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I was on Reddit yesterday and came across this question about RFP response times. A construction company was drowning in manual bid processes and couldn't respond fast enough. Here's what they asked:

"I have a client (construction company in Florida) that wants to automate some of their manual processes related to getting contracts from sam.gov. They say they need to complete the bid forms. Those forms are in PDF format, but it seems that all of them were initially created as Word documents and then converted to PDF.

So my question is:

Their typical workflow looks like this:

As a result of this inefficiency, they can do just a couple of bids per day. They want to do dozens."

These questions always catch my attention because most people are thinking about the problem completely backwards.

When someone mentions "automation," they're usually thinking of Zapier workflows or perhaps something more advanced. However, that misses the point entirely.

Here's the thing: traditional automation means "do this repetitive task faster."

What he needed was to completely rethink how to solve his client's RFP response problem.

Big difference.

Instead of asking "How do I automate this?" start asking:

That's where the transformation happens.

It's the difference between speeding up tasks versus redesigning how work gets done. Instead of making existing broken processes faster, you create entirely new workflows that eliminate bottlenecks. You're not just accelerating bad processes—you're building better systems from scratch.

This construction company's real problem? They can't respond fast enough.

Here's what I saw in their question:

They're completely buried in manual work. Spending hours on 70-150 page forms. Getting through maybe 2 bids a day when they desperately need to handle dozens.

The word that jumped out at me? "Automation."

Wrong focus entirely.

This isn't about streamlining tasks. It's about redesigning their entire approach.

Here's what I told them:

"You need to build a capture solution with two parts:

Stop thinking about tools. Start thinking about digital employees. Focus on business outcomes, not technology."

My approach was simple:

Start with what they actually wanted: 2 bids per day → dozens per day.

Then break it into two separate jobs:

Digital Employee #1: The Opportunity Hunter

This employee constantly monitors SAM.gov, scanning through those 75,000+ records and scoring opportunities based on your criteria. It knows your service areas and wherever else you want to bid and builds a qualified pipeline of prospects worth pursuing. Every morning, you receive a summary of the best opportunities.

Digital Employee #2: The Form Processor

This one tackles the nightmare part: those brutal 70-to-150-page PDFs that consume entire days. It handles repetitive information entry, manages compliance requirements, and tracks every deadline to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. What used to take hours now happens in minutes.

Here's the key: Think in terms of workflows and outcomes, not just tools.

When you shift from "How do I automate this task?" to "What digital employee owns this entire process?" everything changes.

I've run multiple workshops on this specific approach, and I've personally built and tested these solutions.

Take SAM.gov data - there are 75,000 to 85,000 records at any given time. Most people spend an hour just searching and still miss opportunities because they can't process that volume effectively.

I built my own digital employee for this exact process. It analyzes, scores, and filters all 75-85k records in minutes, not hours. Then it applies scoring logic and filtering criteria to surface the best opportunities.

What used to take days or even a week - going through records, doing analysis and assessment, organizing results into Excel files - now happens in minutes. And that's before you even start reviewing the actual opportunity documents.

In my workshops and personal experiments, the time savings are dramatic:

Then you add a human review layer - which I highly recommend. Just as any employee's work is sent to their manager for final approval, your digital employees' output receives human oversight before action.

This creates the perfect system: Digital employees handle the heavy data processing and initial analysis, then humans make the strategic decisions on which opportunities to pursue.

The bottleneck is no longer human capacity. You've shifted from being limited by how fast people can manually process information to being limited only by decision-making and execution capacity.

The construction company transitioned from spending 80% of its time on data gathering and form-filling to allocating 80% of its time to strategy, relationship building, and winning bids.

That's the transformation, not just faster processes, but different work. Your people stop being data processors and become strategists.

Yes, this requires rethinking how you operate. However, the payoff—going from two to dozens of bids—makes the shift worthwhile.

I actually built a GPT that walks you through this exact process. It utilizes my THINK Framework to help you design digital employees tailored to your specific business needs and bottlenecks.

Try asking it: 'Help me create a digital Employee to speed Response Times so I can go from 2 bids per day to 10 to 12 per day. THINK Hard'

You can access the GPT here.

I'm also moving all my THINK and Strategic AI resources into a new Skool community.

I'm still building it out, but I'd love to have you join and help shape its direction.

You can join the Skool community here.

So what's your next move with your own speed problem?

First, figure out where you're stuck at "2" when you need "dozens."

Then design digital employees for each piece. Think in terms of complete workflows, not individual tools.

The construction company's issue wasn't really about technology at all. It was pure speed.

Human capacity capped them at 2 bids daily. They needed dozens.

Fewer bids means fewer shots at revenue. Simple math.

When you're limited by human speed, you'll always hit that wall.

But when you build digital employees to handle entire processes? The wall disappears.

You know you need to go faster. That's not the question.

The real question: What digital employees will eliminate your RFP response bottlenecks?

This shift from automation to digital employees isn't just about speed - it's about changing how work gets done.

Instead of being limited by hiring capacity, you design systems that scale on demand.

Instead of managing tasks, you manage outcomes.

The construction company's transformation from 2 to 12+ daily bids isn't just a productivity goal. It's proof that when you stop thinking about tools and start thinking about employees, you unlock opportunity you never knew existed.

The broader insight?

Every manual bottleneck in your RFP response process can become a digital employee opportunity.

Every "we don't have time" RFP problem becomes a design challenge.

In my next article, I'll provide a walk-through on how to build one of these digital employees.

Marvin