The work the bid team answers for
Tenders, RFPs and security questionnaires arrive as files with a deadline attached. Between bids, sales asks the same product questions in Teams and Slack. Most of them have been answered before, in a response someone wrote last year.
The bid or sales operations lead answers for what goes out. An answer copied from an old response can be out of date, or promise something nobody approved, and the buyer will hold you to it.
Example requests
Examples only. Requests reach Xalios by email, Teams, Slack, a file or a schedule.
What the assistant answers, and when it refuses
It answers from your documents in SharePoint, OneDrive or Google Drive, and only from the material your team has approved for bids.
Approved material only
It drafts from the material your team has approved, such as past responses signed off for reuse and current product and security documents. Anything outside that set stays out of the answer.
A source for every claim
Each claim in a draft links to the approved document it came from, so a reviewer checks it against the source.
Refused when nothing approved covers it
If no approved source answers the question, it refuses and says why. The gap shows up before the response goes out.
It follows your document permissions too. A pricing file restricted to the bid team stays out of answers to anyone outside it.
What the agent does
A bid agent holds a role in sales operations. It is set up from a plain-language job description and plain-English rules. The bid or sales operations lead is the named person responsible, and the agent can carry its own Microsoft Entra identity.
When a tender file arrives, it opens a case and drafts the answers it can back. It sends each refused question to the right subject expert, chases reviewers ahead of the deadline and tells the bid manager where the response stands.
The case holds every question, draft, citation and approval until a person submits the response.
How agents work →What it can see and change
An example set-up. Your administrator grants each connection and decides what it can read and write.
About 200 business apps →How autonomy moves at your volume
Autonomy is per task, so drafting standard security answers can move ahead while anything about pricing still waits for a person. Each task starts in the review queue, where a person approves, edits or declines every item. The steps and timings below are the defaults. Your organisation can set its own steps when it sets Xalios up.
Two mistakes in its last 20 and a task steps back a level. Approvals with edits count as neutral, and 5% of work is spot-checked. Question types that recur across bids, such as security and data protection, move fastest.
How autonomy works →What never runs alone
Your team marks the actions that are serious, and those never run alone at any level. For a bid team the list would start with submitting a response, committing to a price, terms or a delivery date, and adding a new answer to the approved set.
The last one matters most. Every future answer draws on the approved set, so a person decides what goes into it. Where an agent’s work would move money, it also runs under a spending cap that can’t be switched off.
Serious actions and the spending cap →Drafting answers from approved material, sending gaps to subject experts, chasing reviewers and updating the bid tracker.
Submitting a response, committing to price, terms or dates, and adding to the approved set. Each waits for a named person at every level.
On the record
One decision, traced end to end. When a buyer asks where an answer came from, the record shows the source, the check and who approved it. The history is tamper-evident.
How the record works →What the pilot measures
A paid 30-day pilot on one stream of work, such as security questionnaires, starting with every answer approved by a person. For a bid team it produces two numbers.
Answer reuse rate
How many questions in each response are answered from approved material. The rest are the gaps your subject experts fill.
Review time per response
Reviewer minutes per response, week by week, with every edit and approval on the record.
Start with one stream of RFP questions, with a person approving every answer.