RFPs & tenders
Bid response checklist: what AI handles, what humans still own
Two questions sort every section of a tender in about thirty seconds. Is the answer already in your sources, and who takes the call if it's wrong?
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Field notes
Practical AI for the documents your firm writes over and over.
Proposals, SOWs, compliance evidence, RFP responses, and what we're learning as we build SkyDraft, what works inside professional services firms, and what doesn't. New posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
- AI & workflow
The five workspace assets every AI document workflow needs
Three people use it daily, eleven use it occasionally, and the rest went back to copying last quarter's file. Nobody cancelled anything. Nothing was ever set up.
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- AI & workflow
Why generic AI tools fail at structured documents (and what professional services needs instead)
Ninety seconds for 1,600 words of clean prose, then an afternoon fixing structure, facts, and voice. The model was never the limitation.
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- AI & workflow
Private AI document drafting: what “we don’t train on your data” has to mean
Your firm's confidentiality position is currently being set at 4pm on a Friday by whoever is under the most pressure. Eight questions that fix that.
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- AI & workflow
The Microsoft 365 stack and AI document automation: where they meet
You own the best document archive in your industry and you still start from a copy. The archive holds the output of your standard, not the standard itself.
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- Consulting & reports
What AI gets wrong about consulting reports (and how we fixed it)
Eight paragraphs of clean consulting prose, and not one sentence she could defend in the closeout meeting. The prose was never the problem.
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- RFPs & tenders
Tender response writing: the time-to-first-draft problem
A fourteen-day tender where the first complete draft lands on day eleven gives you three days to win it. The number worth moving isn't writing speed.
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- AI & workflow
Templates as institutional memory: encoding what “good” looks like at your firm
Ask a partner what a good report looks like and you get a confident twenty-minute answer. That answer is a firm asset stored in the least available place you own.
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- AI & workflow
How to evaluate AI document tools: the questions vendors hope you won't ask
Three demos in a week and you can't tell them apart, because every demo is built around the one thing that's easy. Stop being the audience and run these tests yourself.
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- AI & workflow
Source-grounded AI vs hallucinated AI: a practical test for professional services teams
A hallucinating tool and a grounded one look identical on a good day. The difference shows up on the facts you didn't provide. Five probes to find out which you have.
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- AI & workflow
Why your firm needs an AI-author identity (and how to capture it)
Voice is how you write. Identity is who's writing. Get the tone perfect and the draft still argues from nowhere. Here's the asset most firms skip.
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- AI & workflow
The case for human-in-the-loop AI drafting (no autopilot, by design)
Autopilot gives you fourteen pages you have to audit against the source. A review gate on every section is the only 'faster' that ships.
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- AI & workflow
Repeating sections: drafting feature lists, requirements, and deliverables one item at a time
Requirements, deliverables, features: the list sections are where generic AI invents, drops, and flattens. Draft them one item at a time.
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- AI & workflow
Section-by-section vs one-shot AI drafting: a side-by-side
One-shot optimises the demo. Section-by-section optimises the deliverable. The same 22-page proposal, run both ways.
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- Compliance & audit
ISO 27001 documentation with AI: the precision problem
Auditors don't reward fluency. They reward precision. Why generic AI drafts audit-failing narratives and what a structured workflow does instead.
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- RFPs & tenders
RFP response automation: what to standardise, what to keep human
Automate the 60% that's recycled. Keep the 40% that decides the win human. A section-by-section breakdown for bid managers.
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- AI & workflow
Why brand voice matters more in AI document tools than anywhere else
Voice is the product. Generic AI flattens firm voice into corporate sameness. Here's what a well-designed AI workflow does instead.
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- Consulting & reports
From meeting transcript to consulting report in twenty minutes
Minute-by-minute worked example: 90-min transcript to 20-page assessment report in twenty minutes, with the AI asking the right questions along the way.
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- AI & workflow
The clarifications loop: how to make AI ask before it invents
Hallucination is a design choice. The alternative is a workflow that lets the AI ask questions instead of guessing plausibly.
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- Proposals & SOWs
Statement of Work (SOW) AI drafting: what's actually different from a proposal
Same chassis, different document. Why generic AI drafts proposal-flavoured SOWs, and how to set up a workflow that gets the contractual specificity right.
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- Proposals & SOWs
Proposal writing with AI: 6 patterns that work, 4 that don't
Six patterns that hold up under a real bid deadline, and four that feel productive but cost you the win.
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- AI & workflow
AI document drafting for professional services: a practical guide for 2026
The thinking is yours. The typing is the bottleneck. Here's how to remove it without losing your firm's voice.
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