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80% of retail and eCommerce businesses use AI chatbots or plan to use them in the near future. And more than half of all U.S. companies with 5,000 employees currently use AI in some form or another.
One segment of the business industry increasingly coming on board with AI is Sales. Sales teams are seeing tremendous opportunities with sales enablement tools like knowledge management software, CRM platforms, communication tools, and even training and coaching platforms.
One of the biggest use cases is automating RFP responses.
How AI Works with RFPs
Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are time-consuming, frustrating, and sometimes mind-boggling to do. At least, they are when we try to complete them manually. This process can take days and require multiple partners and executives to get involved and provide accurate, relevant, up-to-date information.
And because many of your competitors are bidding with you, you’re trying to get these RFPs done as fast as possible. Any business using AI to help gains an immediate advantage over the competition.
For most organizations, the manual RFP process looks something like this:
It’s time-consuming. It’s tedious. There are lots of moving parts and teammates involved.
When using AI-powered RFP automation, the new workflow looks something like this:
The immediate benefits are speed, response quality, and ease of use.
There are several ways to use AI for questionnaire automation. In this post, we’ll dive into the different types of AI businesses use to complete RFPs (Chatbots, Copilots, and Agents) to help you decide which one to use for your business.
What Is an RFP Chatbot?
An RFP Chatbot is as simple as it gets. It’s exactly what you might think: an AI system that can pull information from the vast resources of the internet to answer questions. It is the most common use case since AI became mainstream.
The primary function of a Chatbot is to take in a query and provide a response it thinks is the best one. It will often then offer links to the sources where it got that information.
An RFP Chatbot will return responses from a Large Language Model, usually one at a time, and those results are often not grounded in any particular truth. It requires a significant amount of human involvement to ensure the responses are accurate and not hallucinated.
In the case above, ChatGPT answers the question incorrectly because it thinks it’s being tricked. Even the elaboration on the answer is confusing. This “lying” or “hallucinating” happens because chatbots pull information from the vast number of resources on the internet. And let’s face it, a lot of times, the internet gets it wrong.
Without a limited, accurate knowledge base, any chatbot you use will have a tendency to lie and hallucinate information that isn’t real.
Pros and Cons of RFP Chatbots
| Pros of RFP Chatbots | Cons of RFP Chatbots |
| It’s fast, and no setup is required. You can get responses on day 1. | Hallucinations. A chatbot not trained on your company’s knowledge base will be pulling from massive amounts of information on the internet. It’s really easy to get information wrong this way. |
| It’s smart, and it has access to the entire internet. So, you can get some decent answers, or at least a good start, right out of the gate. | Loading an RFP into a Chatbot is a poor user experience experience. Even the best models lack an understanding of what they’re dealing with in terms of questionnaire format, dropdowns, checkboxes, etc. |
| Speed. Because you have to enter questions manually, this process could take days. |
What Is an RFP Copilot?
Copilots take the Chatbot experience to the next level. Not only will the Copilot find answers, but it can also tell if the answers are true. It will analyze documents and websites, seek and understand context, and be linked to your company’s internal knowledge base.
The biggest differentiator between a simple Chatbot and an RFP Copilot is its capability to ingest user knowledge and keep responses grounded in truth. Once you train and limit an RFP Copilot to your company’s files, web pages, and internal documents, it becomes an amazing virtual assistant that always gets it right and is never too tired to keep generating answers.
A prime example of an RFP Copilot like this would be would be the Ask 1up feature on the 1up platform. You can message @1up on Slack, Google Chat, or MS Teams, to get responses from your company’s knowledge base:
With this approach, users centralize all of their internal data into a single knowledge base and generate lightning-fast responses to RFPs in any format.
Users can ask questions and upload documents and expect a completed RFP in minutes. It’s fast, accurate, and up-to-date.
Pros and Cons of RFP Copilots
| Pros of RFP Copilots | Cons of RFP Copilots |
| No hallucinations. Because it’s trained on your knowledge base, you’ll always only get answers from your own trusted data sources, files, and URLs. | Basic Copilots will still struggle to read or respond to complex document formats. |
| Fast setup time. Connecting all of your files and unifying them on a single platform takes moments. You can be up and running on the same day. | Costs. Using a copilot without control over the answering process could lead to surprisingly high costs. |
| User Experience still involves answering one query at a time, so a long RFP can still take time. |
What Is an RFP Agent?
An RFP Agent is the most advanced AI system you can use to complete questionnaires.
Agents will analyze documents, conduct research, and prepare a much more comprehensive response than a Copilot can. With an Agent, you can automate multiple answers at the same time. With minimal fine-tuning, an RFP agent should be able to complete a questionnaire with several hundred responses in less than an hour.
An Agent can also approach questionnaire formats from different angles, creating automated workflows for almost any scenario including Excel, PDF, Word, and even web-based questionnaires.
For Excel, PDF, and Word Docs
An RFP Agent like 1up will first analyze any document you upload and then generate answers based on your connected knowledge base. This way, you know the answers are always accurate.
Here’s what that looks like:
For web-based questionnaires
RFPs or questionnaires hosted on a webpage can be painful as they don’t always allow bulk answering or exporting to work offline. An RFP Agent with a browser plugin that allows you to scan and complete documents directly on web pages would be a powerful boost in speed.
1up offers an RFP Agent that allows you to do both. You can install the RFP Browser Plugin to automate answers on any webpage, or you can upload documents directly to 1up for automated RFP responses.
Here’s a demo:
In both cases, 1up will pull data from your most updated documents in your files, analyze for context and relevance, and complete your RFPs. The process, for over 100 questions, can be done in minutes, while answering a single question will take just seconds.
Pros and Cons of RFP Agents
| Pros of RFP Agent | Cons of RFP Agent |
| It has the most accurate performance among them all. A good RFP Agent will be fully versed in your company’s materials. | Sometimes takes more time to setup. Because the Agent is scanning your entire file and data systems, it may take a few runs to get the process perfect. Your sales reps will upvote and downvote the Agent’s responses to improve the system. |
| Excellent UX when it comes to formatting. Agents can handle Word, Excel, PDF, and web-based questionnaires. You won’t have to worry about a Chatbot or Copilot getting confused. | |
| Can handle more than just RFPs. You can also complete security questionnaires, DDQ, and more. All of these are part of this grouping. |
Success Stories of Businesses Using RFP Agents
1. Continu: Automating RFPs to Speed Up Deals
Continu had too much business. The influx of RFPs pulled sales engineers away from strategic work, and the manual process was slow and frustrating. With a lean team and ambitious goals, they needed a solution: 1up.
With 1up, Continu centralized all their knowledge and automated the RFP process. Instead of digging through scattered documents, team members now upload an RFP, receive accurate responses in minutes, and just edit and refine it.
We love the reliability of the responses. 1up is intuitive, fast, and accurate, with no real hallucinations.
Matthew Isaman, Customer Solutions Engineer
This means no more time-consuming manual edits, just a quick review before sending the completed RFP back to the client.
Read the full Continu case study here.
2. Optimove: Scaling Up with AI-Powered Questionnaires
Optimove was constantly flooded with technical questionnaires. The process took too much time and distracted the team from core business activities. Until 1up.
1up became Optimove’s go-to automated knowledge base, handling RFPs, security questionnaires, and even everyday questions.
1up saved one of my deals when I had to respond to a last minute RFP. Before 1up, a response could take 3-4 people several days to complete. I was able to get it done in a fraction of the time.
– Chris Gardella, Senior Account Executive
They used our Slack integration as their go-to real-time Q&A tool, letting the team instantly pull information without searching through files.
And of course, they could auto-fill complex RFPs with accurate responses, which saved plenty of time.
Read the full success story here.
3. FusionAuth: Taking on More Deals Without More Work
FusionAuth deals with highly detailed compliance questionnaires. These were eating up valuable time from sales engineers, making it tough to scale. Then they adopted 1up’s RFP agent.
1up could automate RFPs no matter how long they were, allowing them to take on more business without overloading their team.
We used to turn down deals because we didn’t have time to respond. Now, we say yes to every RFP.
Matt Hathcock, Sales Engineering Manager
FushionAuth loved our accurate the responses were as well. By pulling only from trusted internal knowledge sources, FusionAuth avoids AI-generated errors like hallucinations.
Read the full success story here.
Which Approach is Right for You?
So, how do you decide which option is right for you as you begin exploring the use of AI in your business? Well, it will depend on your specific use cases.
If you only have the occasional RFP to handle, like fewer than one per month, you may be just fine installing an RFP Chatbot and manually asking it questions to help you along.
If you’ve got a couple of RFPs per month, a trained Copilot might be the best option. Just make sure it’s limited to information found in your files, rather than the entirety of the internet.
And if you’re dealing with dozens of RFPs each month, plus security questionnaires and DDQs, it’s a no-brainer to get an RFP agent on your side. It’s not even about cost at this point. It’s about investing in your people’s time and closing deals.
Still struggling to choose? Don’t worry. We wrote an entire guide on how to choose the right RFP software for your needs. And if you want to learn a bit more about how 1up can automate your questionnaires fast, accurately, and efficiently, book a demo today.
