The first time that a customer told me they wanted PerfectIt for PowerPoint, I tried not to laugh. Our Chief Engineer and I joked about it. We even drew up a specification document for what it would look like. No matter what slide you ran it on, it would simply say “Use fewer words”.

However, the requests for PerfectIt for PowerPoint kept coming. We track every single request (no matter how odd it seems to us). We stopped joking when we reached five. At ten, we knew we had to understand more and we started researching it properly. At fifty requests, including from some of the biggest companies in the world, we started development.

Spoiler alert: you probably didn’t lose your last bid because of price. It also probably wasn’t because the deal was fixed from the outset. These are the consolations many companies tell themselves when they are unsuccessful in tenders. We get it. You put all your best people on a tender and committed vast amounts of time and resources to it.

Writing a proposal is hard. There’s rarely enough time to give it the attention you want. You don’t always know much about the client, so you feel like you’re writing in the dark. The client may have an unrealistic budget, meaning your cost will knock you out of the running, no matter how well you’ve described your solution. What’s more, they may already have an awardee in mind and are only going through an RFP process as a formality.

If you’re bidding for a contract or responding to a request for proposals (RFP), it doesn’t matter whether it’s small or large. From research funding in the thousands to infrastructure in the billions, there’s always a great deal at stake. Whether it’s jobs that depend on a contract or research that can alter lives, the outcomes of proposal documents could not be more significant. That’s why it’s crucial that your words make the best impression.

PerfectIt Cloud brings all of PerfectIt’s checking to Mac and iPad users for the first time. Users will have the same experience using PerfectIt Cloud on any Office 365 device, whether working on Mac, PC, iPad or Word Online. It integrates directly into Microsoft Word via the Office Store.