Why Your RFP Tool Needs Multi-User Access
June 20, 2025
By
Evie Secilmis

Sales Engineers don’t scale. Neither should your bottlenecks.
In many teams, RFPs stall because one person is expected to quarterback the entire process — juggling intake, drafting, routing, and final submission. But the opposite extreme isn’t much better.
Sometimes everyone is involved. And that’s where the chaos begins.
The Hidden Cost of “Too Many Cooks”
We hear it all the time:
“It’s a team effort, so the whole team should be in the doc.”
But when five people are editing the same spreadsheet, answers get overwritten. Legal’s waiting on Sales. Sales is waiting on Product. Product is waiting for someone to assign ownership. No one’s sure which version is final.
This isn’t collaboration — it’s confusion with a Google Doc.
More access without structure = more delays, not fewer.
The Fix Isn’t “More People” — It’s Smart Collaboration
That’s where a modern AI RFP platform like Iris comes in. Iris isn’t just about adding users — it’s about assigning ownership with clarity, context, and control.
With Iris, your team can:
- Assign specific sections or questions to the right subject matter experts
- Use role-based permissions to prevent accidental edits or duplicate work
- Keep everyone aligned in one live workspace — no version confusion, no “final_final2.docx”
- Let AI handle the first draft of repetitive answers to reduce human effort entirely
Whether your team has one owner or ten collaborators, Iris makes sure the work moves forward without stepping on itself.
What It Actually Enables: Async Work That Works
Multi-user access isn’t about turning RFPs into a group project. It’s about distributed ownership with clear boundaries— and letting AI handle as much as possible.
That means:
- One person can upload and delegate — and then step away.
- SMEs can answer just their piece, without digging through 40 questions.
- Legal and Sales can work in parallel — not ping-pong over email.
- AI can suggest answers from your knowledge base in real time.
SE time on RFPs drops from 50% to 12%.
Knowledge reuse goes up by 312%.
RFPs get submitted — even when someone’s out of office.
This is what scalable, collaborative RFP response actually looks like.
How to Tell If You Have a Collaboration Problem
Ask yourself:
- How many people worked on your last RFP?
- How many versions of the doc were floating around?
- How often did answers get duplicated, overwritten, or lost?
- If someone took PTO mid-way, did the process stall?
If that sounds familiar, you don’t just need more access — you need a system that makes access useful.
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