Proposals built from approved facts, not from memory
A bid process where winning material sits across old documents and individual folders. The risk is a confident claim nobody can substantiate.
A contract caterer turning over under two million pounds, producing frequent menu proposals, site tenders and allergen responses.
A delivered Orchyn engagement. The client is anonymised at their request. The company and the people are not named. The operation, the workflow, the controls and the outcome are as delivered.
The commercial problem
The people are knowledgeable but the process runs on memory. A business development manager spends half a day assembling a credible first draft, then the head chef and the compliance coordinator correct operational and allergen inaccuracies.
Good expertise, unreliable operating memory. Rework is high and the rush at the end of a bid is where commercial and compliance risk concentrates.
How the work runs before
- A prospect sends a tender invitation or an event brief.
- The bid owner searches old proposals and copies sections into a new document.
- They ask the head chef for menu ideas, capacity confirmation and dietary changes.
- The compliance coordinator checks policy wording, insurance statements and requested documents.
- Pricing assumptions are assembled in spreadsheets, usually late.
- The managing director reviews shortly before submission, sometimes finding contradictory claims or missing requirements.
What makes it hard to automate safely
- The model must never invent an allergen, dietary, capacity, sustainability or accreditation claim. This is the whole risk of the workflow.
- Menu and price decisions need chef and commercial approval. They are not drafting exercises.
- Tender material contains sensitive customer information.
- Source documents were inconsistent. An approved facts library had to exist before a model could help safely.
What we change first
Reusable approved content was separated from client specific decisions. A controlled library was built for credentials, menu building blocks, dietary statements, worked examples, template answers and bid review requirements. Every item has an owner and a review date, which is what makes it safe to draw from.
The redesigned workflow
- A brief is forwarded into the bid workspace.
- The model extracts requirements, deadlines, evaluation criteria and clarification questions into a bid checklist.
- It assembles a first draft from approved content only, linking each source and flagging missing evidence rather than filling the gap.
- The chef reviews feasibility, dietary requirements and capacity. Compliance checks mandatory content. The bid owner holds commercial positioning and pricing.
- The system shows a completion view for the bid with named owners against every gap.
Where the model stops
The model assembles from approved content and flags what is missing. It cannot generate a credential, an accreditation or an allergen statement. An unanswerable question is returned as a gap with an owner, never as plausible text.
What we learned
The instinct is to point a model at old proposals and ask for a new one. That produces confident text with unverifiable claims, which in a regulated catering bid is a liability. Building the approved library first is slower and is the only version that holds up.