on the sore spot. "In the draft proposal, there turned out to be an argument that wasn't fully aligned with one of the >100 requirements from the Statement of Work. Because TenderRender had carefully compared our proposal with all requirements in the various RFP documents, I could make our submission fully consistent. In fact, we strengthened our proposition further by offering more than the required scope on some elements."
The ultimate validation: client feedback vs. AI feedback
But how reliable is the feedback from an AI assistant? To test this, Anne Marieke put it to the test. She had proposals that were already completed and evaluated by the contracting agency analyzed again. She compared the scores and substantive feedback from the contracting agency with TenderRender's analysis. "The total score on our submission from TenderRender was almost identical to the client's."
For Anne Marieke, an AI tool like TenderRender is an enhancement of her expertise. It's a smart assistant that maintains the big picture and completeness, so she can do what she does best: write a winning proposal where the client recognizes themselves.
