Two kinds of tools under one name
Behind "RFP software" there are two different jobs.
Many tools on the market come from sales teams. They manage a bank of questions and answers, and mostly serve to fill in questionnaires: IT security, compliance, vendor forms. You find the best answer to "Where is your data hosted?" and paste it again. For that work, they are efficient.
A professional services proposal is won elsewhere. The committee does not ask a hundred closed questions. It scores five or six qualitative criteria (understanding of the mandate, the firm's experience, the project manager's, the team, the methodology) on facts you have to prove. The tool you need starts from the tender documents and your proof.
| Question-and-answer bank | Professional services proposal | |
|---|---|---|
| What you are asked | Dozens or hundreds of closed questions | Five or six qualitative criteria, scored in points |
| Where the text comes from | Answers already written, pasted again | The tender, your mandates, your résumés and your references |
| What wins | The most recent approved answer | The proof that answers the criterion, tied to the mandate |
The six questions below help tell the two apart during a demo.
1. Does it read the tender documents, or only questions?
Tender documents for professional services are not a questionnaire. The expectations are scattered through the text, the admissibility conditions sit in one section, the grid and its weights in an appendix, the page limit somewhere else again, and an addendum published the following week can change everything.
Ask the vendor to upload one of your real tenders during the demo, with its addenda. Look at what comes out. Are the requirements quoted with the passage they come from? Is the grid found criterion by criterion, with its points? Does an admissibility condition surface before it is too late to meet it?
2. Does it treat your proof as facts?
A proposal mixes two kinds of content. The first can be rewritten freely: the firm's presentation, a section taken from a past proposal, the description of an approach. The second must never move. That is the mandates you cite, the résumés, the references, the dates and the amounts.
A tool that treats everything as text to rephrase will end up changing a year, inflating a title or merging two mandates. Ask how the software tells the two apart, and what stops a fact from being changed while drafting.
3. Can you trace it back to the source?
Looking at a sentence in the first draft, you should be able to answer a simple question. Where does this fact come from? A mandate in the library, a résumé, the tender itself? A text whose facts you cannot trace has to be checked from top to bottom, and the time saved writing it is lost rereading it.
4. Does it tell you what is missing?
In our view, this is the most revealing question. Ask the vendor what happens when your library has no project that answers the criterion. A good tool tells you, before drafting, while there is still time to find a partner or walk away. A weak tool fills the gap with a general sentence that goes unnoticed until the committee reads it.
5. Does it know the local context?
A Quebec firm answers tender documents written in French, with precise vocabulary: devis, addenda, bordereau de prix, chargé de projet, comité de sélection. The award rules are local too, with the 70-point pass mark, the adjusted price for public bodies and the factor used by municipalities.
Check that the interface and the drafts are written in French from the start, not translated, and that the tool handles English proposals just as well when a federal or private client requires one.
6. Is it the right size for your firm?
A firm of 5 to 50 people often has neither a proposal department nor a software administrator. Ask three concrete questions. How long before the library is useful, and from which documents? Who has to maintain it? What does the tool cost for the number of proposals you file each year, rather than for a sales team of a hundred?
How Clarido does it
Clarido is built for the second job: the professional services proposal that answers tender documents and their grid. Here are its answers to the six questions, in order.
It reads the tender documents and their addenda, and draws from them the requirements, the admissibility conditions and the evaluation grid, each with a quotation of the passage it comes from. One click opens that passage in the document. When an addendum arrives, Clarido shows you what it changes before applying it.
Your library holds the firm profile, your clients, your team and their résumés, your past projects and your past proposals. The first draft carries the exact facts of those records over as they are (names, figures, dates) and keeps rephrasing for the rest of the text.
Before drafting, the Positioning screen sets each client expectation against the projects and résumés that answer it, on three levels: covered, thin or none. During drafting, whatever the library does not provide becomes "[À fournir par la firme : …]" ("to be provided by the firm"), a marker highlighted in the editor and in the Word export, which you replace with the information directly.
The interface is in English and French, and the proposal is written in the project's language, whatever the language of your documents. The Decision screen sums up how the contract will be awarded, according to the tender, before you decide to bid.
The library fills up with the documents you already have, such as your résumés and past proposals. Pricing is per firm, with unlimited users, starting at $99 a month, and the 14-day trial needs no credit card.
When Clarido is not the right tool
If your work is mostly filling in security questionnaires or vendor forms in high volume, a question-and-answer bank will serve you better.
Clarido writes first drafts and exports them into your firm's Word template. Final layout and review by several people then happen in your usual tools. If you are looking for layout or collaborative editing software, this is not it.
You record the outcome of each proposal in it, won or lost, but Clarido does not manage your business development. To follow prospects and follow-ups, you still need a customer relationship management tool.
A demo that teaches you something
Bring a recent tender, ideally a proposal you lost. Ask to see what the software draws from it, what it finds in your documents to answer it, and what it reports as missing. Compare that with what the committee held against you, if you got feedback.
A demo on an example the vendor prepared shows the tool at its best. A demo on your own tender shows how it will work at your firm.
Sources
- Regulation respecting certain service contracts of public bodies, CQLR c. C-65.1, r. 4 (updated to July 1, 2026), Schedule 2 (interim score, 70-point pass mark and adjusted price). legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/rc/C-65.1,%20r.%204
- Act respecting contracting by municipal bodies, CQLR c. C-65.01 (updated to August 12, 2026), ss. 67 and 72 (factor and final score). legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/lc/C-65.01