A three-person RFP team now shreds long municipal solicitations and drafts proposals from one knowledge hub.
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The master Word document became a tagged, searchable knowledge hub.
From signature to the first live project in under two weeks.
Shredding turns a full municipal RFP into an outline and first draft.
For ForeFront Power, a renewable energy developer owned by Mitsui, nearly every new project starts with a long-form RFP from a city, county or school district. Its three-person RFP team was building each response by copying sections out of one 300-page Word document. With Inventive AI as its RFP software, the team now shreds each solicitation and drafts from a single source of truth. This case study is based on conversations with Sunnie Zhang, former RFP Lead, and Misty Chioffe, Head of Marketing and Communications, at ForeFront Power.
ForeFront Power is a renewable energy developer owned by Mitsui. It builds solar, battery storage and EV charging projects for cities, counties, school districts and commercial customers across the US, and a core team of three handles its long-form proposals.
For US renewable energy projects, nearly every deal starts with a long-form RFP from a municipality or school district, usually on a tight deadline.
Before Inventive AI, every response started from one 300-page master Word document holding the company's narrative, graphics and tables. Deleting irrelevant sections took longer than copying the useful ones, so the team started each proposal from a blank page and copied sections over by hand. Over time, the master document went stale.
"This new boilerplate updated format, which is like the 300 page that I always talk about, where we have almost all of our boilerplate narrative language and graphics and tables... this is probably going to be a bigger headache because as we respond to RFPs, this is kind of outdated."
— Sunnie Zhang, former RFP Lead, ForeFront Power
The team needed proposal software for renewable energy developers that could handle long, unstructured narratives as well as standard security spreadsheets.
ForeFront Power chose Inventive AI as its RFP software for long-form narrative proposals. Within two weeks, the 300-page boilerplate was loaded into the knowledge hub, split by business unit and tagged by US region, so the AI pulls the right content for each bid.
The turning point came when the team used Inventive AI as an RFP shredding tool on a complex municipal RFP. The AI read the full solicitation, built the outline and generated the first draft, work the team used to do by hand.
"The good thing that Inventive has done is creating that outline, so the shredding process is very smooth compared to other tools that I've trialed. Creating that first draft without formatting was really easy."
— Sunnie Zhang, former RFP Lead, ForeFront Power
For a small team, formatting was eating time that should have gone into the proposal itself. As RFP software for small marketing teams, Inventive AI now exports drafts straight into ForeFront Power's branded Word template, keeping its fonts, colors and heading styles.
"I think this looks great, what you're sharing on the screen right now. Very excited to see that... We'll be excited to start incorporating those and see if we can maybe have some broader adoption across the organization."
— Misty Chioffe, Head of Marketing and Communications, ForeFront Power
The team also got a partner that shipped updates based on its feedback, so the platform kept pace with what ForeFront Power needed.
"I think the overall communication has been great. You guys have been patient with all of our questions and trial period and everything. So, I really appreciate you all."
— Sunnie Zhang, former RFP Lead, ForeFront Power
Inventive AI helps lean marketing and proposal teams shred long RFPs and draft narrative responses from approved content.
Book a demo to see how Inventive AI handles proposals like ForeFront Power's.
