Inform us about Altura
At Altura, we offer AI and automation software program to assist corporations win complicated private and non-private sector tenders and RFPs.
Our prospects are corporations in industries like building, IT and consultancy, the place successful aggressive tenders is one in all their foremost income streams. For these promoting items and providers to nationwide or native authorities (a market value round £395 billion within the UK yearly), tendering is usually the one choice.
We assist corporations deal with the inefficiencies of managing complicated bidding processes, which contain many handbook, repetitive duties which are susceptible to errors and collaboration bottlenecks. Research recommend companies lose as much as 25% of potential income because of inefficient bid administration.
Our platform considerably reduces handbook effort, helps higher decision-making, and improves win charges by enabling corporations to give attention to technique, as a substitute of admin. We centralise information to extract insights with AI and automate time-consuming repetitive actions.
What impressed you to construct a bid administration platform, and the way has that mission developed for the reason that begin?
My co-founder, Jordi van der Hek, and I have been pushed to create Altura to handle a transparent market want. It began when l noticed a shopper in a earlier firm persistently scuffling with a wide range of complicated, handbook tender and RFP processes. I used to be additionally struck by the huge quantity of beneficial information out there within the bid course of that was being left on the desk.
Since our launch within the Netherlands in 2021, Altura’s objective has all the time been to assist corporations streamline these processes, improve collaboration between the assorted stakeholders and material specialists whose enter and suggestions is required to organize bids, and optimise outcomes by making use of AI to contextual information for higher selections.
We’ve now expanded our European presence with a London workplace and are frequently refining our know-how, whereas engaged on introducing autonomous AI brokers. The brokers transcend conventional AI instruments, not simply helping customers, however actively finishing duties and making selections on their behalf, fixing a few of the most time-consuming and sophisticated challenges bid managers face as we speak.
Are you able to dive into the AI and information structure that powers Altura’s “superpowers” for bid managers?
We give bid groups a central surroundings: one place the place selections are being made. AI instruments powered by Giant Language Fashions (LLMs) help with duties equivalent to looking out inner information, summarising complicated data – together with prolonged tender paperwork – and producing high-quality proposal content material.
The software program automates time-consuming workflows like reviewing and summarizing tenders, delivering insights to information bid/no-bid selections and analysing efficiency on previous bids to enhance future win charges.
Our AI brokers can map what’s required for every tender and robotically reply or assign the best specialists. They will study from interactions with the specialists and draw on this information to draft solutions, flag dangers in tenders and floor win-loss insights.
What’s the largest cultural or organisational shift required for corporations to maneuver from handbook, fragmented proposal processes to a data-driven, AI-enabled workflow?
Essentially the most important mindset change includes individuals turning into comfy pondering of AI as a useful co-pilot fairly than both a menace to their job, or that the AI will do every part for them. Additionally they want to modify from serious about each bid as a one-off venture to viewing bidding as a set of repeatable, data-driven processes. To develop into AI-enabled, you must flip bid content material and information into shared property for AI to be utilized to.
For instance, in the event that they don’t exist already, it is advisable create documented processes for each stage of the bidding cycle for AI to scale. Is there a rationale for deciding when you must bid for a young or not, for instance? Or agreed standards for evaluating previous tenders?
AI is simply pretty much as good as the knowledge you feed it. So, a central folder for all bid content material is one other important. Previous bids, templates, case research, pricing data, insurance policies, CVs and extra must be accessible to the workforce and to the AI.
The shared information and content material are the foundations your AI instruments lean on to automate and inform each day workflows.
What’s your method to measuring the ROI of AI on your prospects?
In addition to finishing duties quicker and extra effectively, we glance to make use of AI to do issues that weren’t attainable or sensible earlier than. Like with the ability to analyse a whole lot of previous tenders and proposals throughout a number of shoppers to find out the optimum technique for a present bid. That degree of perception and strategic depth merely wasn’t possible earlier than AI, given the sheer quantity of knowledge and time constraints concerned.
So as a substitute of solely monitoring effectivity positive factors, we calculate ROI primarily based on growing our prospects’ win-rates. We wish our AI to assist them improve the standard of their work. And with high quality enhancements, you’ll be able to see increased win charges, which translate into income development and a constructive ROI.
Trying forward, how do you see the function of AI evolving in bid administration?
AI has but to make its largest affect on bid administration. To this point, it has been used to summarise, analyse and supply define responses. And lots of corporations have centered closely on making an attempt to put in writing tender proposals with AI, since this appeared the obvious answer.
Sooner or later, we’ll see two elementary shifts. First, corporations might want to create structured information about tenders, previous bids and inner techniques and extra – and set up a central supply of fact to remain aggressive. Having all information unified and structured would be the key differentiator when leveraging AI, for the reason that underlying fashions would be the similar for each firm.
Second, we’ll shift from utilizing generic LLMs in chat interfaces to counting on specialised workflows. That is the place brokers come to life – analysing huge quantities of data, structuring it to preserving people within the loop, and robotically producing the anticipated outputs. These workflows will probably be purpose-built, for instance to reply necessities, mitigate danger, make bid/no-bid selections, and extra.
However the concept AI will write a successful tender for you is rapidly disappearing. As a result of individuals are realising that AI can’t exchange human perception, creativity and judgment. As an alternative the main focus is shifting to “how can AI save me time, to assist me give attention to the technique that may assist us win”.
