Automating 100-Page RFP Decks for a Global Manufacturer

A global manufacturer’s marketing team was losing weeks to a task no one should do by hand: assembling 100-page bespoke RFP decks.

Every proposal meant manually building a slide deck of more than 100 pages, pulling data from across the business and formatting it piece by piece. I built a custom n8n workflow that connects to the company’s database, pulls the required data, and formats roughly 90% of each deck straight into Google Slides on demand. Manual data entry dropped 90%, and the team got back hundreds of hours a month.

The challenge

The marketing department was effectively paralyzed by the mechanics of proposal production.

• Each RFP deck ran past 100 pages and took weeks of manual assembly.
• That work pulled the team off lead generation, the activity that actually grows pipeline.
• The underlying data was scattered, so every deck meant hunting down and reformatting the same information from scratch.

The cost was not just hours. It was opportunity. A team buried in formatting could not invest in the demand generation that would have brought in the next round of business.

The approach

I focused on separating the mechanical 90% of the work from the bespoke 10% that genuinely needed a human, then automated the former end to end.

I: Implementation Planning

I mapped the anatomy of a deck: which sections were boilerplate, which pulled live from the database, and which required real judgment. That told me the roughly 90% that could be generated automatically, the data sources the workflow needed to connect to, and where a person still had to make the call.

M: Migration & Execution

I built a custom n8n workflow that connects directly to the company’s database, automatically pulls the required data, and formats it into Google Slides decks instantly. The team’s effort collapsed to reviewing and finishing the final bespoke portion rather than assembling 100 pages by hand.

The results

90% less manual data entry. The workflow assembled and formatted roughly 90% of each deck automatically, removing the bulk of the manual effort.

Hundreds of hours back each month. Time that had gone into formatting slides returned to the marketing team.

Refocused on demand generation. Freed from proposal assembly, the team put its hours back into lead generation and nurturing, the work that actually drives pipeline.

Why this matters

The most expensive work in many marketing teams is not thinking. It is assembly: the repetitive, high-volume formatting that quietly consumes weeks. That work feels mandatory, so no one questions it.

Automate the 90% that is mechanical and you give the team back its judgment hours. The deck still ships, the quality holds, and the people who were formatting slides are suddenly free to do the work that grows the business.