The Shift From Legacy RFP Management to AI-Driven Speed

For decades, enterprise teams relied on legacy systems like Qvidian (owned by Upland Software) to manage Request for Proposals (RFPs) and Request for Information (RFIs). These tools were built for an era of manual document assembly. In 2025, the landscape has changed. B2B teams are seeing a 25% increase in the volume of security questionnaires and technical tenders, requiring a more agile approach to proposal management.

If you are exploring a Qvidian alternative or reassessing your Upland RFP workflows, you are likely facing the 'knowledge silo' problem. Legacy systems often require extensive manual tagging and maintenance. Modern platforms like Settle replace these chores with AI-powered automation that maintains your source of truth automatically.

Top 5 Reasons Teams Seek a Qvidian Alternative

Research indicates that teams using older proposal tech spend 40% of their time on administrative tasks like reformatting and manual data entry. Here is why organizations are migrating to modern alternatives:

1. High Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Legacy contracts often cost between $20,000 and $50,000 annually before implementation fees. Newer AI tools offer a faster Return on Investment (ROI).

2. Slow Implementation: Older systems can take 3–6 months to fully deploy. Modern AI tools can ingest existing Library data and be operational in under 5 business days.

3. Semantic Search vs. Keyword Match: Legacy search often fails if a question doesn’t match a specific keyword. Semantic AI understands the intent, increasing answer accuracy by 67% over traditional methods.

4. User Experience (UX): Modern teams expect clean interfaces. Tools that feel like 1990s database software lead to low adoption among Sales and Engineering contributors.

5. Integrated Bid Hunting: Qvidian primarily manages the response. Modern alternatives connect the response engine directly to discovery tools that find new bids, increasing pipeline growth by 20-30% in the first year.

How AI Automation Redefines Proposal Response Time

The average proposal manager spends 15-20 hours on a single 50-question RFP. With an AI-driven Qvidian alternative, that time is slashed. By using a centralized Library, tools like Settle automatically draft answers based on historical wins. Organizations report an 80% reduction in initial response time, moving from 15 hours down to just 3 hours per project.

This speed creates a First-to-File advantage. In competitive bidding, particularly in government contracting, responding quickly while maintaining high quality increases win rates by an average of 12%. Automated drafts allow your experts to spend their time on strategic tailoring rather than repetitive copy-pasting.

The Role of a Centralized Knowledge Base

Your proposal Library is the heart of your operation. It should include:

• Standard company information and EINs.

• Security responses for SOC2 (System and Organization Controls) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

• Product specifications and updated technical roadmaps.

• Past performance summaries from the last 24 months.

Tools like Settle allow you to ingest PDFs, Word docs, and CSVs directly, creating a single source of truth that prevents hallucinations by grounding its AI answers exclusively in your approved content.

Scaling Your Bid Pipeline Without Adding Headcount

Hiring a full-time proposal manager can cost $85,000–$120,000 per year. For growth-stage teams, this isn't always feasible. Automation allows a lean team of two or three people to compete with enterprise-sized sales departments. By automating the grunt work of RFP discovery and drafting, teams can handle 3x more volume without increasing headcount.

For example, using a tool like RFP Hunter within the Settle ecosystem allows you to find high-fit opportunities through natural language search, cutting the time spent on manual bid boards by 8-12 hours per week. This ensures your team only spends time on bids with a high Probability of Win (P-Win).

Enterprise-Grade Collaboration and Review

RFP success is a team sport. It requires input from Legal, Security, Finance, and Product. Legacy Upland RFP workflows often rely on fragmented email threads. A modern Qvidian alternative provides a centralized Inbox for reviewer tasks and threaded discussions. This structured workflow reduces departmental bottlenecks by 50%, ensuring no proposal misses a deadline due to a slow internal approval.

By assigning specific questions to subject matter experts (SMEs) with automated email notifications, you can maintain an audit trail of who approved which answer and when. This transparency is critical for regulated industries like Fintech or Healthcare.

Final Thoughts on Your Proposal Tech Stack

The transition from legacy software to an AI-powered platform is no longer just about convenience; it is about competitive survival. Organizations that adopt automation see a 280% ROI within the first 12 months by winning more deals and lowering the labor cost of every submission. If your current tool is slowing you down, it's time to look at Settle.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the primary difference between Qvidian and modern AI proposal tools?

Qvidian, an Upland Software product, focuses on document assembly and database management using older keyword-based structures. Modern alternatives like Settle use Generative AI and semantic search, which understands the context of a question rather than just matching words. This allows for automated drafting that is 3.2x faster than manual methods used in legacy systems.

How much time can a team save by switching to an AI-driven RFX tool?

Most organizations report a 35-50% reduction in total proposal turnaround time within the first six months. Specifically, the initial drafting phase can be cut by 80% because the AI pulls pre-approved answers from the Library. For a team of 20+ people, this equates to a savings of roughly 15-20 hours per week across the entire department.

Does Settle provide RFP discovery like other Upland products?

Yes, Settle includes RFP Hunter, which provides a continuously refreshed feed of active RFP opportunities with AI-generated summaries. This allows teams to find high-fit opportunities and move them directly into the Projects workflow. Using discovery and response on one platform reduces manual search time by 10-15 hours per month compared to using separate tools.

Is it difficult to migrate data from Qvidian to Settle?

Migration is straightforward because Settle supports document ingestion from PDFs, Word files, and CSV spreadsheets. You can export your existing Qvidian library into these formats and upload them to Settle's Library to create an instant source of truth. Most teams complete this transition within 30 days while maintaining 100% data integrity for their historical proposal answers.

How does AI ensure the accuracy of proposal answers?

Modern platforms like Settle prevent 'hallucinations' by grounding the AI strictly in your approved Library content. If the system cannot find a relevant answer in your data, it returns an 'answer not found' message rather than making something up. This ensures that 100% of the drafted content is based on your specific products, security standards, and past performance.