Over the past couple of years, we've spent a lot of time with commercial leaders, heads of bidding and bid managers. Some conversations have happened around boardroom tables, others over coffee after a product demonstration, and many while working through live opportunities together. Those conversations have given us a front-row seat to how AI is actually being adopted inside commercial teams, and the reality is often very different from the headlines.
Most bid teams have already adopted AI
The narrative in the market still suggests that organisations are deciding whether AI belongs in the bidding process. That hasn't reflected our experience. Most bid teams are already using it. ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and other tools have quietly become part of the day-to-day workflow. Tender documents are being summarised, requirements extracted, evaluation criteria analysed and first drafts generated. In many cases, this isn't being driven by a formal AI strategy. It's simply experienced professionals finding quicker ways to get through the work in front of them.
That shouldn't surprise anyone. Bid managers have always been resourceful. They're measured against demanding deadlines, complex procurements and increasing workloads. If a new tool helps them review a 300-page tender pack in thirty minutes instead of three hours, they're naturally going to use it. From what we've seen, AI isn't replacing experienced bid professionals. It's becoming another tool they reach for when the pressure is on.
The gains often stay with individuals
What has surprised us is how individual those improvements often remain.
One person develops a prompt that consistently extracts the right information from procurement documents. Another builds their own way of comparing revisions to a specification. Someone else creates a personal library of prompts they've refined over months of trial and error. Each individual becomes more productive, but the organisation doesn't necessarily become any more capable.
That isn't because people are deliberately keeping good ideas to themselves. It's simply what happens in busy commercial teams. When deadlines are tight and opportunities keep arriving, there isn't much time to document new ways of working, share them across the team or think about how they fit into a broader commercial strategy. Everyone finds their own shortcuts, but those shortcuts rarely become part of the organisation's standard way of working.
Knowledge is the larger opportunity
From our perspective, that's where the biggest opportunity exists.
Commercial organisations have spent years building valuable knowledge. Winning bids, capability statements, project experience, technical expertise, lessons learned and customer relationships all exist somewhere within the business. The challenge isn't creating more content. The challenge is making that knowledge consistently available when commercial decisions are being made.
The questions that matter when a new opportunity arrives
When a new opportunity arrives, can the team quickly identify similar projects they've delivered before? Can they see which parts of the business are best placed to deliver it? Can they understand the delivery risks before committing valuable time and resource? Or does every opportunity begin with the same process of searching shared drives, asking colleagues if they've seen something similar before and piecing information together from multiple locations?
Those questions have very little to do with writing bids. They have everything to do with commercial performance.
The conversation about AI in bidding is maturing
We're beginning to see the conversation around AI mature. The early focus was understandably on drafting faster and summarising documents, and those capabilities will continue to improve. Increasingly, however, commercial leaders are asking broader questions about how AI fits into the way their organisation operates, how knowledge is captured and reused, and how technology can help teams make better commercial decisions, not simply produce documents more quickly.
Those are the conversations we enjoy most.
Before we talk about software, we want to understand how opportunities move through the business, how bid and no-bid decisions are made, where knowledge lives today and where time is being lost. Every organisation answers those questions differently, which is exactly why every conversation is different. It is also why the same platform is applied differently across the sectors we work in.
Process first, then technology
Technology has an important role to play, but it should support an effective commercial process rather than define it. Organisations that take the time to understand their current bid management process before introducing new technology are often the ones that achieve the greatest long-term benefit.
At bidworx, that's where we choose to start. Not with a product demonstration, but with a conversation.
If you're responsible for commercial performance and you're thinking about how AI could strengthen your bid management process, we'd be delighted to talk.