By Andra Postolache |

Working at an RFP response manually can be sometimes be challenging, as responders can end up spending up to 40 hours on a single response, according to Greenspring Advisors. And this automatically translates to wasting one of nowadays’ most important resource: time.

On the other side, automating the entire process with the help of an RFP response automation platform can potentially cut this time in half. We’ve already talked about the importance of making your RFP response process more efficient, as well as some of the best practices to improve it. However, today we’re delving a bit deeper into the topic, by covering a few of the best RFP response collaboration tactics.

1.Start with creating a review workflow

One of the most important recommendations we can make is to craft an RFP response with care, meaning that your expertise is called in at the front and back of the content creation process.

Going a bit into details, creating a review workflow can turn into a real mess when teams are relying on a manual process, since multiple people are involved in a single response. And when this happens, it can be confusing to understand your place and timing in this entire workflow.

With an automated RFP response process, it’s very easy to assign multiple reviewers, thus creating a well-organized workflow. Each contributor knows where they fit into the process and you end up saving a lot of time.

2. Make communication easier for your team

Generally speaking, each RFP project can be considered a team effort, so communication must be consistent and easy. Its lack, however, can lead to wasting a lot of time.

By relying on an automated tool for managing the entire RFP process, you simplify communication options, promoting easier collaboration – whether it’s at the section level or the project level. Team members can leave comments and mention contributors, making communication very easy.

3. Make the entire project clear

Winning an RFP bid means winning business. However, each and every RFP response is unique, so it’s important to be clear on the requirements of guessing or repurposing previous responses considered just “good enough”.

You want every team member’s RFP response contribution to count, but without the ability to clarify details and language – both internally and externally – this will be difficult to achieve.

An RFP response automation platform gives you the possibility to invite the issuer to collaborate while crafting your response and solve any uncertainties from other team members’ contributions. This is one of the best RFP response collaboration tactics to approach in order to improve your entire process.

4. Make importing easy

Importing is the foundation of a successful RFP project, as each import itself is a time-saving opportunity.

Having a dependable import solution will allow you to save time throughout the entire project. It’s also equally important to be able to make imports from as many sources as possible.

5. Review your content

RFP content management is incredibly important, so you should have the best version at hand, in order to accelerate the RFP response process. After all, responses are adjusted in such a way that the content will always remain compelling and fresh. Also, it should be well organised in a knowledge library, so you can come up with a response quickly and accurately.

A well-reviewed and organised library will help you gain a serious advantage when you’re under pressure, it will save you time and transfer inherent knowledge from all team members into an online platform.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are quite a few RFP response collaboration tactics you can use to improve your process and using an automation platform has several benefits.

The capability to re-use knowledge assets in RFP responses is the single most important reason why we’ve built Kaito. Companies create lots of RFP content over the time (lots of duplicates as well), but since it’s not centralized and structured, it’s very hard to find the response to a particular requirement.

Kaito allows you to import your RFP files in the system as a set of requirements (or questions), build the responses using Kaito’s suggestions, and export the completed RFP in the original file, or other templates.