Inside Our AI Research Initiative with Northwestern Kellogg
We worked with Northwestern Kellogg to study how AI-assisted proposal writing affects win rates. The research validated what we had seen anecdotally across hundreds of bids.
TL;DR: Cliwant collaborated with Northwestern Kellogg on research into AI-driven proposal management. The findings confirmed that structured AI assistance improves proposal quality and win rates, and directly informed how contrl works.
Why an academic partnership mattered
We had 15 years of anecdotal evidence that better-structured proposals win more. But anecdotes are not data. When Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern approached us about a research collaboration on AI in professional document workflows, we saw an opportunity to validate what we believed.
The research question was specific: does AI-assisted proposal creation measurably improve the quality and competitiveness of bid responses? And if so, which parts of the workflow benefit most from AI involvement?
What the research found
The study examined proposals across multiple industries and contract sizes. The key finding was that AI assistance had the greatest impact not on writing quality (which was the expected result) but on structural completeness. AI-assisted teams were significantly less likely to miss RFP requirements or leave compliance gaps.
This made intuitive sense to anyone who has managed bids. The hardest part is not writing good prose. It is making sure every requirement is addressed, every evaluation criterion is reflected, and the proposal tells a coherent story from cover to close. That is a structural problem, not a writing problem.
How this shaped contrl
The Kellogg research validated our core product thesis: the biggest value of AI in proposals is not generating text. It is ensuring completeness, compliance, and strategic coherence. contrl was designed around that insight.
When you use contrl, the system does not just fill slides with content. It maps every RFP requirement to your template, identifies gaps, builds a win theme that threads through the entire deck, and verifies that nothing was missed. That compliance-first approach came directly from what the research told us.
If you have ever submitted a proposal and later realized you missed a key requirement buried on page 47, contrl was built to make sure that never happens again.
Still writing proposals the old way?
Contrl analyzes RFPs, builds win themes, and generates compliant drafts in your own PowerPoint templates. Your strategy, automated.
Questions? Reach us at patrick@contrl.ai
