As generative AI tools become table stakes in competitive bidding, organizations face a critical question: build a proprietary solution in-house or buy one designed and battle-tested by experts? On the surface, building a tool in-house may seem like a way to retain control and reduce cost. But in practice, it often leads to delays, low adoption, and disappointing results.

Purchasing AI tools from specialized vendors and building partnerships succeed about 67% of the time, while internal builds succeed only one-third as often, according to MIT research.

At pWin.ai, we’ve worked with large enterprises that weighed these options before choosing the domain-specific tool built by pWin.ai and Shipley Associates. If you’re weighing your options, start with one truth: AI-generated proposal content is only as good as the systems behind it – and building those systems right is rarely fast or cheap.

Why Build vs. Buy Matters

Your firm’s success depends on focusing resources where they drive the most value. Building an AI-assisted proposal writing tool in-house can offer benefits – custom alignment with your processes, perceived data control, and a sense of long-term ownership. But those advantages come at a steep cost: dedicated engineering and product teams, ongoing maintenance, security investment, and years before measurable ROI.

How does pWin.ai give you an advantage? We’ve broken it down for you below:

For Growth Leaders: Faster Paths to ROI and Scalable Wins

Chief Growth Officers face mounting pressure to grow pipeline and improve win rates, yet proposal teams still spend hours manually shredding RFPs, building outlines, and chasing inputs. With shorter turnaround times, teams are forced to make tradeoffs on which bids to pursue, often resulting in missed opportunities and unrealized revenue. What looks like a content bottleneck is ultimately a growth constraint.

How pWin.ai helps with growth objectives:

• Increases win rates by up to 20% with complete, persuasive drafts built around Shipley best practices – the gold standard in proposal development.

• Delivers first drafts 80% faster by automating RFP shredding and outline creation, going far beyond what non-proposal domain-specific AI tools can achieve.

• Reduces manual writing and compliance tasks so teams can take on more bids without needing more headcount or SME time.

• Builds trust and team adoption support by keeping authorship human-led with no prompt training or AI fine-tuning required.

Building an in-house tool means waiting years for impact. Using pWin.ai means seeing impact on your next bid.

For IT and Security Leaders: Security-First AI Without Reinventing the Stack

Chief Technology Officers and CISOs in DoD-focused firms must vet proposal tools rigorously, given the sensitivity of CUI and proprietary content. As gatekeepers of trust, they need assurance that any AI platform meets federal cybersecurity standards and supports internal confidence. With 68% of IT leaders citing vendor trust as key to buy-in, any tool that lacks strong compliance, control, or security is a non-starter.

How pWin.ai meets security and trust standards:

• Eliminates reliance on risky public tools with a closed, enterprise-grade system designed for sensitive government work.

• Enables secure, compliant data handling by offering CMMC Level 2–compliant deployment in Azure Gov for secure handling of CUI and CTI.

• Meets full NIST 800-171 standards with isolated environments and identity-managed access.

• No need for custom LLM training on proposal writing rules, as pWin.ai is built on Shipley best practices and Responsible AI principles for trusted, human-led content.

Before signing off on an in-house solution, ask whether your team can match the security, scalability, and sustained support that purpose-built platforms like pWin.ai already deliver.

For Proposal and Capture Leaders: Automation That Doesn’t Undermine Your Process

Proposal and capture leaders juggle multiple high-stakes bids under tighter timelines and rising complexity, with constant pressure to do more with less. Time drains into compliance checks, formatting, and chasing inputs, leaving little space for strategy or quality control.

How pWin.ai helps prevent opportunities from slipping through the cracks:

• Saves days per proposal by automating outlines, compliance matrices, and past performance inserts – no non-proposal domain-specific AI tools can match it.

• Reduces compliance risk with built-in checks and hallucination reports that flag statements that need human verification.

• Strengthens narrative quality by threading win themes and differentiators using the Flight Plan – no manual coordination required.

• Improves team morale by cutting repetitive work and late nights and giving teams more time for high-value tasks and collaboration.

If your team is already spread thin, what you need is an immediate expert copilot that lets your team do what they do best – refine, polish, and win.

90-Day RFP QuickPilot

Want to stress-test everything we’ve just described? Ask us about our 90-Day RFP QuickPilot to access our complete suite of products, including RFP, RFI, Chat, Knowledge Repository, and Reports.

• Run live RFPs with your real data – no sandbox, no filler.

• Give your full team access – writers, reviewers, capture, and SMEs.

• Measure ROI in real time – see actual win-rate impact, time savings, and quality lift.

• Get full onboarding support – from knowledge base setup to submission.