Bids
A buyer sends a tender or a questionnaire with a deadline. Keep the bid, split out the questions, draft each answer from your own evidence, review it against the limit and record who submitted it and how it ended.
Getting started
These are the steps in the order somebody would do them. The same list is in the tool: press F1, or the control reading "How this works" at the top of the window.
1. Press New bid when the request arrives
Who is buying, the deadline as the buyer wrote it and in which zone, and what it is worth. The deadline is shown in your own time with the buyer's beside it, because that is how tenders are missed.
2. Decide go or no-go, and say why
The reasons stay on the bid. A no-go is a decision worth keeping: the next request from the same buyer starts from it.
3. Bring in the buyer's questions
Paste them or read the buyer's spreadsheet. Numbered lines become questions, headings become sections, and a limit written into a question is kept beside it.
4. Draft from evidence, then review
Take Document AI's drafts, or an approved answer from the library, or type. Every answer has an owner, a due day and a named reviewer, and an answer over the buyer's limit is never approved and never cut.
5. Assemble, send, and record how it ended
The response is assembled on your letterhead in the buyer's order and kept as a version. You send it through the buyer's own channel; this tool records who sent it, when and how, and nothing else.
The screens, and what to do first on each
Each of these opens with nothing on it on a new install. What the tool says on that screen is what this section says, because it is the same sentence.
No bids are recorded yet
A bid is a tender, a proposal request or a questionnaire: the buyer, the deadline as they wrote it and in which zone, and what it is worth. The buyer's questions are kept on it.
First thing to do: Record the first bid when a request arrives.
No questions to show yet
Each question is kept in the buyer's order with its section and the limit the buyer set, and an answer is drafted against it.
First thing to do: Paste the buyer's questions, or read their spreadsheet.
No approved answers are kept yet
Each answer kept here carries the questions it has answered, who verified it and the day it must be checked again.
First thing to do: Write the first answer here, or keep one approved on a bid.
What this tool does, and what it will not do
It keeps your bids and answers. It drafts nothing itself: drafts come from Document AI, evidence from Policies and Training, and it sends nothing to any buyer.
First thing to do: Read the columns a spreadsheet of questions takes, under the paste rules.
If you get stuck
Write to support@keywaysuite.com. We answer within one business day. Keyway can send us what it knows about your installation: open the hub, go to About and press Get support. It writes one file wherever you choose and never includes your licence, a password, a customer name or a customer address.