Beyond the questionnaire: Automating the ‘everything else’ in your RFP process

“Complete RFPs faster.” “Win more with smarter responses.”

We’ve all seen the headlines. Most RFP software vendors want you to believe that the ‘win’ is hidden inside the questionnaire. They promise that if you can just fill out those 100 rows 70% faster, the deal is yours.

But anyone in the trenches knows the truth: The questionnaire is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Before you even get to the drafting stage, you’re facing a monumental undertaking. You have to determine whether or not to bid on the RFP, go through the document to create a list of every hidden action item, and spin up a project for each submission with tasks assigned to over-stretched team members. Then, you have to track that progress across departments to ensure you don’t miss a hard deadline, all while trying to review and edit a mountain of responses before the final submission.

The industry treats an RFP like a writing assignment. In reality, it’s a high-stakes project management nightmare. We didn’t just build a better text editor; we built an AI engine to handle the entire lifecycle – turning that 15% speed boost into an 80% improvement in total submission time.

From hours to minutes: Automating the Day 1 scramble

The most painful part of an RFP isn't the writing – it’s the 48 hours spent ‘shredding’ the document to figure out what needs to happen. Historically, teams used a manual checklist to track these items. We’ve evolved that concept into a first-of-its-kind automated orchestration engine that replaces the manual checklist with a comprehensive, AI-generated game plan.

How it works

The moment you upload an RFP package, SiftHub goes to work, delivering a solid first draft of your project strategy in under 10 minutes.

• Instant executive summary: Get an immediate brief on who the buyer is, their core requirements, and the deal history so far.
• Data-backed bid/no-bid analysis: Receive an automated recommendation on whether to pursue the deal based on deal size, previous conversations, and your win probability.
• Automated requirement extraction: SiftHub ‘shreds’ the RFP package to identify every explicit and implicit milestone and required submission documents, converting them into actionable tasks.
• The responsibility matrix: Automate your tribal knowledge. By configuring your team's standard operating procedures, SiftHub auto-assigns tasks to the right owners based on your tailored workflow.
• Centralized orchestration hub: By housing your summary, analysis, and tasks in one place, SiftHub eliminates the need to bounce between Monday.com, Jira, and Salesforce to manage the bid.

The SiftHub difference

While other platforms might offer a basic checklist or AI writing assistance, SiftHub is the only RFP platform that automatically generates a project-specific task list directly from the RFP package. We’ve turned a manual process that used to take 1-2 days into a 10-minute automated workflow, allowing your team to spend less time ‘shredding’ and more time winning.

From question chasing to true project ownership

Filling out an RFP isn’t a writing assignment. For every RFP question you answer, there are three shadow tasks happening in the background – legal reviews, technical demos, and security document gathering. We have turned SiftHub into a full-scale ‘Project Command Center for Bids’.

How it works: 

SiftHub allows you to create standalone Project Tasks that cover the entire RFP lifecycle, moving far beyond the questionnaire.

• Comprehensive task tracking: Go beyond per-question assignments with five distinct task types – Milestones, Document Uploads, Content Requests, Content Reviews, and General work.
• Hard qualification milestones: Identify and track the make-or-break checkpoints that determine whether you actually qualify for the bid.
• Document-driven workflows: Ensure compliance by linking tasks directly to file uploads (like SOC2 or VAPT certificates ); the task isn’t ‘done’ until the file is in the package.
• Familiar collaboration UX: Manage the chaos with a robust project board. @mention teammates, attach files, and update statuses in an interface built for high-velocity teams.
• Post-submission persistence: Keep the project live after the deadline to handle follow-up items or ensure final versions are saved back to your Google Drive or SharePoint.

The SiftHub difference

We treat the RFP as a project, not just a document. While other vendors force you to manage your ‘to-do list’ in a separate tool like Asana or a messy spreadsheet, SiftHub brings it all under one umbrella. By centralizing the action items from the RFP and linking them to specific task types, you gain total visibility into the real status of the deal, not just the progress of the draft.

Contextual reviews for complex requirements

With SiftHub, your SMEs have always been able to jump in via Guest Review workflows. But the real bottleneck in the final mile of an RFP is validation. Usually, a bid manager has to trust the tool blindly or spend hours cross-referencing sources to make sure an answer isn't out of date.

Now, we’ve eliminated the ‘blind trust’ phase.

How it works

Every response generated via Autofill now comes with an 'Evidence Panel' that opens right where you're working (Sheets, Docs, or our Web App). You don't just see the answer; you see the ‘why’ behind it:

• The receipts: Instantly verify the sources and activity history for that specific response, so you know exactly where the data came from.
• Multi-column clarity: Manage the ‘Yes/No’ requirement and the detailed explanation side-by-side. You get the full picture without the endless side-scrolling.
• The ‘honesty’ flag: If SiftHub can only find a partial answer, it won’t guess. It flags exactly what’s missing so your team can focus their energy only on the true gaps.
• Expert-in-the-loop: If there is a contradiction between multiple sources in your knowledge base, SiftHub notifies you, allowing you to review the conflict and choose the relevant source of truth.
• AI Teammate refinement: Use our AI Teammate, which understands your prospect’s specific requirements and past discovery notes, to refine and hyper-personalize the final draft.

The SiftHub difference 

Most tools force you to edit one disconnected cell at a time. SiftHub gives you the full picture. By bringing deep prospect context and source-verification into your browser extension and the SiftHub Web App, we’ve turned the ‘review nightmare’ into a quick, high-confidence final polish.

The new standard for RFP orchestration

We’ve always believed that the ‘win’ is decided long before the final PDF is generated. Our mission has been to give sales, solutions, and bid teams a strategic edge that goes far beyond simply filling out a questionnaire.

Through automated bid/no-bid analysis, intelligent project insights, and our seamless guest review workflows, we’ve helped teams move faster and make smarter decisions. But we knew there was still a gap between ‘answering the questions’ and ‘submitting the RFP response’.

With this launch, we’ve closed that gap. By bringing standalone project tasks, automated requirement shredding, and context-rich evidence panels directly into the apps you use every day, like Google Sheets, Docs, and the Web App, SiftHub has become the end-to-end orchestration hub for your entire submission lifecycle.

You no longer have to choose between a powerful RFP tool and a robust project management platform. Now, you can manage the ‘everything else’ without ever leaving your workflow.

The era of the ‘manual RFP’ is over. It’s time to start orchestrating your win.