This is what a Bid Queen looks like to AI, and it’s also written a song about what it’s like to work in a bid team (read further…).
The tech and business world is currently obsessed with ChatGPT, a ‘Generative AI’ program created by OpenAI, that can mimic human writing.
Recently, Microsoft announced a multibillion dollar investment in OpenAI, with plans to integrate ChatGPT into existing software such as Word, Outlook, and Bing. Its brother product, DALL-E, creates realistic images and art from a description in natural language and Microsoft is planning to launch a graphic design app called Designer, and integrate this technology into Bing and Microsoft Edge to allow users to create images if web results don’t return what they’re looking for.
As with any technological advancement, this has led to people in specific industries to wonder how this latest development can help them. Can ChatGPT and DALLE-E help businesses with proposal writing and bid management?
Humans give ChatGTP-3 and DALL-E the instructions
Firstly, it’s important to stress that this is very much early days for the text and image generation technologies as they were only launched in November 2022. However, as a bid manager, you should be aware of ChatGPT and DALL-E – and similar software – and how it could potentially help you now and in the future.
Both technologies were trained on internet data and work by allowing users to type in a question or request and receive either prose or an image on the topic that could have been written by a human. It can also be written in a style of the user’s choosing, from essays and recipes to songs and film scripts.
Let’s see what it can do. In this example, I’ve entered a prompt into the easy-to-use interface.
EXAMPLE 1
Prompt: Create a funny hip hop chorus about bid teams doing all-nighters and burning the midnight oil in the style of the Australian musical group Hilltop Hoods.
Verse 1: Bid teams workin’ all night long Burnin’ the midnight oil, pushin’ on Got our eyes on the prize, the contract win Gotta submit that bid before the deadline spin
Chorus: We’re the bid team, workin’ like crazy All-nighters, makin’ us hazy But we won’t stop ’til we get the deal Burnin’ the midnight oil, makin’ it real
Verse 2: We’re the kings of the proposal scene Got the skills and the means to make it clean We’ll outbid the competition, no doubt Gotta get that contract, we’re in it to win it out
Chorus: We’re the bid team, workin’ like crazy All-nighters, makin’ us hazy But we won’t stop ’til we get the deal Burnin’ the midnight oil, makin’ it real
Verse 3: We’re the ones who seal the deal Got the paperwork and the numbers to appeal We’ll make sure the client chooses us Gotta win that contract, it’s a must
Chorus: We’re the bid team, workin’ like crazy All-nighters, makin’ us hazy But we won’t stop ’til we get the deal Burnin’ the midnight oil, makin’ it real
Outro: We’re the bid team, we’re the ones Burnin’ the midnight oil, gettin’ it done We’ll make sure we win that contract All-nighters, worth it, we’re the best.
I don’t know if Hilltop Hoods would lend their music to this, but if there’s a bid manager who likes to strum a guitar or rap acapella with vocal sounds and samples then bring it on. Our profession doesn’t have an anthem yet.
EXAMPLE 2
Prompt: Create a 3D punk style digital piece of a flying fox marrying a cat with their offspring in the wedding party.
First attempt and I’m happy. 5 seconds to generate.
Response (image generation):
DALL-E generated image of a bat marrying a cat.
Not bad! It’s interpreted the brief ALMOST exactly as my warped brain imagined it. It’s gone a little cra cra and I can see what might possibly be a cockatoo pinned upside down on the shirtfront. That’s a tad weird, and disturbing. But ok.
Depending on how linguistly sophisticated you are, you might defend DALL-E and say that a bat marrying a cat is too vague. Was the bat ”marrying” the cat (the bat being the celebrant), or was the bat and cat marrying eachother. DALL-E challenged my thinking!!! And what’s the cat at the back holding (pray it’s a watering can)? We could spend a long time analysing this piece.
Embedding the technology into your own data
The technology is moving and learning fast, and OpenAI has now granted access to developers to embed into business applications and provide feedback to their researchers. While it needs custom data training, there are many potential use cases that could be explored for bidding.
Research assistance
Use it as a research assistant – ChatGPT could be the ideal solution for bid managers who want a quick and easy way to find repeatable answers to questions that commonly arise (what’s our company number or insurance details again???). By integrating it into the bid management workflow, bid writers can find answers to responses without having to go back and forth to subject matter experts, saving everyone time and increasing company-wide efficiency. After all, being “on” 24/7 is a luxury most companies can’t afford.
Drafting
Draft the parts you can’t (or don’t want to) – As a bid writer or manager, you have many tasks to juggle. ChatGPT might make life easier for you when it comes to drafting menial parts of a response, such as biographies, track record summaries and case studies. Lacking inspiration? Struggling for a response to that draft that came back after the review? Need a draft introduction quickly? The tool can provide you with a framework for a thorough, well-written response, or even summarise a section into 200 words (to avoid the peril of being cut off in the portal), leaving you more time to focus on other important (high scoring) areas. If you want it to magically write your response it might churn out boilerplate content for you to draft, but you’ll always need to tailor the response to the requirements and customer needs.
Brainstorming
Generate some ideas with the solutions team to kick off discussions (what could this futuristic stadium for the Brisbane Olympics look like?). It’s highly unlikely this will take away any jobs because it still needs technical and commercial expertise to take it further than a concept on a page. But, there could be times when simply having something conceptual to show could be more powerful than a sea of words.
Above: DALL-E generated concepts for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics Stadium.
I’m a lover of infographics but it’s not even close to helping me construct a process diagram….
DALL-E’s attempt at an infographic depicting a process flow.
The future is what humans make of it
What this technology probably won’t do (at least for now), is create a strategic, differentiated bid that truly addresses the customer pain points and discriminators. And fact checking is a must. At this early stage, ChatGPT and DALL-E is useful for generating ideas. Should bid writers and managers – even technical solutions people – be threatened? Don’t be. If you approach bidding like you want to win a Pulizer prize, then yes, you might be threatened that it can write fairly creatively. But AI will not be able to replace evidence-based commercial and strategic thinking that persuades an evaluation committee.
It’s humans who are the masterminds behind competitive bidding and the solutions we create, not machines. So don’t be too afraid of what’s coming. If used correctly, it can be a valuable tool to streamline your bid management processes and make your team more engaged and efficient.
