Key Takeaways

• Structured SME assignments prevent project bottlenecks.

• Centralized review queues eliminate version control issues.

• AI-assisted drafting reduces the initial review burden by 80%.

• Real-time status tracking provides accountability across departments.

Managing a single RFP is a challenge, but managing dozens of simultaneous bids requires a paradigm shift in how your team handles approvals. For growth-stage and enterprise teams, the bottleneck is rarely the initial drafting; it is the friction of the multi-reviewer workflow. When technical experts, legal teams, and sales leaders all need to sign off on a single document, the process often devolves into fragmented email chains and conflicting spreadsheet versions.

The Challenge of High-Volume RFP Approvals

As organizations scale, the complexity of technical requirements increases. A typical enterprise RFP may require input from cybersecurity, product engineering, legal counsel, and finance. Without a structured system, the proposal manager becomes a 'traffic cop,' manually chasing individuals for updates. This lack of transparency leads to missed deadlines or, worse, inaccurate information being submitted to a potential client.

How to Structure Multi-Reviewer Workflows

To manage RFP approvals at scale, you must move away from sequential reviews (where one person finishes before the next begins) and toward parallel, question-level assignments.

1. Define Question-Level Ownership

Instead of sending a 50-page Word document to an SME, assign them specific questions relevant to their expertise. This reduces the cognitive load on your experts and ensures they only focus on their area of responsibility. Tools like Settle enable this by allowing per-question reviewer assignments with dedicated email notifications.

2. Create a Centralized Review Queue

Version control is the enemy of scale. By using a centralized 'Inbox' for all pending approvals, reviewers can see exactly what requires their attention across multiple projects in one view. This eliminates the need to dig through old emails to find the latest file version.

3. Implement Real-Time Status Tracking

Visibility is essential for enterprise-grade collaboration. High-performing teams use dashboards that show the completion percentage of every active project. Monitoring these metrics allows proposal managers to identify which department is lagging and reallocate resources before a deadline is at risk.

Speeding Up Approvals with AI and Automation

One of the most effective ways to streamline approvals is to ensure the first draft is as accurate as possible. When reviewers start with a high-quality draft grounded in your official company data, their job shifts from 'writing' to 'validating.'

Tools like Settle automate this process by using a centralized proposal knowledge base to bulk auto-draft answers. Because these drafts are pulled from a single source of truth—including past project answers and approved security responses—the reviewer spends significantly less time correcting errors. This can cut total response time by up to 80%, allowing small teams to compete at an enterprise scale.

Maintaining a Source of Truth

A successful multi-reviewer workflow is only as good as the data powering it. Your Library should serve as the foundation for every bid. By capturing edits made during the review process and feeding them back into the knowledge base, you ensure that the next proposal starts with even better content. This 'virtuous cycle' of enrichment reduces the frequency of future review cycles, as more answers become 'pre-approved' by default.

The Strategic Advantage of Automated Workflows

Organizations that master the art of the multi-reviewer workflow do more than just save time; they increase their bid capacity. When the friction of internal sign-offs is removed, teams can pursue more opportunities without increasing headcount. Combining this efficiency with proactive RFP discovery allows teams to find high-fit opportunities and respond with precision, turning the proposal process into a repeatable engine for pipeline growth.