Across your bid · Alongside every stage
Your SMEs, your reviewers and James, in the same document
Assign each question to the expert who knows the answer. Write, comment, review and sign off in the same shared documents, with James, SEQUESTO's AI bid agent, working alongside you.
The bid stops travelling by e-mail: questions, comments, approvals and reminders stay inside the bid, in your order, with your statuses and your rules.
Before / With SEQUESTO
Before
- The bid manager emails 40 questions to six experts as Word attachments. Answers come back in six versions. Comments live in email. Nobody knows which file is current, and an old paragraph is pasted over a corrected one.
With SEQUESTO
- Each question is assigned to its expert inside the bid. Everyone edits the same document, with comments right on the text. A status field shows what is reviewed, your sign-off chain shows who approved it, and your own rules notify the right person at the right time. If something goes wrong, you restore the earlier version.
ASSIGNMENT
How do you get SMEs to answer bid questions on time?
Make it obvious what is theirs.
01
One named owner per question
In SEQUESTO, each extracted question is its own item, so you can assign it to a named expert: the security officer, the DPO, the operations lead. They get a notification, open the question, see James's draft and its sources, and correct what needs correcting.
02
Only their own questions
Nobody has to read a 60-page document to find their four questions.
03
Comments on the exact paragraph
Leave a comment on the exact paragraph that needs work and name the colleague who should look at it. They are notified, open the bid at that paragraph, and the discussion stays next to the text it is about, not in an e-mail thread.
DASHBOARD
Your own dashboard: everything waiting for you
Every person on the bid has their own dashboard. It shows what is theirs to do, across all the bids they work on: the questions assigned to them, the sections waiting for their review, the sign-offs they owe, and the deadlines coming up. An SME who helps on three bids sees their eleven open questions in one place. A reviewer sees exactly what is ready for review, and nothing else.
01
Nothing to dig through
Nobody has to dig through folders or e-mails to find out what they owe, and the bid manager doesn't have to send the list round.
02
Personal, bid and pipeline views
Your personal dashboard is about your own work. Inside each bid, the bid manager sees every question and section with its owner and status, in table, timeline or kanban view. And across all bids, the head of bids follows the pipeline in dashboards, see Track and report.
CO-EDITING
One shared document, with James in the room
Everyone on the bid works in the same document: no versions e-mailed back and forth, no "final_v7".
Each person opens it, adds their part and sees what the others have done.
01
James edits like anyone else
James works inside the same document. Ask James to tighten a paragraph, and the change is there for everyone, like any other edit.
02
Only on your instruction
James does not act on its own. Every change James makes to a document must carry the user's own instruction, checked before the change. When you ask James only to review, it reviews and does not edit.
STATUSES
Review statuses that match your process
SEQUESTO adapts to each team's own bid process: custom stages, fields, document types and workflows, without code.
01
Steps your team actually uses
Review is part of that. Add a status field to your question or section type, with the steps your team actually uses, for example "Draft", "SME checked", "Bid manager reviewed", "Final".
02
Filter to see what waits
Filter any view by it to see what is still waiting.
03
No fixed review chain
There is no fixed review chain to fit into. Your statuses are your own, and they work in table, timeline and kanban views.
APPROVAL
Sign-off and approvals, in your order
Some answers can't go out until the right person has said yes: the price by Finance, the contract terms by Legal, the whole bid by the bid director.
01
Your own sign-off chain
Set up your sign-off chain in the order your team uses, for example SME, then bid manager, then bid director.
02
Who approved what, and when
Each person signs off in SEQUESTO, and the bid shows who approved what, and when.
NOTIFICATIONS
Your own rules for who hears what
Nobody should have to remember to tell someone else. Set your own rules, and SEQUESTO sends the notifications:
01
When a question is reviewed
When a reviewer marks a question as reviewed, its owner is notified.
02
Five days before a deadline
When a deadline is five days away, the person responsible gets a reminder.
03
An empty section near submission
When a section is still empty two days before submission, the bid manager hears about it.
04
Rules that follow your fields
You decide the rules, and they follow your statuses, fields and deadlines.
SAFE SHARING
Version history, permissions and safe sharing
Every document keeps its version history. If a late edit goes wrong, open an earlier version and restore it.
01
Permissions per file and folder
Permissions are set per file and folder, by team, and inherited from folders. Pricing can stay with commercial, while the technical team works on the method statement.
02
James's search respects them
James's search respects the same permissions.
03
Shared conversations stay safe
When you share a conversation with James, content the recipient may not read is hidden from them.
SECURITY REVIEW
Example: a 120-question security questionnaire across five experts
A Belgian bank sends a 120-question security and data protection questionnaire as part of a supplier onboarding. James extracts every question as an item and drafts first answers from your ISO 27001 statement of applicability, your security policy and last year's questionnaire.
01
Questions assigned by expert
The bid manager assigns 48 questions to the security officer, 22 to the DPO, 30 to IT operations, 12 to HR and 8 to legal. Each gets a notification.
02
Comment on the encryption paragraph
The DPO leaves a comment for the security officer on the paragraph about encryption keys. The security officer adds the detail to the answer.
03
Open items two days out
The bid manager filters the table view by status "SME checked" and sees 11 questions still open two days before the deadline.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Each extracted question or requirement is its own item, and you can assign it to a named person. They get a notification, see James's draft with its sources, and edit the answer directly. They can leave a comment for a colleague on the exact paragraph that needs input.
Yes. Every user has their own dashboard with what is theirs to do across all their bids: assigned questions, sections to review, sign-offs and upcoming deadlines.
Yes. Everyone on the bid works in the same shared document, so there are no copies to merge. James works inside it too, so an edit James makes on your instruction shows up like any other team member's.
No. You add a review status field with your own steps, such as "Draft", "SME checked" and "Final", and filter views by it. SEQUESTO adapts to each team's own bid process: custom stages, fields, document types and workflows, without code.
Yes. Set up your sign-off chain in the order your team uses, for example SME, then bid manager, then bid director. Each person signs off in SEQUESTO, and the bid shows who approved what, and when.
Yes. You set your own rules: notify the owner when a reviewer marks a question as reviewed, remind the person responsible when a deadline is five days away, alert the bid manager when a section is still empty close to submission.
Yes. Every document keeps a version history. You can open an earlier version and restore it, whether the change came from a colleague or from James. Every change James makes must carry the user's own instruction, which is checked before the change is applied.
Yes. Permissions are set per file and folder, by team, and are inherited from folders. James's search respects them. When a conversation with James is shared, content the recipient may not read is hidden from them.
No. When you ask James only to review, it does not edit. It reports gaps, unclear wording and requirements that are not covered back to you instead. Edits happen only when a user instructs them.