By now, in the event you function a tech-savvy group, you have got seemingly already seen what synthetic intelligence can do as a device to handle the complexities of a provide chain. From flagging potential bottlenecks earlier than they happen to optimizing route logistics to evaluating provider danger, AI is proving its worth on the availability aspect of the enterprise.
However let’s not overlook the affect AI can have on a key supply-chain driver inside your group: the brand new enterprise and gross sales pipeline.
Finally, you need a sturdy, bustling provide chain, as a result of that implies your enterprise growth crew is doing its job on the entrance finish by filling your pipeline with new offers, contracts, orders, challenge work, and so on. It’s right here within the enterprise growth space of a corporation the place AI in its varied varieties—task-driven brokers, generative AI-powered assistants, machine studying, and pure language processing, to call just a few—could make an actual distinction, each quantitatively and qualitatively, serving to corporations land extra of the varieties of latest enterprise they need, whereas additionally serving to them determine and deal with dangers that immediately have an effect on the availability chain.
Simply as with managing a provide chain, clever capabilities may also help a corporation carry out key enterprise growth and gross sales pipeline-related actions and workflows extra effectively, with extra precision and fewer guesswork. That, in flip, gives an actual aggressive benefit in vying for brand new enterprise—an edge that may translate into new income and better revenue margin, with out growing worker headcount.
Survey Says: Extra Firms At this time Are Using and Benefiting From AI
In keeping with the outcomes of our 2025 AEC Encourage Report, an annual benchmarking report masking the structure, engineering and development industries, technology-mature corporations (together with these utilizing AI of their operations) “win extra bids, ship extra initiatives on time, speed up money movement, and extra continuously report optimistic indicators of organizational development and profitability” in comparison with their much less tech-focused friends. The sting for tech-mature corporations is particularly stark in proposal win fee, the place they outperform much less tech-focused corporations by 19%.
Greater than half—55%—of the 300 corporations surveyed report utilizing AI in some capability. One other 28% are intrigued by AI however not utilizing it, whereas 16% have but to make use of AI in any respect. We anticipate the universe of non-AI-users to shrink rapidly as extra corporations acknowledge the aggressive worth it might present—and the chance they soak up not exploring it.
Among the many corporations we surveyed, the commonest use circumstances for AI come within the areas of enterprise growth and IT. Slightly than viewing AI as a device to switch folks, they see it primarily as a workforce enhancer. Two-thirds of respondents anticipate AI to assist staff work quicker, and simply over half consider it would improve staff’ efficiency.
One vital AI-related purple flag emerged from our findings: among the many corporations that use AI, two-thirds lack clear insurance policies or procedures for its governance, leaving them uncovered to dangers associated to knowledge stewardship, accuracy, safety, and moral issues. That is an space the place AI-enabled corporations clearly have to take steps to guard themselves from the dangers related to AI use.
In the meantime, findings from a latest IDC examine commissioned by Microsoft counsel that well-placed AI investments can present a robust return on funding. For each $1 an organization invests in generative AI, the ROI is 3.7x, and organizations are realizing worth inside 13 months. Greater than 40% of respondents mentioned productivity-related AI use circumstances present the best ROI.
What sorts of AI capabilities on the enterprise growth and gross sales pipeline aspect of the enterprise are apt to supply a robust ROI? Let’s have a look at a handful which might be proving their worth.
AI Instruments Can Function an Group’s Eyes and Ears within the Market
Ever had that sinking feeling your group is lacking out on strong new enterprise alternatives, like when your first time listening to a few explicit alternative is when considered one of your rivals proclaims they received the contract? An absence of robust, complete market intelligence capabilities that scour the panorama for brand new enterprise alternatives (RFPs, open bid solicitations, and so on.) can create troublesome blind spots for a corporation, placing them at a determined aggressive drawback.
A brand new technology of AI-driven market intelligence instruments can remove these blind spots and maintain corporations knowledgeable of latest enterprise alternatives—and never simply any alternatives, however ones that monitor to a corporation’s particular, predetermined parameters.
These market intelligence AI instruments can function a corporation’s eyes and ears within the market, making an allowance for parameters like the kind of work and buyer desired, geographic area, contract size and extra, then offering a gradual stream of engaging alternatives that land within the firm’s candy spot, with sufficient lead time to behave upon them. These may very well be alternatives that the corporate would possibly in any other case have ignored, and that their rivals may properly miss.
Versatile know-how that it’s, AI may also help set these search parameters, then help in evaluating alternatives as soon as they’ve been recognized. With the power to collect and digest big quantities of information from inner and exterior sources, AI-powered analytics can put a nice level on who an organization’s excellent prospects are from a profitability standpoint, for instance, in addition to the forms of contracts which have been most worthwhile and the purchasers which have yielded essentially the most repeat enterprise. That’s priceless perception that may inform the search parameters an organization gives to its AI market intelligence instruments.
As soon as alternatives are in hand, the emphasis shifts to being target-smart. Clever analytics can create a choice (or compliance) matrix that helps organizational leaders consider and prioritize particular pursuits by zeroing in on essentially the most winnable, worthwhile, and fascinating alternatives.
AI can determine the precise necessities inside a solicitation, then map again to your group’s potential to fulfill every of these necessities. So in the end, as a substitute of counting on intestine intuition alone, decision-makers now have knowledge to tell their go/no-go calls. And in consequence, as a substitute of losing time and assets pursuing work that isn’t in your wheelhouse, you’re filling the pipeline with extra of the sorts of enterprise you covet.
Shut Extra Offers with AI-Powered Proposals
With a transparent image of which alternatives to pursue, subsequent comes the labor-intensive work of formalizing these pursuits with the creation of a bid, supply, or proposal. That is an space the place proposal AI instruments can tackle a lot of the heavy lifting, liberating your folks to concentrate on the components of a bid or proposal the place a human contact is especially vital.
AI capabilities are actually coming into their very own by way of their potential to deal with duties like gathering, verifying, standardizing, organizing, and smoothing knowledge and content material for a bid or proposal. It may possibly assessment and interpret the necessities of an RFP, a few of which may be extremely advanced and esoteric, and even clarify in plain language what sure necessities imply. As an alternative of your enterprise growth groups spending lengthy hours sifting by means of giant volumes of information and documentation to determine related data for a bid or proposal, verifying knowledge accuracy, or making an attempt to make sense of advanced contractual compliance language, they will hand these duties over to AI.
Not solely can AI cull, set up, and confirm applicable data from varied inner and exterior sources (repurposed data from previous proposals, for instance, or third-party market analysis), it can also flip all that data right into a coherent entire by using pure language processing to generate content material. It may possibly then movement that content material into automated proposal templates to create a primary draft that’s 60 to 70% full. Meaning enterprise growth groups received’t have to start out from scratch with every new bid or proposal.
The end result may be game-changing for a enterprise by way of the standard of proposals and bids it produces and its general proposal-generation capability. Capabilities like these can minimize common RFP time-to-draft by 70% and slice probably six-figure proposal-generation prices in half, whereas growing a agency’s general proposal capability 15 to twenty%—with out growing head rely or compromising win fee.
Extra Enterprise Growth Use Instances for AI
The potential enterprise growth use circumstances for AI that join again to the availability chain are quite a few and rising. For instance:
By making use of clever analytics to their pipeline and present contract, order, or challenge backlog, corporations can determine any at-risk enterprise within the pipeline. This, in flip, will inform choices about sourcing, manufacturing, stock, and the like on the availability chain aspect.Through the strategy of evaluating vendor procurement choices for a proposal or bid, AI may also help determine distributors that supply extra favorable phrases and/or current a decrease provider danger, which might bolster the enchantment of that proposal or bid.
These are but extra the explanation why a corporation ought to think about in search of alternatives to combine AI past provide chain administration.
Concerning the Writer
Put up by:
Matt Moddelmog
Matt Moddelmog is senior vp of product administration at Unanet, a software program firm that gives enterprise useful resource planning, and buyer relationship administration options for organizations within the authorities contracting, structure, engineering, development {and professional} companies industries.
Firm: Unanet Web site: www.unanet.com
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