Make ProposalTech Work for You: 5 Strategies

ProposalTech is not a household name. But if you work on a proposal team at a health insurance company, you’re probably well-acquainted. It’s the primary platform many benefit brokers and third-party administrators (TPAs) use to issue RFPs and RFIs on behalf of their clients. For health insurers, this means that 35% to 45% of your RFP workload comes through ProposalTech.

ProposalTech is efficient for the people sending out questionnaires, but it’s not as friendly for the people responding to them. You’ve likely run into these challenges:

• Manual workflows that eat up hours copying, pasting, and formatting responses.
• Complex, multi-part questions that are easy to misinterpret or misalign.
• Minimal collaboration tools that force your team to rely on email, Excel, and other external tools.
• Rigid submission deadlines that can cause last-minute panic.

These issues add up fast, especially when you’re responding to dozens of RFPs a year. It’s not just the time lost. It’s the stress, the risk of mistakes, and the late nights spent trying to clean up formatting or finalize a submission.

Here’s the good news: there are practical ways to work smarter on ProposalTech. In this blog, we’ll walk through five strategies you can use to:

1. Speed up repetitive tasks.
2. Collaborate more efficiently.
3. Avoid common errors before submission.

These are actionable steps you can take, starting today, to save time and improve your team’s response process. Let’s get started.

Build a Centralized Content Library

Most proposal teams reuse a lot of the same answers from one RFP to the next. Questions about plan details, network coverage, pricing, and compliance rarely change. But on ProposalTech, the process of finding and reusing this content can feel like a full-time job.

Here’s the problem: ProposalTech doesn’t have an advanced content library. It doesn’t let you store approved answers in one place or search for responses by keyword. So, you end up scrolling through old proposals, copying answers from spreadsheets, or rewriting content you’ve answered a dozen times before.

Manual work like this costs you valuable hours. It also increases the chance of mistakes. Copying the wrong version of an answer—or missing key updates—can damage your team’s credibility.

Here’s how to fix it:

1. Build a centralized content library. Start by gathering your most common answers into a single, organized repository. You can use tools like SharePoint, Google Drive, or dedicated proposal management software.
2. Organize content by category. Group your answers by common themes:
   • Company information: company history, mission, or financial stability.
   • Plan details: network coverage, member benefits, or plan structures.
   • Compliance: HIPAA compliance, security protocols, or claims processing.
   • Pricing and fees: fee schedules, rate guarantees, or cost structures.
3. Keep content up to date. Assign someone on your team to review and update the library regularly. This ensures the answers you pull are accurate and ready to use.
4. Tag and search for speed. Use tags, keywords, or naming conventions so your team can quickly locate the answers they need. For example, if a question asks about HIPAA, searching “HIPAA” in your library should pull up the right response instantly.

The result: You’ll cut out hours of manual work and reduce errors. When a question comes up on ProposalTech that you’ve answered before, your team can find and insert a pre-approved response in seconds—not minutes.

If you want to go a step further, proposal automation tools like Fastbreak can take this process to the next level. They allow you to automatically pull the best-fit answers from your content library and format them directly for ProposalTech, saving even more time.

Start small. Build a simple content library first and watch how much faster your team can respond. You’ll see immediate improvements—less stress, fewer mistakes, and a quicker turnaround on every ProposalTech submission.

Streamline Complex, Multi-Part ProposalTech Questions

If you’ve worked on an RFP in ProposalTech, you’ve seen it: long, multi-part questions that seem to go on forever. These questions often combine multiple topics or require several specific details in one answer. For example:

“Describe your network coverage, including total provider counts by specialty, access to telehealth, and your process for onboarding new providers.”

Questions like this are easy to mismanage. You might miss a part of the question, bury an important detail, or format the answer in a way that’s hard for the evaluator to follow. Worse, ProposalTech’s interface doesn’t make it easy to split out or visually organize your response.

Here’s how to manage complex questions more effectively:

1. Break the question into smaller pieces before you answer.
   • Copy the question into a Word document, Excel sheet, or project management tool.
   • Highlight or separate each part of the question so you can address them individually.
   • For the example above, you’d break it into:
     • Total provider counts by specialty
     • Telehealth access
     • Provider onboarding process
2. Answer each part clearly and completely.
   Write short, focused paragraphs for each section of the question. Use headings or bullet points to make your response easy to read:
   • Provider Counts by Specialty: [Your answer]
   • Telehealth Access: [Your answer]
   • Onboarding Process: [Your answer]
3. Draft and review outside of ProposalTech.
   Multi-part questions are harder to edit once they’re in ProposalTech’s text boxes. Draft and review your answer in a separate tool first. This gives your team time to check for completeness, clarity, and formatting.
4. Paste the final response into ProposalTech with care.
   After reviewing, paste the cleaned-up answer back into ProposalTech. Double-check that the formatting holds and everything fits within any character limits.
5. Create templates for repeat questions.
   If multi-part questions come up repeatedly, save a clean, well-organized version in your content library. Tag it so it’s easy to find the next time you need it.

Why this works:
Breaking down complex questions ensures you don’t miss key details. Structuring your response with headings or bullets also makes it easier for evaluators to follow, which can improve your score.

Tools like Fastbreak RFP can simplify this process even further. AI-powered automation can break down questions for you, suggest accurate answers from your content library, and align everything neatly for ProposalTech submissions.

The next time you face a complicated question, don’t rush to fill out the box. Take a step back, break it down, and answer it piece by piece. It’ll save time—and improve the quality of your responses.

Improve Collaboration and Ownership

ProposalTech wasn’t built with collaboration in mind. If you’re responding to a large RFP, the lack of team-friendly tools makes it hard to work efficiently. Assigning questions, tracking progress, and managing review cycles often falls back to external tools—email chains, spreadsheets, or Word documents. These methods cause version confusion, missed updates, and wasted time.

The result? Disorganization slows your team down, and things slip through the cracks.

Here’s how to fix it:

1. Assign ownership upfront.
   Before you start filling out ProposalTech, assign clear ownership for every section or question. Use a simple tracker to list:
   • The person responsible for each question.
   • The deadline for first drafts and reviews.
   • Status updates (e.g., “In Progress,” “Complete,” “Needs Review”).
   A shared Excel sheet or project management tools like Trello or Asana work well for this. Keep it simple—overcomplicating the process defeats the purpose.
2. Hold quick kickoff and check-in meetings.
   A short, 15-minute kickoff meeting sets the team up for success. Use it to:
   • Confirm responsibilities.
   • Review the deadline and expectations.
   • Identify potential roadblocks early (e.g., missing data or SMEs who need input).
   Schedule one or two quick check-ins before the final deadline to keep everyone on track. These meetings help catch issues early and reduce last-minute chaos.
3. Standardize how responses are reviewed.
   ProposalTech doesn’t allow for real-time collaboration or built-in review workflows, so create your own. Here’s a simple process:
   • Step 1: Contributors draft responses outside ProposalTech (e.g., in Word).
   • Step 2: A reviewer checks for clarity, completeness, and compliance with the RFP requirements.
   • Step 3: The finalized response gets pasted into ProposalTech.
   Use a naming convention like “Q1_DRAFT” and “Q1_FINAL” to avoid version confusion.
4. Track progress in one place.
   ProposalTech’s interface doesn’t give you a clear view of progress. Use a shared tracker or dashboard to see:
   • How much work is complete.
   • What’s outstanding.
   • Who’s holding things up.
   Tools like Google Sheets or Microsoft Teams allow your team to update status in real time, so you’re never guessing who’s behind or what’s missing.
5. Streamline communication with your SMEs.
   Subject matter experts (SMEs) play a big role in answering detailed questions, but chasing them for input can cause delays. Set clear expectations:
   • Tell SMEs exactly which questions need their input.
   • Give them clear deadlines and reminders.
   • Provide templates or drafts to make their job easier.

Why this works:
When everyone knows their role and progress is easy to track, collaboration becomes smoother. You avoid wasted time, reduce bottlenecks, and finish your ProposalTech responses faster.

If your team handles high volumes of RFPs, tools like Fastbreak RFP can take this a step further. Fastbreak automates task assignments, tracks team progress, and centralizes collaboration, so you don’t have to rely on spreadsheets or scattered communication.

The bottom line: ProposalTech doesn’t make collaboration easy, but you can. With clear ownership, simple processes, and the right tools, your team can work together efficiently—even on the most complex RFPs.

Reduce ProposalTech Formatting Nightmares and Submission Stress

ProposalTech’s strict formatting rules and submission deadlines can be unforgiving. Whether it’s character limits, spacing issues, or missing attachments, small errors can create last-minute chaos. If you’re like most proposal teams, you’ve probably spent late nights scrambling to fix these problems before the deadline.

Here’s how to stay ahead of formatting issues and submission stress:

1. Draft responses outside ProposalTech first.
   Writing directly in ProposalTech increases the risk of formatting mistakes, especially if you’re rushing. Instead, use Word, Google Docs, or your proposal tool of choice to draft responses first.
   • Check for character limits while drafting. Use a word count tool to track progress.
   • Format the text with headings, bullets, and line breaks to improve readability.
2. Create a pre-submission checklist.
   A checklist can help you catch common errors before submission. Include steps like:
   • Verify character limits are met.
   • Check for missing answers or incomplete sections.
   • Ensure all attachments and supporting documents are uploaded.
   • Confirm formatting is consistent across all responses.
   • Test links and ensure they work.
3. Assign a “final reviewer” to catch errors.
   Designate one person to review the entire proposal before submitting. This person should check for:
   • Typos, formatting inconsistencies, and broken links.
   • Missing attachments or incomplete answers.
   • Submission readiness—are all boxes filled, and do responses follow ProposalTech’s guidelines?
4. Save time with response templates.
   If you frequently encounter questions with rigid formatting (like tables, specific line limits, or character counts), save template versions of those answers. Templates reduce rework and keep formatting consistent.
5. Submit early to avoid last-minute lockouts.
   ProposalTech enforces hard deadlines. If you’re even one minute late, the platform can lock you out. To avoid surprises:
   • Submit a draft version several hours early to test for technical issues.
   • Schedule your team’s internal deadline at least 24 hours before the official due date.

Why this works:
By drafting responses outside ProposalTech, using a checklist, and building in extra review time, you eliminate the most common causes of last-minute submission stress. Plus, you can catch errors before they turn into costly mistakes.

For teams looking to take it a step further, tools like Fastbreak RFP can help. Fastbreak automatically formats content for ProposalTech, ensures responses fit character limits, and flags incomplete answers—giving you confidence before submission.

The bottom line? Formatting doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Build a simple process to draft, review, and submit on time. When you’re calm and prepared, even ProposalTech’s hard deadlines feel manageable.

Leverage AI to Save Time on Repetitive ProposalTech Tasks

Repetition is a huge time sink for proposal teams. On ProposalTech, you’ll often see the same questions pop up across RFPs: company background, compliance details, network descriptions, and more. Manually hunting for answers, copying them into ProposalTech, and reformatting them wastes hours.

Worse, it’s easy to make mistakes when you’re tired or in a rush. Copy the wrong version of an answer, miss an update, or forget a detail, and it could cost you the proposal.

Here’s how AI can help you save time and improve accuracy:

1. Automate content retrieval.
   Instead of manually searching old proposals or spreadsheets, AI tools can instantly find the best-fit response to a question.
   • Use an AI-driven tool like Fastbreak RFP to scan your content library and suggest pre-approved answers in seconds.
   • The tool can match ProposalTech questions—even if they’re worded differently—to the right response, so you don’t have to rewrite or reformat.
2. Auto-adapt content to fit ProposalTech’s requirements.
   ProposalTech often has strict character limits or specific formatting rules. AI tools can optimize answers to meet these requirements automatically:
   • Trim answers to fit character counts without losing key information.
   • Clean up formatting, like line breaks, bullets, and text alignment.
3. Reduce errors with automated checks.
   AI tools can flag incomplete or inconsistent answers before you submit. For example:
   • Missing data or placeholders like “[Insert Plan Name Here].”
   • Duplicated answers or inconsistent terminology.
   • Errors in attachments or supporting documents.
4. Speed up repetitive questions with templates.
   AI tools can generate response templates for the most common questions on ProposalTech. Instead of reinventing the wheel, your team can customize the template quickly and move on.
5. Focus your team’s time where it matters.
   By automating repetitive tasks, AI frees up time for higher-value work:
   • Fine-tuning your proposal messaging.
   • Reviewing responses for clarity and impact.
   • Managing stakeholder feedback and internal approvals.

Why this works:
Automating repetitive tasks eliminates manual busywork, reduces the risk of errors, and speeds up the overall response process. Instead of losing hours copying and pasting, your team can focus on what matters most—creating high-quality proposals that win.

For teams responding to ProposalTech RFPs, tools like Fastbreak RFP take this even further. Fastbreak uses AI to:

• Pull the right answers instantly.
• Auto-format content to meet ProposalTech’s guidelines.
• Flag errors before submission.

The result: You’ll respond faster, with fewer mistakes, and your team can finally keep up with the volume of ProposalTech RFPs without burning out.

If you’re still spending hours on repetitive tasks, it’s time to rethink your process. AI tools are no longer optional—they’re essential for teams that want to save time and stay ahead.

Conclusion: Take Control of ProposalTech with Smarter Strategies

ProposalTech isn’t going anywhere. For health insurer proposal teams, it’s the platform where 35–45% of your RFPs and RFIs land. But while ProposalTech simplifies the process for brokers and TPAs, it creates challenges for your team: manual tasks, formatting headaches, collaboration gaps, and time pressure.

The good news? You don’t have to settle for inefficiency. By implementing the strategies we’ve covered, you can make responding on ProposalTech faster and less stressful:

1. Build a centralized content library to eliminate repetitive work.
2. Break down complex questions into manageable parts and structure your answers for clarity.
3. Improve collaboration by assigning ownership and streamlining review cycles.
4. Reduce formatting nightmares with pre-submission checklists and early deadlines.
5. Leverage AI to automate repetitive tasks, optimize responses, and save valuable time.

Every one of these steps adds up to a smoother, more efficient process. You’ll spend less time scrambling to meet deadlines and more time improving the quality of your proposals.

If you want to take it a step further, tools like Fastbreak RFP can automate much of this work for you. Fastbreak integrates with your content library, uses AI to suggest accurate answers, and helps you format everything perfectly for ProposalTech. It’s built to save you time and reduce errors—so your team can focus on what matters most.

The bottom line: ProposalTech is a challenge, but it doesn’t have to control your workflow. With the right strategies and tools, you can take back control, respond faster, and win more business.