Customer story:

Acorus Reduced Proposal Turnaround from Weeks to Hours with XaitProposal

From generic, time-consuming reports to impressive, personalized bids: Acorus's transformation with XaitProposal.

By centralizing content, automating initial drafts, and ensuring brand consistency, XaitProposal has helped Acorus significantly improve the quality and efficiency of their technical reports—boosting their competitive edge in the eco-renovation sector.

When Acorus, a leading group specializing in eco-renovation, maintains, renovates, and rehabilitates real estate assets, they rely on comprehensive and precise technical reports to showcase their value.

Operating on a large scale, with 1600 employees and 180,000 interventions per year, efficient and impactful bid management is crucial.

ACORUS

Region
France

Company size
1600

Industry
Construction

Solution
XaitProposal

Acorus specialises in eco-renovation—maintaining, renovating, and rehabilitating real estate assets to improve living conditions, extend building life, and enhance value. For years, managing these demands using manual tools resulted in generic proposals and wasted time—until they discovered XaitProposal.

Adrien Henriot, Research Officer at Acorus, explains how his team went from spending excessive time on content and formatting to quickly generating personalized, high-quality technical reports that impress clients and stand out in the market.

"Stop Copying and Pasting": The challenges of generic tender work

Before XaitProposal was implemented, writing technical briefs was a time-consuming and unstructured process. Teams often resorted to copying and pasting content, leading to generic proposals that lacked personalization.

About Acorus

Specializing in eco-renovation, the Acorus group maintains, renovates, and rehabilitates real estate assets. Their mission is to improve the lives of occupants, ensure the longevity of properties, and enhance their value. With 1600 employees and €265 million in revenue in 2022, they perform 180,000 interventions annually.

“In the renovation sector, we are not the cheapest; we aim to be the best value: the most balanced between technical and financial offers. To achieve this, our proposals need to be of high quality and demonstrate our added value.”

– Adrien Henriot, Research Officer at Acorus

Adrien-Henriot-portrait-Acorus-bw-transparent-640x640

"Our clients were telling us, 'Stop copying and pasting in your proposals; we need technical reports that are specific to the project! You need to be thorough!'" recalls Adrien Henriot. Acorus faced several key challenges in managing their responses to calls for tender:

  • Lack of Personalization: Technical reports were not tailored to specific projects, despite client demand.
  • Time Loss: Significant time was wasted on manually retrieving, updating, and formatting content.
  • Inconsistent Branding: Without a standardized tool, proposals lacked a unified graphic design and brand image across different design offices.

"As a research officer, economist, or quantity surveyor, a significant part of our work involves drafting technical reports," explains Adrien. The previous process hindered their ability to deliver unique, high-quality bids.

Major Headaches: Manual formatting and generic content

Before XaitProposal, Acorus's tender process was plagued by several issues:

  • Time-consuming content & formatting: Teams spent considerable time manually finding and updating data for technical reports.
  • Lack of personalization: Proposals were generic, failing to address specific client needs or project details.
  • Inconsistent brand image: Without a unified tool, each region might present documents with varying layouts and designs, impacting brand perception.
  • Client dissatisfaction: Clients explicitly noted the lack of personalization, indicating a need for more tailored and thorough technical reports.

“In practice, we generate our offer on XaitProposal, which allows us to have a record and benefit from the data, and then we extract it to Word in the imposed format.”

– Adrien Henriot, Research Officer at Acorus

"The Wow Effect is Guaranteed": How XaitProposal turned it around

When Adrien joined Acorus, XaitProposal was already in place, and its capabilities were a key recruitment argument. The tool is now used by approximately sixty research officers across the entire Acorus group, including newly acquired structures like Acorus Marteau.

Adrien, who has been a user for 2 years and an administrator for 2 years, highlights the tool's immediate impact:

  • Impressive First Draft Generation: "In a three-minute demonstration, they showcased the tool's ability to generate a first draft of a technical report. I was impressed by the process." He notes that this first draft already covers 30% of the content, freeing up time for personalization. Thanks to multiple-choice questions and merge fields, generating a report in just a few clicks is now a reality.
  • Centralized & Up-to-Date Content: The implementation addressed the "copy-pasting" problem by centralizing all relevant content. This ensures accuracy and consistency across all bids.
  • Mandatory Graphic Design & Brand Image: The use of XaitProposal is mandatory, ensuring all documents adhere to the company's graphic design and present a consistent brand image to clients, regardless of which design office creates the document. "To motivate those who are resistant, I do a basic simulation of the multiple-choice questions and export process, and the wow effect is guaranteed," Adrien shares.
  • Continuous Improvement: Adrien appreciates the Xait team's approach: "My Xait project manager is always attentive, available, and educational, even with those who are resistant. His approach is based on listening and understanding, which is very much appreciated!" He also values new features, like the immediate visibility of obsolete merge fields in the latest version.

Positive Feedback: From Users and Clients Alike

Internally, the ease of quickly generating a first draft of a technical report in the company's graphic design is highly convincing. It saves time and enables deeper personalization.

From clients, the feedback has been notably positive: "Initially, our targets such as co-ownerships, social landlords, or architects are surprised by our mini technical reports of 10 pages. That's our goal!" says Adrien. Acorus aims to stand out with personalized proposals, including site plans, brief project descriptions, execution schedules, and specific site constraints. "The document is tailored to the project and reassuring because all aspects are covered. We prove our understanding and relevance."

Even for public tenders with imposed formats, XaitProposal provides a crucial advantage: "In practice, we generate our offer on XaitProposal, which allows us to have a record and benefit from the data, and then we extract it to Word in the imposed format." This enables them to condense 170-page documents down to 10 pages, focusing on the proposed solution and how they practically organize the site.

XaitProposal screen mockup with logo

“The document is tailored to the project and reassuring because all aspects are covered. We prove our understanding and relevance.”

– Adrien Henriot, Research Officer at Acorus

Time Saved, Value Showcased, and a Strong ROI

By freeing teams from manual drudgery and generic content, XaitProposal has become essential to Acorus's workflow. The primary benefit is the time saved, which can now be reinvested into customization and showcasing the in-depth work of the research officers. For Acorus, XaitProposal is key to their strategy: "In the renovation sector, we are not the cheapest; we aim to be the best value: the most balanced between technical and financial offers. To achieve this, our proposals need to be of high quality and demonstrate our added value."

What’s next: Breaking the mold with innovation

Acorus is focused on digitalization and continuing to innovate within the renovation sector. Adrien emphasizes the need to catch up in terms of innovation and offer even more immersive proposals.

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