Proposal Management: What are the challenges faced by organizations and sales teams?

In an increasingly competitive B2B context, where the quality of commercial proposals can make the difference between signing a strategic contract or losing an opportunity, Proposal Management is becoming a major issue.

But structuring and industrializing this function raises several challenges for companies.

At NAELAN, we support organizations facing these challenges on a daily basis.

Here are the 6 most common challenges we identify:

1. The growing complexity of calls for tenders

In sectors such as energy, telecoms, banking and public services, calls for tender are increasingly demanding:

• Long and technical specifications

• Strict compliance criteria

• Reduced response time

This requires rapid and precise coordination of several teams (sales, legal, technical, marketing).

2. Lack of harmonization of content

Without a common frame of reference, each collaborator composes “in their own way”, which leads to:

• Inconsistencies in speech

• Errors or approximations

• An unprofessional image among prospects

3. Manual, time-consuming and poorly scalable processes

Creating a quote or business proposal often involves repetitive manual tasks:

• Search for old offers

• Copy/paste clauses

• Handcrafted layout

This wasted time is a direct obstacle to commercial responsiveness.

4. Compliance and Privacy Risks

Some companies must follow strict standards (banks, mutual insurance companies, regulated industries).

Errors in documents can lead to:

• A legal non-compliance

• Privacy breaches

• Post-signing disputes

5. The difficulty of capitalizing on what already exists

Without structured version and content management, it is difficult to:

• Effectively reuse the best offers

• Pooling the expertise of different professions

• Learn from previous answers

6. Lack of analysis of the commercial performance of proposals

Few companies have consolidated data on:

• The best performing content

• Processing times

• Conversion rate by type of proposal

Proposal Management can become a strategic lever provided it is managed with suitable tools.

In summary

Proposal Management is not just about “making beautiful documents”.

It is a strategic function that allows you to respond faster, better, and with a greater chance of winning business.

It is to meet these challenges that NAELAN designed the Proposal Management suite, used by large companies to automate, secure and enhance each proposal.