Iris Blog - Automated Proposals: Respond in Half the Time

Proposal deadlines don’t move. Neither should your team’s priorities.

Whether it’s an RFP, DDQ, or vendor questionnaire, proposals often pull high-performing people into low-leverage work—formatting documents, rewriting boilerplate, tracking down approvals, or manually chasing down last month’s language.

For most teams, it’s still a stitched-together process of shared drives, Slack threads, and versioning chaos.

That’s where automation comes in—not to skip steps, but to eliminate the ones that don’t add value.

Where Time Actually Gets Lost

Based on Iris client benchmarks, a single proposal cycle can take up to two weeks to complete.

Not because the content doesn’t exist—because the process to surface, review, and format it is broken.

What we hear again and again:

“I know we’ve answered this before, but I can’t find the version legal signed off on.”
“We’re still reformatting in Word after exporting from our platform.”
“We spent more time chasing people than actually writing.”

Not just a time issue, but a focus issue. Teams aren’t burned out because proposals are hard. They’re burned out because proposals are inefficient.

How Iris Fixes the Process

Iris automates the parts of proposal work that shouldn’t require a second thought. Your team still makes the decisions—our platform handles the setup, surfacing, and structure.

Here’s how it works:

Drafts generate instantly, using approved language and previous submissions
Each question routes automatically to the right stakeholder—no manual triage
Brand formatting and tone are baked in, not applied after the fact
Everyone works in one place, with tagging, commenting, and audit trails included
Reviews are built into the workflow, not added at the end

No duct-taped systems. No last-minute copy-paste. No wondering which version is final.