How to Evaluate RFP Questionnaire Software

When it comes to buying an AI RFP automation tool, the marketing messaging can feel overwhelming.

Every product claims they have the latest, greatest model with the best features.

Every sales demo you watch can feel like the greatest demo you’ve ever seen.

How do you know who to choose or what to evaluate?

We made this RFP software buyer’s guide to help you categorize, evaluate, and rate vendors on a shared set of criteria.

Dealing with RFPs and compliance questionnaires is a pain point that Sales and IT teams face on a regular basis. There are a few routes you can take when trying to modernize this process.

This is by far the most painful approach. In most cases, a dedicated teammate will be assigned to own the questionnaire response process. In larger organizations, this can involve a full team with a complex workflow, and the need to maintain a large library of information. Most companies want to transition away from this costly and inefficient approach – in fact, we recently did a study on how long it takes to manually complete an RFP.

These tools are more common among enterprises and larger organizations where the RFP workflow is high-volume and has many movings parts. If you’re looking for a large software suite that can help you ‘project manage’ a high volume of RFPs and questionnaires, this might be the category for you.

The biggest downside is that users report spending more time researching, manually writing responses, and maintaining a large knowledge base due to the lack of answer automation.

Believe it or not, some revenue teams have tried leveraging traditional knowledge management and enablement tools to improve their RFP response workflows. Unfortunately, this is like fitting a square peg in a round hole. Though the user personas do often overlap, enablement tools do not address the pain points associated with responding to sales and compliance questionnaires.

In a similar vein, IT and security teams have tried using compliance software to address the questionnaire problem. While these are great tools for achieving infosec compliance, the technology does not translate well into the specific pain point of responding to complex RFPs and questionnaires. Despite some of these tools having questionnaire assistants, they are limited and still require you to research and manually write responses.

Furthermore, these tools get siloed into the security teams when in fact most RFP and compliance questionnaire activity comes from the sales org. This is why many of our customers use 1up alongside their existing IT compliance software.

This category is widely-considered to be the modern approach to automating RFPs and security questionnaires, and answering sales questions 10x faster. By combining Large Language Models with an automated knowledge base, tools like 1up deliver a user experience that addresses specific pain points.

The result is an automation experience that Sales and IT teams love to use daily at companies of all sizes. Here’s a demo of what that looks like:

When evaluating questionnaire automation tools, you’re should benchmark them against a few key factors. Don’t just compare lists of features. Consider these strategic qualities in choose the tool that’s right for your team:

Finally, assess if the tool is actually saving you time.
Does the tool require you to continue living in Excel or Word Documents? If the whole point of looking for an automation tool is to get away from living in spreadsheets, then make sure that’s what you’re getting. You should be able to hand off a document to an AI, step away, and come back to a completed project ready for your review. Anything less is proof of extra steps.

Ask for a specific customer story that lines up with your company size or industry.

If you’re a small or medium business, a case study explaining how a large enterprise adopted AI might not be relevant to you. Conversely, a tool that focuses on small, nimble teams won’t necessarily translate well to a large complex organization.

For example, 1up has been deployed across companies ranging in size from 10 to 10,000 employees. Here’s an RFP automation customer story for Tellennium, a leader in enterprise expense management. Here’s another for FusionAuth, a leader in the Identity Access Management space who use 1up to automatically generate thousands of RFP responses.

To dig deeper, ask for a reference of someone who has renewed their contract. The key to telling great customer stories isn’t sales, it’s adoption. Are they still using the tool? Why did they stick around? Why not?

Ask the hard questions and you’ll be surprised how many customers churn when it comes to RFP management software.

Finally, don’t just settle for online reviews.

I know, G2 Reviews can be a great signal, but remember that many companies trade Starbucks gift cards for a positive review. Yes, most of these are paid for, unfortunately.

Anytime a vendor flashes their G2 review badge at you, ask them to speak with a customer. There’s no better way to validate a review than by speaking with a reference.

You want to cut through the sales speak and marketing noise? Here’s a list of direct questions you should ask the vendors you’re reviewing.

Once you’ve selected your preferred tool, it’s time to pick a pricing plan and inform your finance team.

At 1up, our pricing plans vary based on questionnaire volume. All pricing tiers include unlimited single answer generation and free integrations such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Single Sign-On login.

At this stage, you may also be required to get approval from your IT/Security team. Depending on company policies, you might have to share a vendor risk questionnaire with your preferred vendor (how ironic).

Here are some considerations when procuring a tool like 1up:

Finally, make sure you can get a free trial. Don’t just settle for a demo. You want to be able to test multiple questionnaire types, formats, and answer modes. This is how you can ensure that your team picks the right tool for the job.