Discovery case study · Patent pending
More work from the same team
A managing director asked how his team could win more without hiring. Eight weeks later he had the answer, costed, sequenced and running as software on his own workflows.
- 62
- Stakeholders interviewed
- 10,959
- Findings, every one traceable
- 119
- Costed proposals
- 9
- Working demos built during discovery
01What we found
The constraint was not effort, and it was not headcount
The team was strong and the experience was deep. It was just spending its days finding what the business already knew. Nothing one pursuit learned was ever held by the business, so no bid made the next one cheaper. Seven themes came back, all the same failure in a different place.
The seven themes are in the full case study.
02How discovery works
Every workflow read, then specified as a system
Agents interview the whole function, not a sample, and they know which workflows each person sits in, so they ask that person the right questions. The findings are mapped into one structure the business can act on.
01
Pipeline
02
Content
03
Estimating
04
Design
05
Tender ops
06
Assurance
07
Post-tender
Seven workstreams, under one orchestrator and one leadership interface.
03What it is worth
A modelled 25% increase in efficiency, from the same team
On existing win rates that is close to 20% more completed project bids, worth A$250m to A$500m of additional bid volume put in front of clients. Not a target and not a promise. A forward model built on the client's own effort data, handed over with the workings.
How we got to 25% is the part most people want to argue with. It is all in the case study, including the assumptions.
04The record
How the project actually ran.
The challenge
A work-winning division running a long, multi-stage bid process across estimating, design, delivery and leadership. Leadership needed to know where AI could lift efficiency without cutting headcount.
The approach
Scout interviewed stakeholders across every function via Microsoft Teams and voice. Lens mapped the full tender lifecycle as a six-layer service blueprint. Arc ranked the interventions by impact against effort.
Outcome
The sponsor extended the project to further divisions.
Key findings
- Estimates were not benchmarked against final costs — independently confirmed by multiple stakeholders in different roles.
- Post-bid feedback was not systematically tracked, so knowledge was lost between tenders.
- No effort tracking per tender, making return on bid investment impossible to measure.
- Ownership gaps in key process steps, with several stakeholders each deflecting responsibility for the same deliverable.
Signal quality · 10,959 findings
- 3,229
- Corroborated
- 6,656
- Single source
- 1,074
- Disputed
Disputed findings are usually disagreements about how something is done, not whether it happened.
Your organisation could be next.
See what Agentic Discovery uncovers in your processes, your teams and your operations.
Client anonymised at their request. Prepared by 1QLabs. Commercial figures are a forward model on stated assumptions, not a forecast or a promised return.