The Red Review Podcast - Where are we up to with AI in bidding and winning work, with Henry Brogan
In this first episode of our new season, Jeremy is joined by Henry Brogan from BidScript to talk all things AI in winning bids and proposals.
Access the 4 min Frameworks Questionnaire mentioned in the episode here.
Transcript
00:00:01 JEREMY
Welcome to the Red Review Podcast, brought to you by Growth Ignition, the work-winning transformation and training business, and our partners Bidscript, the bid management, bid writing, and opportunity search platform.
So hello, and welcome to the Red Review with me, Jeremy Brim.
Um, first episode of a new season.
Very exciting.
Um, and so, um, I'm gonna be talking to my friend Henry from Bidscript today.
Hi, Henry.
00:00:30 HENRY
Hi.
How are you?
00:00:32 JEREMY
I'm very good, thank you.
Very good.
So, um, the thorny subject of AI and bidding and bid platforms and all of that good stuff.
So I'll do my best to keep pace with you, mate, but you're one of the leading lights in this stuff so, um, we'll have the conversation.
So just, just for context, everybody, so new season on the podcast, um, I've become, or Henry's kindly signed me up as an advisor to, uh, the board of Bidscript.
Um, so we're working together, so cards on the table.
We're, we're partners.
00:01:03 JEREMY
Um, and as part of that relationship, I thought well, why not have the, have the guys on the podcast, and we'll have the chat basically.
So you'll see they're, they're the sponsors or partners for the podcast through the, the series.
So thank you very much for, uh, bringing me on board, I guess, Henry, and for, for partnering with me.
It's, uh, it's been really good fun already.
I'm enjoying it.
00:01:25 HENRY
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Been really good, and I think super value-aligned.
Uh, obviously you've got quite a depth of knowledge in this area, so it's, um, you know, been really good for us thus far, and good going forward I'm sure.
00:01:37 JEREMY
Yeah.
And we're having some fun along the way, so it's good.
Um-
00:01:40 HENRY
That's it
00:01:40 JEREMY
...
so, uh, would you mind, Henry, uh, just giving us a bit of a, a bit about you?
Career overview, what you're doing now, bit about Bidscript, and then we can get into the subject.
00:01:52 HENRY
Yeah, of course.
Well, yeah, nice to meet everyone.
I'm, I'm Henry.
I'm one of the founders of Bidscript and, um, bit about me.
So, uh, I guess career overview's always been, there's a bit of entrepreneurial spi-spirit really, uh, trying to start a lot of different businesses, whether it be sort of small, uh, you know, side hustles as they call them in, in high school or sort of growing up through teen years.
And then as I went through university, just trialing different things, trying to test on different ideas.
And a big part of this was, um, you know, going out to sort of different local businesses in the area and just trying to sort of pick, pick together problems and, and figure out sort of what solutions myself and Tyler could, uh, could build together, um, in order to solve these problems.
00:02:38 HENRY
Um, you know, why did we go out to the market and why did we have to ask all these businesses their problems?
Because, you know, quite young and we didn't really have a lot of, uh, job experience.
We, we hadn't gone through the paces in the corporate world and fou-found something that we, we really hated, you know, which is the typical route to start a business.
No, we just, you know, wanted to do it sort of off our own initiative.
We just went out to local businesses, started to ask plenty of questions, uh, got a lot of lessons and we ended up coming across, um, what was at, what we thought at the time was sort of a problem or an inefficiency, uh, being the bid function.
00:03:17 HENRY
But we, we, uh, sort of as we sort of started to investigate the market more and more and asked more and more questions, um, and we did quite a deep discovery process, uh, meeting lots of different businesses and lots of different sectors to talk about their bidding function.
We started to realize some of the other problems that were going on in and around it, and this is what sort of really started to boil up into what Bidscript is today.
So i-in total, we've been going at it for a little over three and a half years and, um, you know, it's been sort of fun ever since.
00:03:48 HENRY
So, uh, yeah, b-been involved in the industry now, and this is my longest job to date.
Um, uh, so-
00:03:55 JEREMY
[laughs]
00:03:56 HENRY
...
so that's a bit about me.
[laughs]
00:04:00 JEREMY
Fantastic.
Um, and it's the, the energy, uh, with you guys, the approach that you take, uh, and particularly just how, how accomplished you are in running a business already, I have to say.
I mean, I, I, I work with people in their, you know, late 50s, early 60s who don't have quite the rounded, um, understanding of how you scale a business that you guys have.
So it's, it's been really refreshing.
It's great fun.
So enough blowing smoke up your arse though, I guess we should get into-
00:04:27 HENRY
Yeah, too kind
00:04:28 JEREMY
...
the subject.
So, um, so what, so why did you start Bidscript?
What was the gap?
So you, you, you did a bunch of discovery stuff with clients, and what, what was your read of the gap?
What, what was the reason for going down this road, starting the business?
00:04:43 HENRY
It was a bit of a snowball effect, you know.
I mean, the first business where something related to this function started, or the first problem that was raised to us was actually populating the PQQs or, like, compliance questionnaires, so we started there really, and we started looking at, you know, the, uh, complexity of some of these structures and different varying document types, which everyone who's listened to this will be well aware of.
But it was, like, quite a maze to navigate around and a lot of boilerplate information.
And then when you started talking to groups of businesses and they had, had different sort of legal entities within the group, and then they had to figure out which group or which legal entity they're bidding on behalf of, and therefore what information to pop into, populate into these fields, um, it, that, that, that was the first sort of problem that we, we sort of, uh, started in and, you know, of course, to learn more about that problem, to understand the pain points and the frustrations, we started speaking to the people who were responsible for completing these documents.
00:05:43 HENRY
And then from there, it sort of snowballed into something else, and then it sort of, uh, came to sort of actual project centralization and is there a way that we can, you know, store these things in an effective way that's outside of a SharePoint repository.
And then it came about kickoffs and storyboarding and, you know, as we were going through these motions, um, you know, AI was starting to really sort of pick up some pace and, and sort of develop quite a, quite a, you know-Rapid pace of innovation.
Um, so it kind of aligned quite nicely with, with timelines.
00:06:14 HENRY
Um, a-and we started to sort of, you know, this is where, um, business partner Tyler comes in with his brains and his ability, uh, started to tie in sort of problem to, to this, uh, you know, fast-paced growing technology quite nicely to build some quite effective solutions.
Um, so yeah, we actually started at, at sort of PQQ stage, um, which is, you know, uh, yeah, c-quite, quite, quite sort of, um, quite aligned really.
And then, and then sort of it-
00:06:42 JEREMY
Mm
00:06:42 HENRY
...
but it-as we went further down the process, I think there was a lot of things that people thought that they could do better.
Um, so yeah, that, and that sort of boiled into Bidscript today, which is pretty much full life cycle search and capture all the way through to outcomes and lessons learned.
So I think we found something along the way everywhere, you know, just to make, uh, sort of the lives of work-winning functions or bid functions, uh, that much easier.
00:07:08 JEREMY
Yeah.
Well, unpack that last bit for me a bit more.
So what does Bidscript actually do?
What is it?
What's the product and what, what, what-
00:07:16 HENRY
Yeah
00:07:16 JEREMY
...
mechanics does it have?
00:07:17 HENRY
Good question.
Good question.
So Bidscript is, um, you know, if, if I was to give you the one liner, it's a sort of full lifecycle bid management software solution, but Bidscript is, uh, split into two core products.
We have Bid Search.
Bid Search is the global tender aggregator, uh, where we search across 900 global data sources, uh, and aggregate, uh, tender information across sort of open tenders, contract notices, and then sort of upcoming pipeline planning notices.
It's a search tool, uh, for teams to use to sort of build pipeline, have an understanding of what's coming in their sort of, uh, you know, uh, vertical or sector, uh, based on a set of search criteria.
00:07:58 HENRY
We add about 10 to 15,000 opportunities each and every day to the search database.
Um, and we have a sort of nice little agent called Bid Hunter, which searches, uh, with your saved filters in mind across those opportunities to essentially surface results.
A lot of people will know of these things as tender search aggregators.
So that's one product.
00:08:20 JEREMY
Yeah.
00:08:20 HENRY
Now, the, the second product, which is really the core of the Bidscript offering, is Bidscript.
It's the bid management platform.
Now, Bidscript helps teams manage the actual sort of day-to-day work.
Everything from, uh, sort of go no go qualification through to live project work, uh, sort of context understanding, question extraction, draft generation, review workflows, project management, task management, timeline management.
Um, you know, then into sort of, uh, submission workflows, populating these PQQs or PSQs, populating these ITTs, all the way through then into the outcome area where we log and feedback and categorize, uh, sort of scores or, or, or feedback on a answer-by-answer basis or project level basis before completing a postmortem and storing those answers back to the content base.
00:09:11 HENRY
And then we have a sort of full, uh, content management lifecycle system in there as well.
So pretty full capture and it, and it's there to be used sort of, uh, as underlying bid infrastructure, uh, for, for sort of bid teams to, to make sure that they can handle their work at a sort of velocity that, that makes sure that they are comfortable when it comes to deadlines, comfortable when it comes to dealing, managing with content, comfortable when it comes to inviting SMEs to collaborate on certain work, having visibility of a pipeline, having visibility of a resource.
So it's quite multifaceted really in its capabilities and, and the value that it brings to teams.
00:09:47 HENRY
But yeah, I guess if I was to summarize that product, it's a sort of full lifecycle bid management software solution.
00:09:55 JEREMY
Yeah.
Fantastic.
And it's good gear.
I've, I've had to play myself.
It's very good.
Um, so it's a busy old market, isn't it?
It seems there's a new platform launching every week.
00:10:05 HENRY
It is.
[laughs]
00:10:06 JEREMY
Uh,'cause I, I guess slightly ironically, people are probably using AI to bash together all sorts of stuff at pace, I guess, and, you know, innovation marches on, so...
But so the, not all are equal, are they?
So, um, where do we see the market going in the bid platform space and with AI ever marching on?
00:10:28 HENRY
It, it, yeah, it's a great question.
Obviously there's a, there's a, a large selection of tools nowadays, and it's not even just bid specific platforms like Bidscript.
It's also, you know, your, your generic general sort of AI platforms like a ChatGPT or Claude or most commonly used in sort of corporate settings, Copilot.
Um-
00:10:48 JEREMY
Mm
00:10:48 HENRY
...
and any, then even sort of just sales related technology, if any teams use like CRMs or sales enablement platforms.
You know, it's all these sort of tools as well that can, you know, start to feed into the overall revenue function of different teams.
So, um, yeah, where do I see the market going?
I'm a big believer in the sort of writing.
You know, when AI started to come about, the biggest use case that people were piling into marketing sort of thesises and, and sort of on LinkedIn was automating the writing element of bids.
00:11:21 HENRY
I don't think that's like an advantage anymore.
I think that's sort of fairly well sort of democratized, and I think everyone pretty much has access and the capability to do that in different fashions.
So I don't think that is, uh, the advantage.
I don't think that is the, the thing that will, you know, make teams look for, for dedicated platforms.
I think Ge-general AI has a position and a place to play in this market.
It's definitely not gonna go away.
It's something that most people on a wide cohort basis will have access to just on a day-to-day basis.
00:11:53 HENRY
Um, I think because of the criticality of information that we're dealing with on sort of a, on bid function by f-bid function basis, uh, I think it will be quite restrictive in the ways that we can actually work with these tools.
Um, you know, and I think they're just not built for the specific, uh, sort of demands of, of, um-Of, of a bidding life cycle, you know?
And that's just one bidding life cycle in isolation, not 15 concurrent tenders.
You know, as I'm sure everyone who's listening, you know, most people would have used Copilot.
00:12:24 HENRY
If you go through a long chat history Copilot, you'll, you'll recognize that it starts to lose prior context and it'll start to hallucinate.
It's just things like this that make it not sort of necessarily suitable for a team that's bidding across a large scale of projects.
So to answer your question finally, where do I think, uh, sort of wider bid management, uh, sort of platform market is heading?
I think we need to cater and we need to be for the sort of core underlying infrastructure of these bid functions.
I think we need to be, uh, a source of truth.
00:12:55 HENRY
We need to sort of fit into the existing tech ecosystem that a company uses, whether that be their communications channels, their calendar channels, their CRM, whether it be their SharePoint or Google Drive or anything of the kind.
So we, we need to sort of be an extension of the tech they use.
But something that really answers the niggles and the wrinkles that people experience in bid functions.
I'll give you an example.
Um, as everyone will know, uh, going, especially going through public sector bids, uh, we, we will most often, often see a new version of a document, uh, you know, sort of issued midway through a, a life cycle.
00:13:34 HENRY
Might be a new ITT.
Sometimes if they're feeling really kind, they'll sort of change the commercial model two days before submission deadlines.
It's the tools and the capability-
00:13:43 JEREMY
Yeah, yeah
00:13:44 HENRY
...
to, to sort of handle with th-these things, you know, at scale.
So, so we actually allow those professionals who are just trying to get the submission out the door at the highest possible quality, uh, we give them the tools that they need in order to sort of handle these occurrences.
Um, go, no-go qualification's another massive one.
I was having a chat with a company the other day, um, you know, that, that sort of has a certain ambition and idea of how they want to see their go, no-go function or framework, uh, be handled.
00:14:14 HENRY
And that will vary on a team-by-team basis.
So a platform needs to be able to handle and, and cater for the, the unique sort of elements of each team's workflow.
Um, you know, and be fit for purpose for them.
The last thing teams want to be doing is adopting some sort of platform that doesn't actually fit or, or handle the sort of circumstances they come across in, in, in, in-flight work.
So I guess in summary-
00:14:39 JEREMY
Yeah
00:14:40 HENRY
...
you know, I, I think there's, AI's here.
It's obviously here to stay.
I think AI's gonna become more and more democratized for its basic task-tasks.
But I see platforms like Bidskrip become sort of core underlying infrastructure for scalable sort of, uh, bid functions going forward into the future.
00:14:57 JEREMY
Yeah.
And we were talking another time, weren't we, about security implications as well, uh, in terms of information security and proprietary information, and all of that kind of stuff.
'Cause it's a bit, you know, although you can switch off sharing of content back to the mothership in, in the major sort of, uh, open platforms, it's, they're still at risk that this stuff ends up-
00:15:22 HENRY
Yeah.
It is
00:15:23 JEREMY
...
where it shouldn't, and all, all of that kind of stuff.
Whereas if you've got a closed loop system, that's...
Yours, yours is based on their SharePoint, right, isn't it?
So it doesn't go anywhere.
00:15:31 HENRY
Yeah.
Or, or, or equivalent.
So SharePoint, Google Drive, or they can have like a locally uploaded Bidskrip bid library.
Um, so, so it is just, it is completely containerized on that information.
And also the information that we start to aggregate throughout the life cycle of a platform.
So give you a reason, if we go through a go, no-go decision process and we actually opt to not go for a certain opportunity, you log and you categorize the reason why you're not going.
And then in the future, the platform can use that information for, for only your benefit.
Say, for example, that same opportunity comes up for retender, you flag it up as a,"Hey, you, you sort of no-go'd this decision last time round.
00:16:10 HENRY
Here was the reason why.
Is this, you know, is this still a requirement in the, in the new tender documents?"So yes, we, we as a general rule of thumb that the sort of content base that we point at and that we target in, for, for AI services, answering questions against the bid library or generating drafts to answers in a question.
Uh, sorry, to questions in a tender.
Uh, we will just use information that is housed in, uh, sort of the necessary SharePoint sites, folders and Google or other document management system equivalent.
00:16:42 HENRY
But then the data that you pick up throughout the platform starts to become super valuable.
And that's what I call like the compounding nature of our platform.
The more and more you use it, the more and more, uh, intelligence gets surfaced.
00:16:57 JEREMY
Yeah.
No, super cool.
Super cool, that.
Um, and I think, yeah, we, we were talking previously around different use cases that may come down the line.
So I mean, I, I, I was, um, using Claude yesterday to help me update my key account management training program'cause I realized I haven't, uh, most of my training courses I update the content twice a year.
Once during the summer holidays and once over Christmas sort of break,'cause no one wants to be trained in the school holidays, and I tend to be quiet.
00:17:29 HENRY
[laughs]
00:17:29 JEREMY
Although this, this year's been a bit of a cluster F'cause, uh, there's been loads of frameworks my mates have wanted help with, like SCF and things all, all coming at once over the summer.
00:17:39 HENRY
All the good stuff.
00:17:41 JEREMY
Yeah.
But I just thought I'd, whilst I was waiting for someone to send me something, I thought I'd have a play and so I got it to review my training deck for key account management.
And the one big thing, so, uh, uh, thankfully it, it said it's, it's good gear.
So happy days.
00:17:54 HENRY
[laughs]Tick.
00:17:55 JEREMY
Um, so I haven't had to change much.
Tick.
So I was quite relieved at that.
Um, but, uh, considering I've gone and delivered that course this week actually with a client.
Uh, but the big c-uh, criticism it had that was my approach to researching prospects and other stakeholders and other parts of key accounts where you already work with them, um, is out of date.
My sort of thinking was circa 2018 in terms of best practices, it said.
'Cause obviously the world of AI is really driven on how you can research people and stakeholders and stuff and things.
00:18:29 JEREMY
As long as you check the sources and make sure it's not Putting two and two together and getting six or whatever.
Um, so that, that, that was quite interesting, and it kind of reminded me of other places.
I think you're right.
The, the...
People think of AI as a writing tool when it's actually awesome for data aggregation.
Um, so the bid, no bid stuff, themes, lessons learned, how you play that in, super important.
How you break questions down, scoring criteria, all of that stuff in your platform, really, really important.
00:19:02 JEREMY
Obviously writing stuff.
But how you review content as well, how it gives you feedback on, um, what's been written is, um, you know, really super powerful stuff.
I've been doing a load of that today myself.
00:19:14 HENRY
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it really is.
And, and you've, you've mentioned a couple things there that, you know, for example, do-like, uh, verification, verification of sources and evidence.
This is one thing that Bidscript offers at the ho-the heart of everything.
Um, obviously we, we sort of in the bid-bidding world sort of deal with a pretty document-heavy, uh, process.
Um, and so if we're summarizing a set of tender documents, uh, against someone's go, no-go criteria, you know, obviously someone that's probably going to want to look into where that information has come from.
00:19:48 HENRY
And, you know, if someone is a little bit untrustworthy of AI, they, they probably want to see the source and actually where it's written line by line in the document itself.
So this is another thing that Bidscript makes easy, is you just click on a little question mark button, and up comes the document and here you go.
Here's the highlighted piece of information and text where it exists in the document itself.
We call it at-source verification.
So yeah, it's, it's, you know, a capability like that, uh, that, that once was not possible that now is.
Um, and then you mentioned another thing, uh, and this is one of the biggest things that we see.
00:20:23 HENRY
Uh, you know, we, we sort of can have observability over sort of what, what our community are doing.
One of the biggest things our community does, um, pretty much on a regular basis now is, is, uh, open up our agent bid bot.
Um, i-in, in the Anter environment we have a set of skills, and one of the skills is called Grill This.
And you turn the Grill This skill on, and it flips Bidbot into evaluator mode, and it sort of understands all the context of the tender documents that have been uploaded.
It understands what the bands of the scoring rubric are, what the eval criteria is, what the eval process is.
00:20:57 HENRY
You know, just a whole general context requirements o-of the tender, and then it'll grill your answer.
And if you ask it to give you a score, it'll give you a score, but it'll give you constructive criticism to sort of take next steps to improve it.
And then using Bidbot, you can improve that answer directly.
Um, of course you can type and edit, uh, you know, if you wish to do so, but you have the tools and the technology to assist you in that workflow.
Now, the two big...
Well, one, the one big benefit that that provides for most teams is not only it sort of improves the actual outcome in the final, uh, sort of submission quality, but also it voids the need.
00:21:33 HENRY
Say if you and I, and you were my boss and I needed to send, send you something for sort of review, um, but you're stacked, uh, going through your, your training material, uh, you might take till Friday afternoon to review it.
With Bidbot I can do it there and then, and I can get a second pair of eyes, and then may-maybe I can submit something to you for final sign-off.
So again, it reduces the iteration life cycle and it, and it allows a team to get through the response, you know, or, or their work in a quicker fashion.
So some people hear quicker and they, they all of sudden think it means AI is gonna draft the output and therefore there's no need for human involvement.
00:22:07 HENRY
It's, it's absolutely not the case.
Um, especially in the industries that we serve, right?
Where, where there's a lot of need for bid professional involvement throughout it, and there always will, will be.
Um, so yeah, it's, it's...
You, you, you're completely right.
It's, it's not just about writing things.
It's, um, it's, it's much deeper than that.
00:22:25 JEREMY
Yeah, yeah.
So you sort of touched on some of it.
Beautiful segue in terms of what, what are the big challenges that you think your clients, from, from you being able to see through the back end of what they're getting up to, but also the stuff anecdotally that people talk to you about.
What, what are the big challenges in bidding and winning work that, that you're seeing, do you think?
00:22:45 HENRY
Oof, gosh.
I, I'm gonna say one that's not sort of related to technology, um, just to give everyone a bit of a breather.
Um-
00:22:52 JEREMY
Yeah.
00:22:53 HENRY
Uh, uh, culture, uh, especially organizations where there's, like, large stakeholder involvement in, in a bid process.
A lot of SMEs contributing either at sort of go, no-go stage, answer planning stage, or actually writing and reviews.
Um, I, I, you know...
Part of me can't, I can't blame the SMEs'cause they have their own day-to-day job and it's just not been instilled in the culture since day one, but there seems to be, in some teams, an innate struggle to get people together to sort of work through these, these different parts of the process where they're required or required to sort of, you know, use their expertise.
00:23:29 HENRY
And so I think culture is, is the fault for that.
I don't think it's the people themselves.
00:23:34 JEREMY
Um-
00:23:34 HENRY
But that's one big challenge I see.
00:23:37 JEREMY
Yeah, I'll come in on that one'cause it's, it's...
It is a cultural thing, but it's a bigger problem.
And I've, I've already recorded a number of episodes.
This will be the first one that goes out, but I've got a number in the can, uh, with the likes of Matt Light, Light and some others, where a similar topic comes up a few times.
And, um, it's becoming a real frustration that, uh, for me.
Uh, so there's a couple of dynamics.
One, one is that we find, and you'll see this with your construction engineering clients, et cetera, for instance, uh, the more intelligent the people, the more complex the thing that they do, uh, the worse they tend to be at bidding, um, because they-
00:24:20 HENRY
The PhD students
00:24:21 JEREMY
...
realize, or they...
Well, yeah.
Well, yeah.
You lot.
And, um, uh, but the, the architects, the engineers, the, you know, the, the super scientists of, of doing clever stuff Uh, th-they get frustrated with the questions and the specification that the client's pumped out,'cause they know what it should've been, what the better answer could've been, and how much money the client's wasting or time or...
So they get sort of frustrated by it, and they start to try and answer the question they wished they'd been asked, not the one they've actually been asked, which...
00:24:53 JEREMY
And points make prizes.
Um, so that, that's a microcosm of a bigger problem.
That's kind of in the middle band, in the, the sort of rarefied atmosphere of the problem, is that nobody teaches these people how to grow a B2B, B2G business.
You're way better than almost all people that I work with day to day on this.
Genuinely, seriously.
It's why it's been quite almost sort of positively jarring,'cause I have to talk to people a lot about the fact that technical people, stakeholders in particular, they grow up through business, or they, they go to school, college, university, whatever their pathway is, apprenticeship, get qualified, and they work up through the business and become these wonderful technical beings.
00:25:36 JEREMY
But at no point in any of their studies do anybody show them what their client journey or funnel looks like.
Um, so they have n-they naturally think that you just bid everything in the bottom of the funnel, in the end game, and win some of it, and that'll be all right.
But they don't realize the implications.
'Cause if you win bids where you're writing to strangers, they probably never wanted you, and they're probably pissed off that you won it by accident on price or program or something.
'Cause they've always known who they wanted before the procurement started, and it probab-if, if you don't know them, it wasn't you.
00:26:13 JEREMY
So people don't understand the sheer power, the massive ROI in key account management and in capture and in having decent market research and information to tell you who to target for that.
So, um-
00:26:26 HENRY
Yeah, more, more of the upstream stuff.
I, I also think a lot of the work that we do downstream as a bid function, um, outcomes, why, you know, why-if we won, if we lost, time that we spent on project, resource that it took-
00:26:38 JEREMY
Absolutely
00:26:38 HENRY
...
to bid on a project.
It's all these things and, and, and, you know, as you put it before, like this data aggregation, which can be used to reinform upstream strategy.
Um-
00:26:48 JEREMY
Yep
00:26:48 HENRY
...
and if it doesn't, you're missing a trick, it, it, at-with AI, because that's one of the, like one of the largest capabilities, and it's one, one capability that we offer through the core of Bidscript, is sort of servicing all the lessons that we're actually picking up on the way to make sure that we take corrective action going forward.
Um, so yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
It's, uh-
00:27:10 JEREMY
Yeah.
So it's-
00:27:10 HENRY
That, that, that's one...
Sorry, go on, Jeremy.
00:27:15 JEREMY
Sorry, go on.
No, sorry.
Go on.
I interrupted.
00:27:18 HENRY
N-no, I was just gonna say that's, that's one, that's one big area away from tech, although we've somehow found a way to bring it back onto tech.
[laughs]
00:27:25 JEREMY
[laughs]Yeah, sorry.
00:27:26 HENRY
That, that is, uh, that, that we, um, that we see as a struggling point.
But, but you know, I think, you know, tech is not a sort of one point solution to, to that problem we just discussed.
But if you have a platform that can handle escalation of tasks or of, of, of, uh, things that need to be done within a project because someone's missed a deadline or because someone's not, you know, actually doing the things that they need to do.
If you can handle automated nudges and, you know, you, you get sort of notifications to you about the progress status of different key tasks relative to their bid deadline and, you know, at-risk work.
00:28:04 HENRY
As a, as a bid director, as a senior bid manager, a bid manager who has visibility and control of these projects and this function, like that's a key offering and, and sort of a, a key weight off your shoulders for that sort of problem.
You know?
You still need culture to make sure they actually come back in and, and do the work they need to do and do it to the standard-
00:28:24 JEREMY
Yeah
00:28:24 HENRY
...
that's required.
But, but you know-
00:28:26 JEREMY
Yeah
00:28:26 HENRY
...
something like that can really help, um, again, take corrective action rather than let it sink the ship.
00:28:33 JEREMY
Yeah.
But the culture thing is informed by its le-by the business leaders.
It's the sponsorship is the biggest defining factor in the growth of businesses we find.
And so that, that needs to be led from the top, and I've seen some wonderful examples of that, and you see quite a lot of bad ones.
Uh, I'm dealing with some clients at the moment, um, some really well-known businesses where certain leadership have drifted off.
You know, employed some others to lead the business.
Perhaps they were accountants or something by background, and they don't get this game, uh, and the, the, the whole culture piece of how you grow a business, and they're, they're on the wane.
00:29:07 JEREMY
So, um, you know, it's a cautionary tale in some ways.
It's...
The culture set by leadership is a, a big, big part.
That's interesting.
Let's see.
What-
00:29:18 HENRY
Yeah
00:29:18 JEREMY
...
what else have we got?
Have we got, have we got another one?
What's, uh, one more challenge that we face?
00:29:25 HENRY
Oof.
You know what?
I think, uh, again, I'm gonna, gonna sort of st-in absence of technology or in absence of a dedicated platform being used in a business, I see a challenge.
Teams who aspire to do, you know, the sort of best practice, best process, the storyboarding, the outcomes, the lessons learned, um, the content management, these things that are really key and critical to the success of a bid function.
They, they don't, they don't have the time.
Um, unfortunately, I don't have any verified statistics for what I'm about to say, but from what I've heard from a lot of our community is they seemingly deadlines are getting tighter, uh, and the sort of time to actually respond is getting shorter.
00:30:07 HENRY
Um-
00:30:07 JEREMY
Yeah
00:30:08 HENRY
...
you know, I think the, the sort of the cl-the contracts and authority market understands that AI is being used, and therefore there's probably some, you know, timeline, um, sort of improvements that can happen in terms of response.
Um, so, so bid teams are feeling the weight and the volume still, um, you know, and that just sort of puts extra stress on the process and, and, and, and the governance mechanisms And again, in absence of a platform, uh, what we hear from a lot of people incoming into the community, um, is that the things that they wish they could do, they struggle to get the time to do.
00:30:44 HENRY
Um, and these are generally the things that will, you know, separate a winning bid from a losing bid, or even if it's a losing bid, at least it's something that's contributing to the growth and the continuous improvement of that function.
Um, so yeah-
00:30:58 JEREMY
Yeah
00:30:58 HENRY
...
that's probably one of the things that, that, that we see quite a lot, especially in like conversations with people who, who are incoming into the Descript community.
00:31:07 JEREMY
Yeah.
No, I get that.
I mean, mo-most often, though, I mean, it's part of a bigger patchwork of what's going on up the funnel'cause, um, if they're bidding too much, and there's two things going on, either they're genuinely under-resourced, or the business, uh, has a fairly low win rate and is bidding too much to strangers-
00:31:27 HENRY
Mm
00:31:28 JEREMY
...
hot bidding stuff.
It's very rarely anywhere but, uh, else than those two points really.
Um, and it's because their leadership don't really understand it.
I mean, you do, you do go through phases like this year, everyone in the construction community will be painfully aware, we, we've just had an absolute onslaught of frameworks all going on, all the regional ones coming out.
Uh, there's a SCAPE one out, there's SCF, there's a Pagabo one, there's been CCS, which is the biggest one in history and was appallingly run, of course.
00:32:00 JEREMY
Um, you know, incredibly poor behaviors towards our community.
Um, so i-it's been a tough old year and particularly summer in terms of just sheer quantum.
So sometimes they just come along like buses, don't they?
And it doesn't help, you're right, when clients are pulling in the amount of time they give you often because they just think that all your bids are being written by ChatGPT.
And in fairness to procurement people, um, outside our core markets really, those bids are.
00:32:31 JEREMY
So if you're bidding for a contract to supply pens and pencils, like those companies don't tend to have bid teams, and so salespeople are, you know, genuinely using ChatGPT to cobble together a load of crap, and the clients are receiving basically 15 bids that are identical.
And so they-
00:32:49 HENRY
This is-
00:32:51 JEREMY
It's a problem.
Um, we are, we're seeing, interestingly though, as an outcome of that, even in our markets where the solution's a lot more detailed and people can't be using ChatGPT to do the bid really, uh, or definitely shouldn't be.
We are seeing more competitive dialogues.
Um-
00:33:09 HENRY
Yeah
00:33:09 JEREMY
...
working on one at the moment.
Went and did some training for another one.
I've trained a bunch of people in how to approach it a couple of months ago.
So we're either seeing more...
One, one of the reasons why they're giving people less time is because clients think they've done a better job of engagement before the bid comes out,'cause they've read a manual or had their new training in new procurement act, and what the intent was that they actually did proper engagement.
So you need less time to write the bid'cause you've been engaged, workshops, et cetera.
00:33:40 JEREMY
But what they actually do is just do a half-hour webinar where they talk at you and don't really look at the Q&A, and then tell you to jog on.
Um, and then give you two weeks, so rather than a month.
00:33:50 HENRY
Speaking, speaking-
00:33:51 JEREMY
So there's-
00:33:51 HENRY
...
from experience, Jeremy.
[laughs]
00:33:53 JEREMY
Yeah, just a bit.
Uh, but we're seeing more mid-bid meetings, which fit out firms, et cetera, would be used to, but many others aren't.
Uh, we're seeing clarification meetings, we're seeing post-tender interviews, all, all the way up to full competitive dialogue.
So yeah, you've-
00:34:09 HENRY
Yeah
00:34:09 JEREMY
...
but you've got to be able to put the ball in the net in the writing stuff to get in the game for that.
00:34:14 HENRY
Yeah.
And I think, you know, going, if, if I, you know, link this back to sort of the question you asked before about where do I see this market going, and the first thing I said was, I don't think writing is a sort of compelling enough advantage now.
I think sort of it's not something that is, you know, the, the be all and end all of AI when it comes to the bidding function.
I don't even know if it's, you know, maybe it was the gateway mechanism, but I don't think it's really the, the big defensible thing.
And, and this is also reason to that claim as well, is, is this sort of, sort of trend of, of, you know, as, as you put it, a competitive dialogue and sort of various different stages of, of the bid process.
00:34:56 HENRY
And, you know, believe it or not, if, if a team was to just fully automate the writing of their bids and they got through to competitive dialogue, um, you know, gosh, uh, the, the[laughs]you know, what are the chances there, you know?
00:35:09 JEREMY
It's not gonna go very well.
00:35:11 HENRY
No.
00:35:11 JEREMY
Yeah.
00:35:11 HENRY
No, probably not.
00:35:12 JEREMY
Absolutely.
No, absolutely.
00:35:13 HENRY
And then, um, you know, last thing on, on, uh, from, from what you've just said there, um, in those markets where there is a high use of generic AI and, uh, you know, procurement folk are receiving a high volume of very similar responses, uh, you know, just to sort of bring that to context in the markets we look at, a lot of teams will now be noticing, um, you know, like annex Ks and, uh, and declarations of the use of AI in, i-in sort of certain responses.
I think one big thing to flag, um, is that it's exactly that reason why these declarations exist, not to not use AI, but instead if you do just freeball everything through a ChatGPT or a Claude or a Copilot, and it makes some, you know, great, amazing claim about the work that you're going to do, you submit, you win, and then actually when you sort of hand it or transition it over to delivery and they go,"Well, we can't do that in this timelines,"you can't go back to the client then and say,"We want a, a resubmission."Um, because you're just accepting the fact, you're, you're, you're declaring and acknowledging the, the, the fact that, that you've used AI and therefore the liability is now on you for any mistakes that you've made, not to the contracts and authority to sort of re-go through or go through any sort of further competitive process.
00:36:39 HENRY
So I think that's one really important thing to claim.
It's because of those-
00:36:42 JEREMY
Yeah, yeah
00:36:42 HENRY
...
that use generic AI en masse and create these sort of generic bullet point answers and just submit in tenders in, in the hope and the whim in some magical universe that they, you know, win these, win these, uh, sort of contracts.
That is why these, uh, declarations are coming in more and more now.
Just to-
00:37:01 JEREMY
Well, and I'll-
00:37:02 HENRY
Just so suppliers own
00:37:04 JEREMY
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it, it links to our next point about frameworks in a second.
But the...
It's a bit deeper than that, mate.
That's'cause under the new Procurement Act that came into force in February'25, um, clients, and particularly their procurement people, are now genuinely accountable for you delivering the stuff you say in your bid.
00:37:23 HENRY
Mm-hmm.
00:37:23 JEREMY
Um, so it's not just that contractually you've been a bit naughty and overpromised.
Uh, actually they are measured on it, and they're meant to have at least three KPIs that relate to the stuff you've practiced, you've, you've promised in your bid and all sorts of stuff.
So that's why we're seeing a dumbing down of scoring criteria.
We're seeing added value as a scoring criteria a lot less, and a lot more very bland scoring criterias, because they're concerned that added value's too hypothetical, um, and they can't nail you for it.
00:37:55 JEREMY
So it's, it's a genuine thing.
So, um, we're gonna be doing a bit of thought leadership and some events together o-over the next year or so.
Particularly, we're, we're gonna, uh, run a, a sort of curated, quite specific event with a cornerstone about frameworks in, in Q4, probably in November.
Um, I've secured, uh, a friend of mine who's fairly well-known in our industry, uh, but I won't absolutely commit to it yet'cause I wanna get the date nailed down and all that sort of stuff.
00:38:27 JEREMY
But, um, we...
What we'll have is a, a couple of panel discussions, then a fireside chat with somebody who's fairly well-known.
But the...
One of the particular, uh, panels and the cornerstone of the event really is gonna be linked to frameworks.
And we're gonna do a bit of research, a bit of a survey in the run-up about frameworks and so, uh, we, we'd appreciate people filling that in.
They'll send...
You'll send that out to your list, I'll send it out to mine.
We'll put it on the socials, et cetera.
We're trying to get a new, refreshed picture of what's going on in the framework space or panel space.
00:39:02 JEREMY
Um, but certainly what, what I'm seeing is this dumbing down of scoring criteria.
So basically, it's play their spec back to them and you can't go too far wrong.
Um, and therefore most organizations get 100 out of 100 on quality, and so it's closest to price wins is the, the core issue we're seeing.
That's not absolute-Some of the frameworks have varied from that and got some interesting stuff going on.
But certainly GCA or CCS have played that way, and there's, there's ramifications of that, so we're gonna have some questions about what people are seeing in terms of the procurement of frameworks themselves, and then the environment of mini bidding or direct awards through those frameworks as well, which will be really interesting, I think.
00:39:44 JEREMY
So hopefully people can feed into that.
00:39:47 HENRY
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's, it's, it's sort of area that people would like a little bit of aggregated data on as well.
It's a-
00:39:54 JEREMY
Mm
00:39:54 HENRY
...
sort of a mystified area at times, and there's a lot of things thrown around on LinkedIn about, you know, frameworks being the only, best, and most probable way to win public sector work, which is obviously not always the case, and not, not so well founded in its, uh, in its claims.
But it is a rise and a growing trend, that there's an increasing amount of, of sort of public, uh, you know, spending going through, uh, frameworks and it's obviously, uh, a very, very sort of key target for a lot of the strategic suppliers to the public sector.
00:40:25 HENRY
And therefore everyone-
00:40:26 JEREMY
Yeah
00:40:27 HENRY
...
is well within their rights to, to sort of, you know, say,"Right.
What, what are...
What is everyone else experiencing?"And, you know, we can produce data on the buyer side, uh, the contractual buyer side, public sector side.
But getting a bit of insight into what the teams going through these processes are, are seeing and facing and feeling is, uh, you know, is, is probably gonna be very, very unique and, and fresh insight for, um, a lot of people to sort of understand and learn from.
Um, so, uh, yeah, I think it's gonna be very interesting.
00:40:59 HENRY
I think we're gonna surface some really cool things and, um, you know, the more people that are involved, the, the more people that sort of will learn and then sort of get some benefit from it as well.
For, for what will be a short sort of 10, 15-minute survey, um, if that.
00:41:13 JEREMY
Mm.
00:41:14 HENRY
You know?
00:41:14 JEREMY
Yeah.
00:41:14 HENRY
It's well worth the, the short investment just to sort of get, get going.
00:41:19 JEREMY
Yeah, yeah.
So that, that'll be out in September.
Um, and then the event will be in November, and we'll publish the paper and the findings out, out the back of that as well.
So looking forward to that.
Thank you.
It's good, good fun to work with you on that.
So we're out of time, mate.
Uh, I've gotta go and let you go and continue to be wonderful in inventing stuff or talking to people and all of that.
Um, so thank you very much for joining me.
It is really great to work with you.
Uh, we'll have to grab another episode once we've done our event.
Actually, well, we'll, we'll put the, uh, recording of the event out as a, uh, an episode probably anyway.
00:41:53 HENRY
Yeah.
00:41:53 JEREMY
Um,'cause we'll, we'll record it.
Uh, but we may well do some follow-up stuff soon.
But thank you very much.
We'll see you next time, Andrew.
Thank you.
00:42:00 HENRY
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Cheers, Jeremy.
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