Bid Analysis
Upload RFP documents and let Cothon extract requirements and assess them against your company profile
Bid Analysis
Cothon's Bid Analysis reads an RFP document, extracts the individual requirements it contains, and assesses each one against your company profile. Instead of combing through a long solicitation by hand, you get a structured, reviewable list of requirements with an assessment of how well your organization can meet each one.
The Workflow
Every analysis follows the same four stages:
- Upload — Submit an RFP document (PDF, DOC, or DOCX, up to 50 MB).
- Extraction — Cothon reads the full text and extracts each requirement.
- Capability matching — Each requirement is assessed against your company profile.
- Results — Review the requirement list, compliance score, and flagged terms.
Analyses run in the background. Longer documents take longer to process, so you can continue working while an analysis is in progress.
Key Concepts
Match Statuses
Every requirement receives exactly one of three statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Fully Meets | Your profile clearly satisfies the requirement |
| Partially Meets | You can address it, with gaps or caveats |
| Cannot Meet | Your current profile does not satisfy it |
Each status comes with a written justification explaining the assessment.
Requirement Criticality
Requirements are also classified by how they are evaluated in the solicitation:
- Mandatory — pass/fail criteria. A single unmet mandatory requirement can make a bid non-responsive.
- Point-Rated — scored criteria that affect your evaluation score but are not pass/fail.
- Administrative — procedural and submission-format requirements.
Mandatory and Point-Rated requirements carry visible badges in the results view.
Warning
When one or more mandatory requirements are not met, the results page shows a compliance banner warning that the bid may be non-compliant, and the affected requirements are pinned to the top of the list. Always review this banner before relying on the overall percentage score.
Compliance Ring
The compliance ring shows the percentage of all extracted requirements with a Fully Meets status. Partially Meets earns no partial credit. See Compliance Ring for how to read it.
Flagged Terms
You can define terms (for example, "liquidated damages" or "security clearance") that Cothon highlights whenever they appear in an analyzed document. See Flagged Terms.
What You Can Do With Results
- Switch between grid, list, and table views, and filter by search text, department tags, or status — Views & Modes
- Add notes and flags to individual requirements — Analysis History
- Export the analysis as a PDF report
- Share the analysis with teammates or via a link — Sharing Analyses
- Organize past analyses with pins, custom names, and color-coded folders — Analysis History
Tip
Matching quality depends directly on your company profile. Before your first analysis, take the time to fill in your capabilities, certifications, and experience — see Company Profile.
Section Contents
- Uploading RFPs — supported files and how analyses run
- Requirement Extraction — what gets extracted and how it's classified
- Capability Matching — how assessments are made
- Views & Modes — grid, list, table, and filters
- Sharing Analyses — team and link sharing
- Flagged Terms — custom term highlighting
- Analysis History — organizing past analyses
- Compliance Ring — reading the score
- Troubleshooting — fixing common issues
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