The Real Cost of Manual DDQ Responses

Manual DDQ responses don’t just drain time — they drain momentum.

If you’ve ever had a deal lose steam after a due diligence questionnaire hit someone’s inbox, you know the feeling. The AE thinks it's almost closed. The buyer is nodding along. Then Procurement sends over a 300-row spreadsheet, and the momentum dies quietly in an endless loop of email threads, SME approvals, and last-minute compliance reviews.

Most teams treat DDQs as “just paperwork.” But they’re not. They’re real work — and when your process is manual, they create more friction than anyone admits.

Behind the scenes, Sales leans on Security. Security asks Legal. Legal has edits. The SE gets pulled in to re-answer the same encryption questions they already handled last quarter. Half the answers are buried in past responses or a teammate’s inbox. Everyone’s time is spent stitching together content that already exists — just not where you need it.

That lag doesn’t just slow things down — it changes how your buyer perceives you. Are you responsive? Are you trustworthy? Are you ready to work with an enterprise team with a real security review process? Or are you sending half-baked, copied answers that need asterisks and follow-up?

This is where most teams break down — not because they can’t answer the questions, but because they can’t do it consistently, quickly, or clearly. And that’s when trust starts to erode.

Then there’s the invisible cost: the people. Ask anyone who’s been at a high-growth company long enough, and they’ll tell you about dropping everything to finish a DDQ late at night. Or trying to decipher someone else’s answer to a SOC 2 question while they’re out on PTO. Or resending the same response to five different prospects with slightly different wording, wondering which one is “right.”

This isn’t scalable. It’s not strategic. It’s not how high-performing teams work.

And yet — it’s the norm.

The alternative? Build a system where the answers don’t live in someone’s head. Where AI suggests your best language based on what worked before. Where you can see who owns what, how long it’s taking, and where approvals are stuck. Where DDQs are part of the process — not a fire drill.

That’s what Iris does.

It helps your team stop scrambling and start responding — with speed, with consistency, and without pulling your SEs and compliance leads away from the work that actually moves deals forward.

Because documentation is necessary.
But burnout is not.

And every hour your best people spend on repetitive questionnaires is an hour they’re not spending helping you win.

‍