Overview
As you complete tender documents, Q&As (Questions & Answers) will flow into your Knowledge Base, so your content will grow and improve over time.
When you get started however, your Knowledge Base will be empty, which means Answertree won't be able to suggest answers to questions or generate new answers for you. Consequently, we recommend 'seeding' your Knowledge Base with content when you start out.
Types of Content
Content can take different forms:
Q&As (Question and Answers): These are the most important type of content. The aim over time is to build up the smallest set of the best possible Q&As that answer the majority of the questions you are asked in your bid process (and beyond). You can import Q&As in various formats described below
Word and PDF documents: These might be previously completed bids, marketing materials or technical documentation. If Answertree can't find a Q&A that answers a given question, then it will compose content by looking at any Word or PDF documents that have been imported to the Knowledge Base. These 'generated' answers in turn will become future Q&As once they've been tweaked and reviewed, so there's always a natural progression towards your best content being made available as well-formatted Q&As
⭐️ The reason Answertree prioritizes answering questions by matching Q&As rather than generating new content, is that whilst using AI to generate content is impressive and a huge time-saver, you still may want to tweak / amend and review content generated in this way. Once that's done, it makes sense to save that answer and use it again next time rather than repeating the process over and over.
🔄 As you answer bid documents, your Q&As will be reviewed, refined and added to through normal system use so there's no need for labour intensive administration of your Knowledge Base.
Importing Content
Answertree offers a number of options to import content. Click 'Add Content' in the Knowledge Base screen to get started:
New Q&A: Input a single Question and Answer
Import Documents: Use this approach when you want to import Word or PDF files to use as information Answertree can draw from when generating new answers. This could be previous tender documents (RFPs, RFIs, Security questionnaires etc) or technical and marketing documentation
Import Q&As: If you have a list of Q&As in a table or other structured document, you can bulk import them using this method. We offer a useful template to help here
Import Knowledge Base: If you're currently using a competitor product, we can help you import all of your content in one go. Message us and we'll help get you started
Organizing Content
Content can be separated into 'Libraries'. This can be especially useful if you sell multiple products or services and need to complete bid documents referencing one (or more) products/services at a time. When you answer a new tender document, you'll be given a choice of which libraries to use. For more information, see Libraries Support.
What Content Should I Import to Get Started?
This will depend on your company:
If you're using a competitor product now, then we recommend importing your library of answers directly from that solution. Just Message Us and we'll get you started
If you don't currently have that option and you want to get started as quickly as possible, then we recommend importing the last 3 or 4 completed tender documents into the system as Word or PDF files using the Import Documents option. You'll be up and running in a few minutes, and your Q&As will build up naturally for you over time
If you have time to spare (now or later), you can curate a list of Q&As using this template and selecting Import Q&As. We recommend copying and pasting from the last few tender documents you've completed to create a set of data, and then importing it. It doesn't have to be perfect, as they'll improve automatically as you use the system. While this method will take a little longer than importing the documents directly, you'll already be well on your way to having a fully populated Knowledge Base of Q&As, which will save you time later
You can of course use a combination of these approaches, or start with one add more later.
😕 What if my previous tender responses are in Excel format?
At the moment, we don't support importing Excel documents directly into the Knowledge Base (although we're working on it!). If your previous responses are in Excel format, then you can import them directly as Q&As. See Importing Q&As for detail.