In the rapidly evolving landscape of enterprise software and artificial intelligence, few leaders have demonstrated the remarkable ability to transform a vision into a market-leading reality quite like AJ Sunder. As the Chief Information Officer, Chief Product Officer, and Co-founder of Responsive (formerly RFPIO), AJ has positioned himself at the forefront of what industry experts are calling the next frontier of business automation: AI-powered Strategic Response Management.
The numbers tell a compelling story. In a market that Aragon Research predicts will explode from $3.34 billion in 2023 to $22.74 billion by 2028 with a staggering 35% compound annual growth rate, Responsive has emerged as the undisputed leader. The platform now manages over $750 billion in opportunities, serving more than 25 of the Fortune 100 companies, including technology giants like Microsoft, Adobe, LinkedIn, and Google.
But perhaps most impressive are the tangible results Responsive delivers to its enterprise clients. Microsoft alone has saved $17 million while reclaiming 21,000 hours through the platform, supporting 18,000 sellers across their global organization. Meanwhile, healthcare technology leader Netsmart has achieved a 10X acceleration in response time and submitted 67% more proposals, all while maintaining zero increase in team headcount.
Unique Blend of Technical Expertise
What makes AJ’s perspective particularly valuable is his unique blend of technical expertise and deep understanding of the proposal management pain points that plague enterprises worldwide. His journey began not in the boardroom, but in the trenches of RFP responses, where he experienced firsthand the inefficiencies and frustrations that would eventually inspire the creation of Responsive. With a background spanning software development, information security analysis, and product management across industries including telecommunications, healthcare, and aerospace, AJ brings a rare combination of technical depth and strategic vision to the Strategic Response Management space.
As we stand at an inflection point where 78% of proposal managers are prioritizing automation and 35% of organizations are either piloting or have fully deployed AI agents, AJ’s insights into “Response Intelligence” and the future of AI-driven proposal management have never been more relevant. His leadership has not only established Responsive as the industry’s first AI-enabled RFP software but has also defined an entirely new category of enterprise technology that is fundamentally changing how organizations approach knowledge management and customer engagement.
Aha Moments
Q1. AJ, thank you for joining us today. Let’s start with your personal journey – how did your experience across telecommunications, healthcare, and aerospace ultimately lead you to co-found Responsive? What was that “aha moment” when you realized there had to be a better way to handle RFP responses?
AJ: My career path has been anything but linear: software engineer, product manager, BI analyst, quality engineering. Each role gave me a different view of how organizations work and where inefficiencies creep in. I’ve always admired founders who could turn frustration into companies, and those varied experiences gave me the toolkit to do the same. The turning point came at my previous job, where I met my co-founders. We were constantly delivering last minute RFPs, repeating the same work, re-explaining the same answers, and reinventing knowledge that should have been institutionalized. The grind wasn’t just painful, it was absurd. That was the spark for Responsive: build a system that learns from every response, scales with the organization, and frees teams from endless reinvention.
Q2. Many of our readers might not be familiar with the term “Response Intelligence.” Can you walk us through what this concept means and why it represents such a fundamental shift from traditional proposal management approaches?
AJ: Response Intelligence started as a way to answer with compliant, accurate knowledge, but it’s grown into something bigger. So much company knowledge only surfaces when teams respond to customer or prospect questions. Those facts come straight from subject matter experts, and they rarely live anywhere else. By capturing and structuring that, Response Intelligence turns RFPs and questionnaires from a burden into one of the most reliable sources of truth inside an organization. It’s not just about faster turnaround, it’s about creating a trusted backbone of up to date facts the business can reuse and compete with.
Critical Business Responses
Q3. When you and your co-founders started Responsive in 2015, AI was still emerging. How did you have the foresight to build AI into the core of your platform from day one, and what challenges did you face convincing enterprises to trust AI with their critical business responses?
AJ: In 2015, AI wasn’t mainstream, but the signals were there. Natural language processing had matured enough to classify, recommend, and learn patterns from text. Response management is a language problem at scale, so from day one we designed the system assuming AI would be the backbone, not an add-on. The real challenge wasn’t the tech, it was trust. Enterprises worried about accuracy, compliance, and reputation. Convincing them meant proving the system was controlled, auditable, and never a black box. Governance and explainability became part of our DNA before they were industry buzzwords.
Transitioning to Strategic Insights
Q4. The statistics around Microsoft’s success with Responsive are remarkable – $17 million saved, 21,000 hours reclaimed, supporting 18,000 sellers. Can you break down the key factors that enabled such dramatic results? What specific AI capabilities made this level of impact possible?
AJ: What stood out with Microsoft is the sheer scale they deal with: tens of thousands of RFPs, questionnaires, and customer asks coming in nonstop. Sellers were spending far too much time digging for answers or chasing down SMEs. Once they put Responsive in place, all that trusted knowledge was centralized, AI surfaced the right content instantly, and governance kept every response accurate and compliant. Because it was embedded into their daily workflows, 18,000 sellers suddenly had hours back in their day. That’s how you get numbers like $17 million saved and 21,000 hours reclaimed. It wasn’t abstract efficiency, it was letting sellers focus on customers instead of paperwork.
Q5. Netsmart’s case study shows a 10X acceleration in response time. That’s not incremental improvement – that’s transformation. What underlying technology and process innovations enable such dramatic performance gains?
AJ: With Netsmart, the story was about breaking habits people thought were just part of the job. Their teams were spending days pulling together responses, chasing compliance details, and waiting on handoffs. Once Responsive went in, AI search surfaced answers immediately, compliance was baked in, and workflows kept things moving without bottlenecks. Because the interface required no training, adoption was instant. That’s how they hit a 10X acceleration. It wasn’t a silver bullet, it was rewiring the process so what used to take days now took hours.
SRM Market
Q6. The Strategic Response Management market is projected to grow from $3.34 billion to $22.74 billion by 2028. As someone who essentially created this category, what do you see as the primary drivers of this explosive growth?
AJ: The market growth comes from pressure on every side: buying cycles are shorter, security questionnaires are longer, compliance demands are stricter, and competition is fiercer. Organizations can’t afford to waste cycles reinventing responses. What used to be a cost center is now revenue-critical. Strategic Response Management fills that gap because it doesn’t just save time, it increases win rates and reduces risk.
Deep Analytical Focus
Q7. Your platform now manages over $750 billion in opportunities. From a data science perspective, what patterns and insights emerge when you analyze that volume of proposal and response data? How does this scale of data inform your AI model development?
AJ: At $750 billion in opportunities managed, the data becomes an advantage. Patterns emerge: how certain language correlates with higher win rates, where compliance gaps most often occur, how teams in different industries structure responses. That data informs how we design solutions and build intelligent systems, knowing not just what the answer is, but what answer is most likely to resonate. At scale, you stop seeing individual documents and start seeing the strategic DNA of how enterprises compete.
Q8. With 78% of proposal managers prioritizing automation, we’re clearly at a tipping point. However, many organizations still struggle with AI adoption. What are the key organizational and technical barriers you’ve observed, and how does Responsive address the human-AI collaboration challenge?
AJ: The barriers are less about technology than behavior and trust. Technically, most organizations struggle with fragmented content, poor knowledge hygiene, and legacy processes that resist automation. On the human side, people fear AI will misrepresent them or replace judgment. Our approach is to make AI a co-pilot, not an autopilot. Every recommendation is transparent, auditable, and editable. We don’t hide the seams, we expose them so users feel in control.
Deep Intelligence
Q9. You’ve recently introduced AI agents that “transcend automation with deep intelligence.” Can you explain the technical architecture behind these agents and how they differ from the current generation of AI tools in the market? What specific capabilities do they possess that make them truly autonomous?
AJ: Our AI agents are built on a layered architecture: retrieval augmented generation for grounding, workflow engines for orchestration, and governance layers for compliance. Unlike basic LLM chatbots, these agents don’t just generate text, they execute multi step processes with guardrails. For example, an agent can shred a 200 page RFP, create a compliance matrix, run a fit analysis, and draft an executive summary without user micromanagement. Autonomy comes from chaining together reasoning, retrieval, and action, not just producing fluent text.
Q10. Looking at the competitive landscape, 35% of organizations are deploying AI agents. How do you maintain technological leadership when the market is moving so rapidly? What’s your product development philosophy for staying ahead of both established competitors and emerging startups?
AJ: Staying ahead in a market moving this fast means two things: depth over breadth, and conviction in product bets. We don’t chase every shiny AI trend. We ask: what problem, if solved, creates an order of magnitude advantage for our customers? Then we go deep. Our philosophy is to build with extensibility, so when the market shifts we can adapt faster than competitors who bolted AI on as a feature. Leadership comes from anticipating not just where AI is, but where enterprises will need it in 18 to 24 months.
Strategic and Forward-Looking
Q11. From your product management perspective, how do you balance the need for sophisticated AI capabilities with user experience simplicity? Many enterprise AI tools struggle with this tension – how does Responsive solve for both power users and occasional users?
AJ: The tension between sophistication and simplicity is real. Our answer is layered design. Power users can dive into advanced workflows, analytics, and customization. Casual users get a clean interface where the system anticipates needs and hides complexity. The principle is zero training adoption: if someone has to read a manual, we failed, but I’ll acknowledge this is always a work in progress. At the same time, we don’t dump capabilities, we expose them progressively so the platform grows with the user.
Q12. The integration with Microsoft’s ecosystem appears to be particularly deep. How do you approach platform partnerships and ecosystem development? What role do strategic alliances play in your go-to-market strategy?
AJ: When we think about partnerships, the goal is simple: meet customers where they already work. With Microsoft, for example, we went deep into Teams, Office, Dynamics, and Azure so sellers didn’t have to jump between systems. The integration wasn’t about checking a box, it was about making the experience seamless. More broadly, we build pre built integrations across CRM, productivity, and collaboration tools, and we keep an open API so customers can extend what they need. Strategic alliances matter because they accelerate trust and adoption. Customers live in ecosystems, not silos, and the more naturally Responsive fits into those ecosystems, the more value they see. That’s why we put real energy into these partnerships.
Expectations Evolving Rapidly
Q13. As enterprises become more AI-literate, their expectations are evolving rapidly. How do you anticipate customer needs will change over the next 2-3 years, and how is Responsive preparing for these shifts?
AJ: As enterprises become more AI fluent, they won’t just ask “does it work?” They’ll ask “is it accurate, is it governed, is it adaptable to my workflows?” Expectations will shift from flashy demos to measurable business outcomes. We’re preparing by investing in explainability, in domain specific models, and in configurability that lets enterprises shape the AI to their voice, brand, and compliance requirements. Customers want less hype, more accountability.
Q14. From a technical architecture standpoint, how do you ensure your AI agents can handle the complexity and nuance of high-stakes enterprise responses while maintaining accuracy, compliance, and brand consistency?
AJ: Architecturally, accuracy and compliance aren’t afterthoughts, they’re enforced at every step. Retrieval keeps responses grounded in enterprise content. Governance policies filter and constrain outputs. Brand style guides train the system to speak in the customer’s voice. Audit trails ensure traceability. It’s a closed loop where autonomy never means loss of control. The result: even high stakes responses stay aligned with enterprise standards.
Lead Through Changes
Q15. Finally, as we look toward 2025 and beyond, what emerging technologies or trends do you believe will most significantly impact the Strategic Response Management space? How is Responsive positioning itself to lead through these changes?
AJ: The next wave will be about agentic systems, domain specific language models, and AI native workflows. Generic chatbots will fade; customers will expect specialized agents that understand their business context deeply. Regulatory frameworks like ISO 42001 will reshape how AI is governed. And integration between proposal management, CLM, CPQ, and CRM will create an end to end intelligent revenue stack. Responsive is positioning to lead by building agent first, governance anchored, ecosystem integrated solutions that don’t just keep up with the future, they shape it.
Closing Summary
As our conversation with AJ Sunder draws to a close, it becomes clear that we’re witnessing more than just technological evolution—we’re observing the birth of an entirely new paradigm in how enterprises manage knowledge, engage customers, and drive profitable growth.
The statistics we’ve discussed today aren’t just impressive numbers; they represent thousands of professionals who can now focus on strategic thinking instead of manual drudgery, countless hours redirected from administrative tasks to customer relationship building, and millions of dollars in operational savings reinvested into innovation and growth. When Microsoft saves $17 million while empowering 18,000 sellers, or when Netsmart achieves a 10X improvement in response time, these aren’t isolated success stories—they’re harbingers of a fundamental shift in enterprise operations.
AJ’s vision of Response Intelligence extends far beyond simple automation. It represents a sophisticated understanding that in our hypercompetitive business environment, the ability to rapidly synthesize organizational knowledge, craft compelling responses, and maintain consistent quality at scale isn’t just a competitive advantage—it’s a business imperative. The AI agents he and his team have developed don’t merely replace human effort; they amplify human intelligence, enabling professionals to operate at levels of speed and accuracy that were previously impossible.
Unprecedented Opportunities
Perhaps most significantly, AJ’s insights reveal how the convergence of artificial intelligence, enterprise knowledge management, and customer experience is creating unprecedented opportunities for organizations willing to embrace change. As 78% of proposal managers prioritize automation and 35% of organizations deploy AI agents, the early adopters aren’t just gaining efficiency—they’re fundamentally restructuring their relationships with customers and prospects.
The Strategic Response Management market’s projected growth from $3.34 billion to $22.74 billion by 2028 reflects more than market opportunity; it signals a recognition that how organizations communicate, respond, and engage in our digital-first economy will determine their success or failure. AJ and Responsive haven’t just built a successful company—they’ve created the infrastructure for the next generation of enterprise communication.
For customer experience professionals, technology leaders, and business executives, AJ’s perspective offers a roadmap for navigating the AI transformation. The future he envisions isn’t one where artificial intelligence replaces human insight, but where it elevates human capability, enabling organizations to be more responsive, more intelligent, and more customer-centric than ever before.
Inflection Point
As we stand at this inflection point, with AI agents becoming mainstream and Response Intelligence emerging as a critical business capability, AJ Sunder’s leadership at Responsive provides both inspiration and practical guidance for the transformation ahead. The revolution in Strategic Response Management is just beginning, and the organizations that embrace it will define the future of business communication.
Thank you, AJ, for sharing your insights and for your continued leadership in transforming how enterprises engage with their most valuable opportunities. We look forward to following Responsive’s continued innovation and the broader Response Intelligence revolution you’ve helped create.
This interview was conducted exclusively for CXQuest.com, your premier destination for customer experience insights, technology innovation, and strategic business intelligence. For more exclusive content and expert interviews, visit CXQuest.com.
