ProposalOS for research, monitoring and evaluation firms
In an evaluation tender the methodology is the product. Evaluators score the sampling strategy, the analysis plan, the ethics arrangements and the credibility of the named researchers — and they score them against a set of questions buried in the terms of reference. ProposalOS extracts those questions as a working list, and lets your team answer each one from methods and researcher records the firm has already approved.
The situation
Terms of reference for a research or evaluation assignment usually contain a set of evaluation questions, an expected approach, a set of deliverables and a set of constraints — dispersed across the document rather than listed together. The proposals that score well answer each question explicitly and show how the design will produce the evidence to answer it. The proposals that lose are usually the ones that described a general methodology and left the mapping to the reader.
The problem
They appear in the background, the objectives, the scope and sometimes an annex. Without them extracted as a list, the methodology section is written as a narrative and the mapping to each question is left for the panel to infer.
Your firm has a defensible position on mixed-methods design, sampling under access constraints, contribution analysis and data quality. It lives in past proposals and in senior researchers' heads, not in anything reusable.
Publications, prior evaluations in the sector, language and country experience, ethics training. Team-composition tables are built by email, and the person best suited is often left out because nobody could confirm their availability in time.
Increasingly they are scored. Consent procedures, handling of data on vulnerable participants, storage and retention, and conflict-of-interest declarations need current approved text, not a paragraph carried forward since 2021.
Method
Every question, deliverable, constraint and reporting requirement recorded as its own item, each linked to the paragraph of the terms of reference it came from.
Build the methodology so each evaluation question has a visible method, data source and analysis route — which is also what an evaluation matrix asks you to show.
Sampling approaches, instruments, quality-assurance procedures and analytical frameworks held as governed knowledge with an owner and a review date.
Filter by sector, method, country, language and prior assignment, then produce CVs and team tables in the format the client demands.
The readiness check maps each extracted question and deliverable to the section addressing it, and lists what is unanswered while there is time to fix it.
Where it applies
Mid-term and final evaluations where an evaluation matrix, a defensible sampling strategy and named evaluators carry most of the technical score.
Where instruments, enumerator training, data quality procedures and analysis plans recur across assignments and should not be re-derived each time.
Assignments scored on analytical framing and sector credibility, where the firm's publication record and prior policy work are the evidence.
Long-running assignments where each call-off reuses the institutional method set with a different scope and a different team.
Fit
Honest limits
Questions
It extracts the evaluation questions and maps each to the section answering it, which is the structure an evaluation matrix expresses. A researcher still decides the method against each question.
Each method carries an owner, a version and a review date, so the approved version is identifiable rather than inferred from whichever proposal was opened last.
No. It drafts from your approved methods and shows the source. Research design is a judgement a person has to make and defend, and the tool is built so it stays that way.
Arabic is a working language of the product with full right-to-left behaviour, so instruments and narrative can be held and reviewed in either language.
Other sectors
Go deeper
Break complex tenders into source-linked requirements, criteria, deadlines and risks your team can track.
Tender and RFP document analysisGovern approved experience, methods, policies and company facts with owners and versions.
Organizational knowledge repositoryFind relevant evidence by words and meaning, narrowed by type, tag, language and approval state.
Search across company knowledgeSurface missing responses, evidence, attachments and approvals before they become submission risk.
Compliance and completeness checksA clearer proposal operating model
Tell us how your organization handles opportunities, evidence and review. We’ll tailor the conversation to that context.