Automating responses to calls for tender: how AI is changing the game

Introduction: Why is automating responses to RFPs essential today?

Responding to a Request for Proposal (or RFP in English) requires time and resources. Businesses, from SMEs to large corporations, face increasingly complex and extensive questionnaires. Each response requires gathering accurate information, writing coherent text, and ensuring compliance with the client’s requirements. Without assistance, this process ties up teams for long hours—often more than thirty hours of work per RFP—with the risk of missing deadlines or making mistakes. In a competitive environment, being late or submitting an incomplete response can lead to losing a major contract.

That’s why automating RFP responses has become a necessity today. Advances in artificial intelligence offer an unprecedented opportunity to speed up and improve the preparation of these responses. Specialized solutions like Answer Writer from Smart Global Governance are game changers, allowing companies to save valuable time while enhancing the quality of their proposals. The objective: respond faster, better, and to more RFPs, without overburdening the teams or sacrificing accuracy.

Understanding the automation of RFP responses

Simple definition

Automating RFP responses means using a software tool, often powered by artificial intelligence, to handle and draft a large part of the answers to an RFP document. Concretely, instead of writing each response manually from scratch, the company relies on a solution capable of automatically generating responses based on an existing knowledge base (internal documents, past responses, regulatory references, etc.). The tool analyzes the RFP questions and proposes coherently written, relevant answers. The user then only needs to check and refine if necessary.

In simple terms, it’s like having a virtual assistant that pre-fills an RFP questionnaire for you. The artificial intelligence understands the questions asked and draws from its information reservoir to formulate a draft answer. Of course, human intervention is still needed for final validation, but the initial workload is greatly reduced.

Importance and benefits

Why is it so important to automate these responses? Here are some key benefits:

• Significant time savings: Automation speeds up drafting. What used to take days now only takes a few hours, or even less. The team can thus respond to more RFPs within the same timeframe.

• Improved consistency and quality: By reusing the best existing responses and ensuring coherence, AI produces precise and consistent answers. It avoids forgetting crucial information and reduces human error.

• Guaranteed compliance: An intelligent solution can integrate regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, ISO standards) as soon as drafting begins. The tool ensures each answer is compliant with the standards requested, which bolsters the credibility of the proposal.

• Resource savings: Spending less time drafting manually means freeing up time for higher-value tasks (negotiation, strategy, advanced customization of the offer). The company also saves on costs related to overtime work.

• Access to more opportunities: Through automation, even an SME with a small team can respond to a greater number of RFPs. This increases the chances of winning new business by not missing out on opportunities due to time constraints.

In short, automating RFP responses is no longer a luxury but a lever for operational efficiency. It remains to understand the problems it solves and how a dedicated solution excels at it.

Common issues

Frequently encountered pain points

Without an automation tool, companies typically face several difficulties when responding to RFPs:

• A long and tedious process: Gathering data, writing, and multiple internal reviews make the process endless. Every team member may be involved, from sales to legal, which slows everything down.

• Repetitive tasks with no added value: Often, the same questions recur from one RFP to another. Teams waste time rewriting redundant answers instead of focusing on tailoring the response to the client’s specifics.

• Risk of errors and inconsistencies: Manually, it’s easy to forget a piece of information, make a typo, or provide an answer that conflicts with another part of the document. These errors can be costly in terms of reputation and points during proposal evaluation.

• Complex information management: RFP responses involve handling a lot of information (figures, project references, certifications, etc.). Centralizing and finding relevant data can be difficult without a well-organized database.

• Stress and excessive team mobilization: Tight deadlines and the amount of work generate stress. Employees often have to work late or neglect other projects to finalize a response on time, potentially leading to demotivation.

Consequences for the company

These problems have direct consequences on the company’s performance:

• High costs and reduced productivity: Excessive time spent on responses is time not invested elsewhere. By tying up your experts for days on a single proposal, you increase your internal costs and slow down other activities.

• Fewer RFPs handled: Due to time constraints, a company may choose to respond to only a limited number of RFPs. This means missed opportunities and potential lost revenue.

• Variable response quality: Under pressure, you might submit less developed responses. An incomplete or unconvincing response reduces your chances of winning the contract and can tarnish your company’s reputation with the client.

• Team burnout: Over time, constantly rushing each RFP response leads to burnout. Employees may become disengaged or even leave the company, causing a loss of valuable expertise.

• Falling behind the competition: If your competitors adopt automation tools and respond more quickly with excellent proposals, they’ll gain a lead. Failing to modernize your response process risks losing competitiveness in the market.

Fortunately, innovative solutions have emerged to address these challenges. AI, in particular, provides concrete solutions to the pain points mentioned. That’s exactly what Answer Writer offers, a specialized solution designed to eliminate these issues.

Effective solutions with Answer Writer

How Answer Writer specifically meets these needs

Answer Writer is an AI solution specifically designed to automate responses to RFPs and complex questionnaires. Deployed in SaaS mode by Smart Global Governance, this tool directly tackles all the previously listed problems:

• It dramatically reduces writing time: thanks to AI, up to 90% of repetitive tasks are automated. What used to take days is done in a few hours. For instance, if your teams took 15 hours to draft a response, Answer Writer can cut this down to about 1 hour.

• It avoids unnecessary repetition: the solution uses a database of pre-approved answers. For each common question, it suggests a coherent response drawn from your own content, adapted to the new context. Your best formulations are intelligently reused instead of starting from scratch each time.

• It improves quality and accuracy: Answer Writer’s AI includes various intelligent agents that understand the business context, industry, and regulatory requirements. As a result, the generated responses are highly personalized and compliant with expectations. The tool even cites its sources (laws, internal policies, etc.) to back up each response, ensuring transparency and reliability.

• You remain in control: despite advanced automation, the user remains the decision-maker. Answer Writer presents pre-written responses, and the team can quickly review, adjust, and approve with a single click. This easy validation also allows the AI to learn continuously: the more you use it, the more the proposed answers will match your tone and preferences exactly.

• It centralizes knowledge: by importing your documents and previous answers, the solution creates an intelligent library of content. No more calling internally to find the latest HR policy or exact revenue figure: the AI retrieves it and incorporates it into the response instantly.

In short, Answer Writer works like an expert assistant that prepares 90% of the work, allowing your teams to focus on final review and highly specific aspects of the offer. It’s a modern and efficient solution to the time-consuming challenges that RFPs used to present.

Key features of the product

Feature 1: Automated drafting for maximum time savings

Answer Writer includes an advanced AI writing engine capable of generating most of the responses for you. The user simply uploads the RFP questionnaire to the platform, and the tool analyzes each question. In just a few moments, complete answers are generated taking the context into account. The user benefit is immediate: hours of typing become a quick content review. The interface allows you to rapidly go through the AI’s suggestions, edit them if necessary, then approve. Thanks to this automated drafting, the time saved is huge for each response. You can respond to more requests without working longer days. This feature frees users from the most repetitive tasks and lets them focus on offer strategy and final customization, rather than basic writing.

Feature 2: Personalized answers and compliance with requirements

Another strength of Answer Writer lies in the fine-tuning of answers and automatic compliance with standards. The product doesn’t just regurgitate generic text: it uses its specialized AI agents (regulatory, industry, business, company) to tailor each answer to your specific context. For the company, this impact is substantial. On the one hand, the responses provided by the tool are aligned with the company’s voice (internal terminology, references to completed projects, up-to-date figures). On the other hand, they automatically incorporate compliance and quality elements: for example, the latest applicable regulations are considered, and sensitive data is never overlooked. This guarantees that each proposal delivered is reliable, coherent, and complete, which enhances your company’s credibility in the client’s eyes. By ensuring high quality and compliance, Answer Writer allows you to increase your success rate in RFPs while reducing risks (fewer errors, fewer omissions). It’s an automation software that provides not only time savings but also peace of mind about the final deliverable’s quality.

Real use cases with Answer Writer

Concrete success example

To illustrate the concrete impact of Answer Writer, let’s take the case of a company facing a high volume of questionnaires. S.D, Compliance Director of a large telecom group, shares her experience: “In less than a month, we responded to 200 questionnaires without fully mobilizing our teams.” In other words, thanks to Answer Writer, her company was able to handle an exceptional number of requests in record time, without exhausting employees. Previously, each questionnaire required blocking out several people for days, but the AI allowed for parallel processing of the answers much faster. The result: no major RFP was set aside, and the company multiplied its chances of winning contracts.

This kind of success story is not isolated. Another organization—a multinational bank—saw its performance soar after adopting the tool. Jean Martin, DPO of a multinational bank, says: “Answer Writer allowed us to cut our response time by 40% and save 30% on compliance costs.” Here, automation not only saved time but also generated significant financial savings (fewer work hours, thus reduced internal costs). Moreover, by reducing the response time by nearly half, the bank could respond more quickly to its clients’ RFPs, a decisive advantage to stand out from the competition.

User testimonials

Two client testimonials highlight the benefits of Answer Writer:

• “In less than a month, we responded to 200 questionnaires without fully mobilizing our teams.” – S.D, Head of Compliance at a multinational telecommunications company.

• “Answer Writer allowed us to cut our response time by 40% and save 30% on compliance costs.” – J.M, DPO at an international bank.

These experiences highlight both the tool’s ability to make an operational difference (hundreds of responses processed, massively reduced turnaround times) and its strategic impact (cost savings and increased efficiency that boost the company’s competitiveness). They demonstrate that a well-implemented AI solution can truly transform the day-to-day management of RFPs.

Best practices for optimizing response automation

Simple and practical tips

If you adopt a solution like Answer Writer to automate your responses, here are some best practices to get the most out of it:

• Pay attention to the initial setup phase: Take the time to import your reference documents (past responses, product sheets, internal policies). The more quality content the AI has to learn from, the more relevant its answers will be. An hour invested in properly configuring the knowledge base will save you dozens of hours afterward.

• Regularly update your information base: Be sure to keep the data updated in the tool (annual figures, new certifications, new client references). This way, the AI always has the latest information and you avoid having to correct outdated answers.

• Always proofread the AI’s suggestions: Automation doesn’t mean 100% autopilot. Reviewing generated answers ensures they precisely match the question and the message you want to convey. The human final touch ensures relevance and personalization before sending.

• Enrich the AI with your feedback: When you modify or add to a proposed answer, make sure to save these adjustments if the tool allows it. For example, validate or correct relevant suggestions. This will gradually train the AI to better understand your preferences. The more you interact with the tool, the more effective it becomes for your future RFPs.

• Involve your teams in the process: Train employees to use the tool and reassure them about its role (it assists them without replacing them). Encourage a collaborative mindset between AI and humans: the AI prepares a draft, the human expert refines it. This human-machine synergy is key to successful adoption.

By following these tips, you’ll optimize the solution’s performance and maximize time and quality gains on your RFP responses.

Mistakes to absolutely avoid

Conversely, here are some pitfalls to avoid when automating your responses:

• Neglecting the final review: Even if 90% of the work is done by AI, it’s risky to send a response without carefully proofreading it. Avoid trusting the tool blindly. A human check remains vital to ensure that no detail is missing or that no automated wording is awkward.

• Using outdated content: If you integrate old answers into the AI’s database, make sure they’re still valid. Reusing an outdated answer (e.g., with old financial figures or obsolete legal references) can be problematic. Keep your content updated or clearly label what should no longer be used as is.

• Wanting to automate everything at once: It’s tempting to let the AI handle everything from A to Z right away. In practice, it’s better to proceed gradually. Don’t immediately entrust it with the most critical or highly specialized questions without oversight. Start by automating answers to simple, repeated questions, then expand to more sections once you’re confident in the quality of the responses.

• Ignoring the context of the question: Sometimes an RFP question may look similar to a previously addressed one, but the client’s context is different. Avoid copy-pasting an automated answer without contextualizing as needed. Take into account the specifics of the current RFP (client’s industry, specific goals) and adjust the responses accordingly. The AI saves you time on the basics, but don’t forget to add the final contextual detail.

• Failing to leverage feedback from failures: If your company loses an RFP, analyze the submitted response. Was it complete? Was information missing? If so, train your tool by adding the expected response or adjusting the wording for next time. A mistake then becomes a learning opportunity. It would be a shame not to improve your solution after receiving negative feedback.

By avoiding these errors, you ensure that automation remains an asset, not a liability. The goal is to have AI assist you reliably, rather than falling into pitfalls from overconfidence or lack of preparation.

Future outlook: RFP response automation in the coming years

RFP response automation is still in its early stages, and the future looks promising. In the coming years, we can expect AI to be even more integrated into commercial processes. Solutions like Answer Writer will gain additional features and intelligence. For instance, AI could predict the most likely questions of an upcoming RFP by analyzing market trends or similar past RFPs. It could also connect to more databases (internal or external to the company) to further enrich responses automatically.

The quality of language models will continue to improve, producing even more natural and convincing generated text. One can imagine a future where AI not only drafts responses but also helps with response strategy by suggesting which opportunities to prioritize or which offers are most likely to succeed based on historical data. Automation could expand to analyzing the RFPs themselves: AI tools capable of dissecting a statement of work, identifying key points and risks, guiding teams before they even start writing the response.

For businesses, this means staying at the cutting edge and adopting these innovations to maintain a competitive edge. Operational efficiency will become standard: responding within a few hours with high quality will no longer be the exception but the norm. Those who continue to do everything manually risk quickly falling behind. Conversely, by embracing these new technologies, an SME can compete with larger players in terms of responsiveness and professionalism when responding to RFPs.

Answer Writer and other market solutions will also evolve by integrating user feedback and adapting to new regulations. We can expect the emergence of even more collaborative features, where AI works hand in hand with several team members in real time on the same document, or seamless integrations with office suites and project management platforms.

In short, the automation of RFP responses will continue to gain momentum. AI will be an essential strategic ally for sales and presales teams. It’s exciting to think that what is now an innovative advantage—responding faster and better thanks to AI—will soon become a market standard, pushing the level of demand and innovation ever higher in this field.

Conclusion: Turning response automation into a growth driver

Automating RFP responses is not just about adopting a new technological tool; it’s about rethinking how you win business. By freeing your teams from tedious tasks, you allow them to focus on what really matters: understanding the client’s needs, refining the value proposition, and building trust. Solutions like Answer Writer transform what was once a cumbersome process into an agile, strategic activity. The time saved translates into more RFPs handled, overall higher response quality, and thus more chances of securing contracts.

For an SME, this means being able to compete at the same level as bigger rivals by responding quickly and effectively. For a large company, it’s an opportunity to significantly boost its success rate and reduce the workload on its experts. In any case, RFP response automation has become a true growth driver. It enhances operational efficiency and provides a competitive edge.

In conclusion, AI applied to RFP responses is a positive development for the business world. By adopting these new practices now, your company gets a head start. It’s time to make automated responses a full-fledged strategic asset. Don’t wait any longer to discover how Answer Writer can boost your response processes and contribute to your growth.

FAQ: Frequently asked questions about RFP response automation

What is RFP response automation?

It’s the use of software tools (particularly artificial intelligence) to respond more quickly and efficiently to RFPs. Instead of manually writing every answer, the tool drafts a response for each question based on previously provided data and content. Automation handles most of the writing process, and the user only needs to review and approve. In short, you assign an AI to prepare your responses, speeding up the process and standardizing the quality of submitted proposals.

Is Answer Writer suitable for both SMEs and large companies?

Yes, Answer Writer is designed to adapt to companies of all sizes. For an SME, the tool is particularly helpful because it compensates for limited dedicated resources: even with a small team, you can respond to numerous RFPs professionally. For medium and large companies managing a high volume of RFPs, the solution provides an industrial-scale approach to responses: simultaneous handling of multiple questionnaires, knowledge centralization, and consistency of responses despite multiple contributors. In both cases, the interface remains user-friendly and the benefits (time savings, reliability) are evident.

Are my data secure if I use Answer Writer?

Absolutely. Data security and confidentiality are priorities for any professional AI solution. In this case, Answer Writer stores your information securely (100% hosted in Europe) and complies with the strictest security standards (ISO 27001/27018 certifications, GDPR compliance). Your RFP data, including generated answers, remain confidential. Moreover, access to the platform is protected, and only your authorized staff can view or export the content. Using Answer Writer does not mean exposing your strategic documents online without protection—on the contrary, the automation software includes robust safeguards to protect your sensitive information.

Do I need to be a technical expert to use Answer Writer?

No, one of Answer Writer’s strengths is its ease of use. The solution is designed for business users (sales teams, presales, RFP managers, etc.), not IT specialists. The interface is intuitive, in French, and does not require any special technical skills. For example, to set up the tool, just drag and drop your documents. To begin drafting a response, you upload the PDF or Excel questionnaire provided by the client, and the AI takes care of the rest. Clear instructions guide you every step of the way. Additionally, Smart Global Governance provides support if needed. Generally, in less than an hour, the tool is deployed and operational in your organization. You can therefore start reaping the benefits very quickly, with no heavy training or complex installation.

Can I try Answer Writer for free?

Yes, it is indeed possible to try Answer Writer for free to get a concrete idea of its features. Smart Global Governance generally offers a trial version on the official website. You can go to the Answer Writer site and request a free trial. In just a few clicks, you’ll have access to the platform and can try processing your own questionnaires or RFPs. It’s an opportunity to see for yourself how much time you can save and the quality of the AI-generated answers. This no-obligation approach lets you confirm that Answer Writer meets your company’s needs before rolling it out on a larger scale.