Why is a senior consultant rebuilding last spring's proposal?

The question this file answersWhy are my most expensive people re-finding paragraphs we have already written every time an RFP lands?

Fits: consulting, legal, accounting and engineering firms producing 5–30+ proposals a month, with past proposals sitting in a DMS such as SharePoint, iManage or NetDocuments and pricing in spreadsheets.

Not for: firms writing a few bespoke proposals a year, where each one is genuinely new — nor for the pricing strategy and positioning, which no draft replaces.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the professional-services playbook — not a client's day. Between 5 and 30+ proposals a month leave a mid-size firm, and each begins the same way: a partner assigns a team, the team trawls SharePoint or iManage for similar proposals, copies the methodology, re-prices from a spreadsheet, formats, and hands the partner a pile the night before the deadline. All of it is non-billable and sits on senior people, because they remember what was written. It hurts most when two RFPs land in one week, and at quarter-end when utilisation is reviewed.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

Tuesday, the morning an RFP lands. By the time the partner has assigned a team, a first draft exists: the requirements listed, each answered from proposals the firm has already won, sources named beside each section, the price sheet pre-filled from the rate card, and a short list of requirements nothing in the DMS covers. The team's day goes on the gap list and on tailoring the pitch — not on finding last spring's methodology. The partner reads a draft, not a pile, and can see which sections came from past work and which were written fresh. BCG and APMP (2023) measured assembly time, not win rate; their range is below.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~30–50%

less proposal-assembly time — BCG (2023), APMP (2023)

Before: a team searches old decks and pastes a pile for the partner. After: BCG and APMP (2023) report 30–50% less assembly time — positioning and price stay the partner's.

Where this number comes from

BCG 'How People Create — and Destroy — Value with GenAI' (2023): consultants using AI completed proposals 25–40% faster. APMP (2023): 30–50% less proposal assembly time. Both are published industry figures; we have not measured this. Playbook range 35–55%. Not a win-rate claim.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

We do not touch where the documents live — SharePoint, iManage or NetDocuments, with Salesforce, HubSpot or Dynamics, or whatever you run. We put a drafting step in front of the team:

the RFP is read and its requirements and scoring criteria listed
each requirement is matched against past proposals and CVs in the DMS, through its API or search index
sections are drafted from your templates and that past content, every paragraph carrying the proposal it came from
pricing is pre-filled from the rate card, so the partner adjusts numbers rather than rebuilding them
the draft is filed to the DMS with its revision history, and anything unmatched appears as a gap list.

First scope: the two service lines you propose most.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Positioning against the others on the shortlist. Price strategy. Partner review. The relationship with the buyer. Final sign-off.

Not a win-rate claim.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

Old proposals contain old prices, old names and promises you no longer make; a draft assembled from them repeats those unless the library is curated — so the audit tags what is current, and stale sources are excluded. If past work is scattered across personal drives, the search finds little and the first drafts are thin. Scoring criteria hidden in an RFP's annexes are what extraction misses; a person checks the requirements list before drafting begins. The 35–55% range is assembly effort on repeat service lines; a genuinely new offering gets no head start.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we count proposals by service line, sit with a team through one live RFP, and check how your DMS can be searched — API, index or export. Pilot, 3–5 weeks (€10–20K), medium complexity by the professional-services playbook: one or two service lines, every draft reviewed by the partner as today. Production: further service lines, CV and case libraries kept current. From you: read access to past proposals and the rate card, and a partner willing to mark up drafts honestly.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Do RFPs arrive as PDFs your team answers by searching old proposals?
Do senior people spend non-billable evenings assembling and formatting the response?
Are past proposals and CVs in a DMS a system could read?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map an ops process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Ops.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files