Analyst and RFI responses
Answer the analyst questionnaire without inventing a number.
Gartner, Forrester, IDC, BARC. Hundreds of questions, every one scored, every answer published. Get it right the first time.
What usually goes wrong
Three failures, every cycle, under deadline.
These are what actually happens when a team drafts in a hurry. Each has a mechanism pointed at it.
numbers that are not real
A figure inherited from an old template, or invented once and then repeated across a dozen answers. Every number is defined once and traced to something quotable, or flagged for you. A figure sitting in a template is a question to answer.
limits that get blown
Answers that overflow the per-cell caps and have to be re-cut late, badly. The limits are read out of the workbook before a word is written, then every finished answer is measured against them in code.
stories that do not match
One answer contradicting another, or quietly rewriting what you told the same analyst last year. A dedicated pass hunts contradictions across the whole set and brings what it cannot settle to you, clustered by decision.
How it runs
Drop in your material, run one prompt.
Nothing to configure. Your questionnaire, your strategy material and your previous responses go in their folders, and the pipeline does the rest.
FIRST
It reads the rules of the form
Every limit, dropdown and value type comes out of the workbook before drafting starts, so nothing has to be re-cut at the end.
THEN
It interviews you
It stops and asks about the calls only a person can make: scoping, what is generally available, what you are willing to disclose. Before drafting.
THEN
It drafts and checks itself
Each answer written to its rubric line and its limit, then re-measured in code and re-checked against the sources by a fresh adversarial pass.
FINALLY
You get a reviewable package
A filled workbook, an answer sheet labelled by cell, and a note listing where every number came from and everything still open.
Two modes
The same truth rules, whoever is asking.
An analyst questionnaire and a customer thread need different documents and the same discipline about what is true.
The analyst questionnaire
the stricter pipeline
- A blank or partly filled workbook goes in
- A filled workbook, an answer sheet and a reviewer's note come out
- Cell limits, dropdowns and rubric lines all enforced
General product questions
same knowledge, different shape
- A customer thread, a sales escalation, a security review
- One response document, structured to forward as it is
- Open questions routed to whoever owns the answer
The division of labour
What stays yours, and what it will refuse to do.
What the product does and what you will put in writing stay with you. The chasing, the counting and the cross-checking do not.
It only knows what you give it
If your material is stale, the answers are confidently stale, and no amount of process fixes that. It has no opinions about your strategy and it will not decide what to disclose. What it will do is refuse to assert what it cannot source, and hand you the list of everything still open.