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Brand storytelling in RFP responses

Brand storytelling in RFP responses

Templates & guides

What do Dr. Suess, Toni Morrison, and winning RFP responses have in common? They all tell their stories in surprisingly […]

Category: Author: Wendy Gittleson

Wendy has more than 10 years experience as a B2B and B2C copywriter. She developed a passion for writing about tech from living in the San Francisco Bay Area and working for a technology school. From there, she transitioned to writing about everything from SaaS to hardware and cloud migration. She is excited to be part of the wonderful team at Responsive and looks forward to playing her part in building the future. Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn.
Brand storytelling in RFP responses

Brand storytelling in RFP responses

Templates & guides

What do Dr. Suess, Toni Morrison, and winning RFP responses have in common? They all tell their stories in surprisingly similar ways. A great story follows an arc. It draws the reader in, moves the story forward in an emotionally engaging way, and provides a satisfying conclusion.

You might think that comparing RFP responses to great works of fiction is going a little too far, especially because a quality RFP response is proofed and fact-checked to ensure complete accuracy. But fiction, nonfiction, or business proposal, it doesn’t matter.

Why using brand storytelling delivers a better RFP response

A study by neuroscientist and tech entrepreneur Paul J. Zak, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, found that regardless of the medium, storytelling that captures emotions signals oxytocin—the love hormone—in the brain.

But wait, you aren’t trying to make people fall in love with your company, are you? In a sense, yes. Odds are that your company is one of many that can meet a prospect’s needs. So, how do you make your proposal stand out? How do you make a customer want to do business with you?

You differentiate yourselves by appealing to the readers’ emotions in the hope that you’ll awash their brains in the love hormone. It’s important to note that oxytocin also signals trustworthiness and motivates cooperation, which are both critical factors in closing business deals of all sorts.

“I advise business people to begin every presentation with a compelling, human-scale story. Why should customers or a person on the street care about the project you are proposing? How does it change the world or improve lives? How will people feel when it is complete? These are the components that make information persuasive and memorable.” Paul Zak

Examples of companies that use storytelling to connect with their customers

Nearly every B2C ad you read or see attempts to emotionally connect with you. Apple wants to “share the joy.” Subaru wants to “share the love,” and Patagonia will help you help save the environment.

But what about B2B examples? How can a business document make a reader “fall in love,” or at least emotionally connect with your company? Straddling that line between professional and oxytocin-producing content takes some skill, but these two companies get it right:

Salesforce

Salesforce is the top customer relationship management platform in the world. Tracking customers through sales cycles might not exactly trigger love, so Salesforce took another approach. Their story is as much about their customers’ stories as their own.

KPN is a Dutch telecom company. While their customer success story includes the pain points/solutions specifics you’d expect to find, their customer quotes use emotional trigger words like “happier” and “excited.”

You’ll find emotionally engaging words peppered throughout their customer success stories. Salesforce helped T-Mobile’s customers feel “crazy about its service” and gave American Water “peace of mind.”

You get the idea. You don’t have to pivot away from your main selling points to insert some emotion. If you feel your story could be more engaging, tell your customers’ stories as part of yours.

Amplifi

Is there anything that evokes a sense of warmth and comfort more than the yeasty, buttery smell of freshly baked bread? What about a freshly baked data strategy? Are you hungry yet?

In one blog post, Amplify, a data management company, does a brilliant job of connecting these two disparate subjects to tell a story about creating and following roadmaps, just as you should follow every step of a recipe when baking bread.

In another, the author compares data management to alchemy and even TNT. In short, if data is well-managed, it can turn into metaphorical gold, and if not…boom!

While Amplifi doesn’t rely on emotional statements like “happier” or “excited,” they use clever metaphors to take readers on an emotional journey through the world of data management.

Best practices and examples for writing competitive RFP responses

We probably don’t need to mention that RFP response storytelling is not about making up characters and plotlines. Your job is to use the company’s story to sell a product or service. Write for your audience, not award committees or even yourself.

The academic journal Psychology and Marketing published a study called “Brand narratives: Content and consequences among heritage brands.” The study authors interviewed brand managers, analyzed heritage brand websites, and tested their findings with consumers to pinpoint what customers wanted to see from a seller’s story.

While it is true that their study focused on B2C organizations, it’s always good to remember that human beings spearhead every step in a B2B purchasing cycle.

So, what resonated with consumers?

  • Founding date – Interestingly, it didn’t seem as though a long history was important, but consumers still wanted to see how long a company has been in business. Most RFPs ask for the founding date.
  • Your unique approach or method – How are you different from your competitors? How does your product or service relate to your company’s core values?
  • Linking the past to the present – Even if yours is not a heritage brand, link your vision or product to the past. For example, if your product uses a modern solution, such as artificial intelligence, give a brief history lesson of the challenge before your company addressed it using AI.

The study also examined common storytelling elements that don’t resonate, such as:

  • The founder’s story – The buyer wants to go into business with your company, not its founders.
  • Your business’s struggles – Readers like success stories. They don’t want to know that your company almost folded in its first year, even if it rose like a phoenix. They definitely don’t want to know about your cultural or product-related struggles.
  • Where you were founded – Today’s business world is nearly borderless. Your California location, for example, will mean very little to a company in Europe.

Now that we have the very basic dos and don’ts, it’s time to further break down response stories.

1. Tell your why

As every middle school journalism teacher will tell you, there are six elements to a good story: who, what, where, when, why, and how. It’s the same with RFP response.

“Who,” as we mentioned above, is about your company, not your founder (with an exception we’ll talk about in a moment).

“What” is the product or service. “Where” is less about your location than the product or service (e.g., Where will onboarding take place? Where are your products manufactured?). “When” should outline deliverable dates. “How” is pretty self-explanatory, but what about “why?”

“Why” is an opportunity to genuinely resonate with your audience. Perhaps your company began because your founders were once in the customer’s shoes, or they saw a need that they were in a position to fill.

It might be tempting to include “why” when responding to a question about your company’s founding date or one that asks about product specs, but you’ll run the risk of annoying your customers by using valuable space for what they might see as superfluous information in those contexts. Also, you might have character and space limits.

Unless the RFP offers organic opportunities to present your “why,” save it for the cover letter.

RFP response example:

If, for example, a company wanted to improve efficiency. Here at RFPIO, we might say something like:

“We understand your desire to improve efficiencies in your organization. We founded RFPIO for that very reason. Our platform helps you take back time to spend with your customers, family, and of course, on yourself.”

2. Show you’re human

Individuals and company decision-makers all want to feel good about their buying decisions. Highlight the good that your company does.

RFP response example:

At RFPIO, we’re proud of our workplace ideals and culture. But simply patting ourselves on the back might seem inauthentic. We let our employees speak for themselves. In our RFP responses, we often include something like:

“RFPIO is committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment. Our employees voted this year, and we were honored as a Comparably Award winner for Best Outlook, Best CEO for diversity, and Best Leadership team.”

3. Share a testimonial

Who better to speak for your company’s quality and customer service than your customers?

RFP response example:

We might, for example, use the words of Brian Z. of LinkedIn:

“Hundreds of hours saved in responding to questionnaires and RFPs. RFPIO offers very competitive cost savings over most of the larger RFP software providers. The same functionality at a fraction of the cost of the big guys. Customer support is top-notch — all questions or requests for help are addressed within the same day (or within 24 hours at most). Great, direct support from the management team — no call centers, no outsourced product support. You get assistance from people who helped build the product.”

4. Customize answers with specific deliverables

When an RFP asks about deliverables, the customer wants more than just a timeline. They want to know that you understand their needs. If you sell a product, how long will it take for the customer to receive it? If you sell a service, what is the onboarding process? Sure, it’s easy to answer these questions with dates or predicted time from purchase, but remember, you’re telling a story.

RFP response example:

Let’s pivot from RFPIO for a moment. Perhaps your company offers SEO services. Rather than simply listing timelines, say something like:

“At ____ SEO Consultants, we value partnership with our clients. First, we’ll meet with your content strategists to help devise a plan to leverage your strengths and highlight your values. On average, we will deliver a detailed SEO strategy within X months.

By month X, we will begin weekly strategy meetings with content writers and key stakeholders. Implementation will be ongoing but expect your first results within X months.”

5. Be succinct and real

Most products or services are relatively dry. If you’re in tech, things can get rather *um* technical. If you sell a product, you might have to explain its manufacturing or logistics.

Odds are, the procurement person looking at your proposal has high-level knowledge of what they are seeking, but their eyes might start getting bleary if you go into too much detail, especially technical detail. Avoid jargon as much as possible.

RFP response example:

If, for example, the RFP asks about your approach to project management. Rather than describing your methodology or Gantt chart, say something like:

“Our project management team is agile. We tailor our proven process to each client’s unique needs with the main steps remaining consistent: build, test, and deploy to deliver value.”

6. Make life easier for the issuer

Reviewing a (long) proposal is a tedious enough process, don’t also make the issuer do extra work digging to find answers. Rather than directing them to an attachment or a URL to find the answer they’re looking for, answer their question within the proposal itself. In addition, you can always provide an attachment to expand on your answer or offer supporting evidence for it.

RFP response example:

“We practice secure application design and coding principles. Engineers are required to undergo security training for security awareness and secure coding.

We use third-party services to perform vulnerability/application security scans annually.

The most recent penetration report is attached to this package: .”

7. Elaborate when appropriate

You don’t want to be too wordy or provide unnecessary information, but there are instances where a bit of elaboration is valuable. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to determine what the customer needs. Rather than just providing the most direct answer to the question, try to understand what the buyer is actually trying to learn. If a more detailed response fits better, go for it.

RFP response example:

The customer may want to know how you communicate new features to clients. Sure, you could respond with something like, “Upcoming platform enhancements are communicated to customers via email. You can also access them from the Help Center.”

Yes, that answer is succinct, but does it set you apart from your competitors? Maybe they asked that question because their current vendor doesn’t listen to suggestions or communicate new features. Instead, try something like:

“Our roadmap is heavily influenced by our customers through a feedback/enhancement request feature within the application. Customers can interact with one another’s requests, as well as with the development team. Their comments, voting, and status reports all influence future enhancements.

We then communicate enhancements to our customers via email release announcements. This email will have the major highlights from the release, a document outlining all the release details, and a link to the release details that can be accessed 24/7 in the Help Center.”

8. Say no with style

No one likes to pass up a business opportunity, but there are times when your company won’t be the right fit, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Rather than responding to an RFP and misleading the customer into believing that yours is the right solution, tell them “no” but do it the right way.

A well-composed “no” response might help open doors to future opportunities with the issuer.

RFP response example:

Imagine the customer is looking for a specific integration you don’t currently offer. Instead of a simple “No, we do not integrate with that tool,” say something like:

“Currently, the solution does not integrate with XYZ tool. However, a potential integration is on our 6-12 month product roadmap. We would love the opportunity to partner with you in identifying the best path forward to build an XYZ tool integration.”

More RFP examples and response resources

While we’re on the subject of storytelling, part of RFPIO’s story is that we also respond to RFPs, so we have several experts within our ranks who are always willing to offer sage advice.

RFPIO’s website and blog have multiple resources to help you craft a bid-winning story, such as:

Sample RFP response cover letter

A great cover letter is short and sweet but also informative. Click here for tips and tricks for writing the perfect cover letter. Kelly Barnard, RFPIO’s Response Management Strategist, even included her go-to example.

Winning RFP response examples using storytelling

Are you hungry for more storytelling examples? Click here.

Free RFP response template

Hubspot has a fantastic RFP response template. Click here.

Modernize your RFP response process and complete more winning bids with artificial intelligence

None of these best practices are worth much if you can’t complete each potentially winnable RFP or find time to customize them when you do. To get to the point where you can actively put this advice into practice, you need RFP software that takes care of the more tedious and time-consuming parts of the process.

RFPIO’s advanced response technology includes features that help you create better, faster, more winning responses:

  • Business intelligence – RFPIO’s advanced analytics and reporting capabilities let you use data to drive your business decisions.
  • Content Library – RFPs aren’t known for their originality. You’ve probably answered most questions before. RFPIO’s AI-enabled recommendation engine finds the best preapproved content, leaving you the option to accept, edit, or reject its suggestions.
  • Import and export – Whether an RFP comes as a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or through your CRM, you can import it directly onto RFPIO’s platform.
  • Standard and customized templates – RFPIO lets you create proposals using your favorite templates or one of ours.
  • Customization – As they say, every picture tells a story. Add tables, images, and rich text to visually narrate your response.
  • Integrations – RFPIO integrates with the most popular productivity and sales enablement tools.

Related: Create proactive proposals at scale with proposal automation software

Create rich narratives that will help you win more business, spend more time in front of customers, and live your life. With RFPIO, you can make that happen. See how with a free demo.

Understanding the RFP response process

Understanding the RFP response process

Selling & Enablement

If your company is like most, you responded to a lot more RFPs last year than you did the year before. You’ll likely respond to even more in the upcoming months and years.

Leadership is beginning to understand the importance of dedicated response professionals. Still, they’re a bit more reluctant to invest in the processes needed for efficiency, faster response times, better morale, and higher win rates.

To be fair, not all RFP response processes call for automation or even computers, but unless you’re a one-person show–and even if you are—creating quality, on time responses requires a repeatable process. Here is what that looks like for us and perhaps for you.

The basics of the RFP response process

When a company or organization wants to make a major purchase or launch a project, they usually issue a detailed document–a request for proposal (RFP)—describing their needs to several potential vendors. A typical RFP will outline the following:

  • Their budget for the project or product
  • The project’s goals
  • Common deal-breakers, such as:
    • Unsatisfactory audit findings
    • Insufficient security protocols
    • Poorly-defined procedures and policies
    • Improperly vetted subcontractors
    • Customer support concerns
    • Inability to meet the buyer’s budget or timeline
    • Not enough customer references
    • No out-of-the-box functionality
  • The most important factors
  • The RFP’s due date

The prospect may also include separate documents such as a security questionnaire, which asks about your and third-party vendors’ security protocols, or due diligence questionnaire, which asks about your company rather than your product.

The best way to produce a winning bid is to have a process in place. Do you have project management software? Who is your project manager? Do you have a list of subject matter experts (SMEs) and their schedules? What about other stakeholders, such as writers and editors?

RFPs are more alike than they are different. Around 80 percent of an RFP’s questions are relatively standard. For example, it’s common for an RFP to ask about company history, hiring practices, and the onboarding process. Why not have those answers ready to go or at least prepared for a quick proofread?

Creating a repeatable process establishes:

  • Whether the RFP is worth pursuing
  • Team participants
  • Timelines
  • Role definitions
  • SME engagement
  • Final evaluation

Why are RFPs issued?

Organizations issue RFPs when their needs are complex and want to efficiently access multiple vendors. Governmental organizations, many nonprofits, and large companies send RFPs for every purchase exceeding a certain threshold.

Steps in the RFP response process

Establishing an effective and efficient process is easier than you might think. RFPIO’s response managers have identified eight steps:

Step 1 – Go/no-go

As the number of RFPs you receive increases, so does the number of questions on each one. Instead of attempting to respond to each one, choose those that best align with your business and are winnable.

Step 2 – Have a kickoff party

Unfortunately, most kickoff parties don’t have cake, but they do define team and individual roles, responsibilities, and objectives.

Step 3 – 1st draft

Because roughly 80 percent of an RFP contains questions you’ve probably answered before—many times—let your automated system take a run at it first. Make sure the answers are correct and up-to-date.

Step 4 – 2nd draft

Consult with SMEs and other stakeholders to answer the remaining questions.

Step 5 – Review and revise

Were the questions answered accurately and completely? Were all the objectives met? Are there any misspelled words or typos? Are the responses otherwise well-written? Have you attached all relevant documents?

Step 6 – Submit

Once you’ve completed and polished the response, submit it (hopefully before it’s due). Confirm that it was received and let team members know.

Step 7 – Save and audit the responses

Every answer is potentially valuable for future RFPs. Save them in a central location that’s easily accessible to key stakeholders. Make sure you regularly audit the content in the centralized repository.

Step 8 – Postmortem

Win or lose, every response is a learning opportunity. What worked? What could have used improvement?

An example of a high-quality RFP process

A high-quality process is well-defined, efficient, and generates quality proposals for winnable RFPs. Once you’ve established a high-quality process, your team will begin to run like a well-oiled machine, you’ll increase the number of responses and hopefully win more bids.

Accruent, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, has recently acquired several companies with highly-technical products. RFPs began arriving faster than the response team could master the new technologies. Unsurprisingly, SMEs were stretched thin.

Accruent introduced RFPIO into their response process. Confident that their answers would be stored for future use in their Content Library, SMEs were much more likely to offer their expertise.

Soon, because more than 75 percent of answers came directly from the Content Library, the response team more than tripled its capacity.

RFP response process metrics

The go/no-go step is key to increasing your win rate, but knowing which RFPs to answer requires data. Tracking metrics should be part of your response process. Those metrics include the following:

  • Project types – How many RFPs did you answer compared to DDQs and other documents?
  • Types of wins – You should save your resources for winnable RFPs. What kinds of projects provide the highest win rates? Break types down by:
    • Vertical – Are there specific industries that are more apt to purchase your product or service?
    • Company size – Are your target customers enterprise-level or small and medium-sized businesses?
    • Product line – What is your win rate for that product?
    • Project type – Has your company successfully implemented this type of project in the past?
    • Project stage – How far do similar projects make it through the sales funnel?
    • Number of questions – Do you have the bandwidth for an RFP of that size?
    • Project value – Is it worth it for you?
  • Project scope – How much work does your current project require?
  • Completion time – How long does it take, on average, to complete a similar project? What is the shortest time on record, and what is the longest?
  • Average response rate – What percentage of incoming RFPs do you answer?
  • Resource needs – Comparing the content and moderation needs, who are the people who are best suited for the project?
  • Content needed – Read and understand the questions and determine how much content you have in your Content Library.

Once you have decided to go forward, metrics help keep you on track and tell you whether it’s worth continuing.

  • Determine workload – Break down the project into manageable deliverables which can be divided among your team.
  • Readability score – Write in a way that’s easy to understand, typically at no more than a 10th-grade level. Use tools like the Hemingway App or Flesch reading ease test to ensure readability.
  • The Probability of Win Score (PWIN) – You’ve already calculated your odds of winning based on past similar projects. Still, the PWIN examines the details of your current project for a more accurate prediction.
    • How do your answers compare to similar RFPs that you’ve won?
    • Have you answered each question?
    • Have you met all the conditions?
    • How many questions were you able to answer in the affirmative?
  • Identify content gaps – What is missing from your Content Library? What needs to be updated?
  • Determine your Content Library’s health – How many questions can you answer using the curated content in the Content Library? Aim for 40-80 percent.

For more information on response metrics, read here.

Best practices for a smarter RFP process

Turning your RFP process into an 800-horsepower revenue-generating engine takes coordination, a great pit crew (so to speak), and tools to turbocharge efficiency.

At RFPIO, we receive and respond to RFPs just like you. Below are the best practices our experts swear by.

Encourage collaboration

A Facebook poll by RFPIO found that effective collaboration was considered much more important than an efficient process. I would argue that neither is possible without the other.

Because RFPs are long, complex, and require potential input from every department, from finance to HR to IT (and more), collaboration is a critical part of an RFP response process. And because we have distributed and siloed workforces, intense competition for SMEs’ time, and tight deadlines, smart processes foster collaboration.

An RFP response system should leverage project management and communication tools to keep everyone on the same page. And because respecting your colleagues’ time is key to continued collaboration, it should also include a single source of truth knowledge management system to record answers for use on future projects.

Bring effective storytelling into your RFP responses

No one is suggesting that your RFP response should include the next great novel, but telling your organization’s story helps make your response memorable and builds trust among readers.

Your proposal’s story should include information about your company, such as why your founders created your solution, how it will meet the customer’s needs, and how you will handle their needs.

Your cover letter might highlight your company’s values and what it does to live up to them. It’s also a great idea to include testimonials from customers with similar needs.

Automate your response process

At least three-quarters of companies hope to boost their RFP response, but only around half of those companies consider increasing response staffing. That leaves one option, which is to automate their response processes.

Because most questions on an RFP are exact or near exact duplicates of former queries, you can save hours, days, or even weeks by leveraging machine learning to access those repeat question-and-answer pairs, giving you the time to address the questions that need your efforts.

Develop habits that support organizational success

Suppose you worked out or ate well today. Congratulations! Continue for a few weeks, and the next thing you know, you’ll have formed a habit that might lead to better health and longer life.

When you habitually maintain your list of SMEs and other stakeholders, as well as your Content Library’s health, those habits will pay off with faster responses, smoother collaboration, and improved morale.

Enable your sales team

Aside from your employees, a well-maintained single source of truth is your company’s greatest asset. It might contain incorporation papers, financial statements, sales reports, and product details. There’s no limit to the number of use cases.

We like to think of RFPIO as a sales enablement platform. Naturally, RFPs generate tremendous revenue. Still, a well-maintained Content Library supplies relevant, customer-facing information for sales teams with a few keystrokes. RFPIO’s proposal management features can help you create winning sales proposals complete with automation and reporting.

And because salespeople spend time on the road, RFPIO® LookUp provides access to your Content Library from anywhere you have browser access.

The role of RFP software

Chances are, your company uses CRMs and other sales enablement platforms. You probably also use communication apps and some sort of project management software. How does one make a case for more on top of what your CIO might call a bloated tech stack?

Advanced RFP software works with your tech stack, not on top of it. It should integrate with your productivity, communication, and sales enablement apps, but it should also add value on its own. Unlike a standard project management platform, RFP software is customized for proposal management.

RFP software is designed to let you respond to more requests and maximize your win rate. It may not be a specific part of your sales team, but like your top salespeople, its superpower is revenue generation.

Advanced RFP software should import and export from and to nearly every format and offer standard and customizable templates. Its knowledge and document library should provide relevant stored Q&A pairs as well as required documentation with a few keystrokes. In fact, its knowledge and document library should serve as a single source of truth for the entire organization.

The software’s reporting features should go far beyond response analytics and help facilitate informed business decisions. Additionally, because RFPs come in waves, software should be scalable and instantly respond to your changing requirements.

Choosing the right RFP software for your team

I could spend hours highlighting all the RFP software features you might need, but the fact is that even you don’t know what might arrive next week and especially next year. Your ideal RFP response solution is a bespoke answer to your evolving needs.

The software should work with your existing systems to maximize revenue and efficiency. It should be designed by response managers who know the ebbs and flows of response processes.

The most important feature, however, is the designers. Is the company receptive to your questions and poised to consider adding features as requested?

RFPIO’s approach to the response process

RFPIO offers an end-to-end approach to RFP response. Its features include:

  • Knowledge – Store your commonly-seen questions and answers and your critical documents in a single repository.
  • Collaboration – Communicate with other stakeholders inside the platform or with your current collaboration apps.
  • Projects – Break your projects down into manageable pieces, assign tasks, and keep track right inside the app.
  • Insights – How much time and other resources are you using? How many and what kind of deals do you win? What are your strengths and weaknesses? RFPIO has many standard and nearly unlimited customized reporting features.
  • Integrations – RFPIO integrations work seamlessly with more than two dozen of the most popular business applications.
  • Remote access – RFPIO® LookUp provides access to your Content Library through Google, Microsoft Office, and many other applications.
  • Loyal customers – RFPIO is the response platform for many of the world’s most successful companies, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Visa, Lyft, Zoom, and hundreds more. Read more about RFPIO from our customers.

Case study

While RFPIO is the RFP response solution for large companies, most enterprise organizations have dedicated response departments. Employees for smaller companies find themselves wearing many hats, which sometimes means putting RFPs on the back burner.

Complí, a small software company located in Portland, OR, often found themselves missing deadlines for lack of time and personnel. Just a week after investing in RFPIO, that changed. The company was able to respond to RFPs without holding time-consuming, in-office meetings. They were also able to complete up to 80 percent of each RFP with just one click, thanks to the Content Library.

Today, they are submitting RFPs on–time (and even early) and the entire company uses the Content Library as their single source of truth.

RFP response management process FAQs

It isn’t easy to gauge RFPIO’s true value without seeing it in action. We invite you to view a demo to see how RFPIO might benefit your organization. Before that, though, here are some of the most common questions we are asked:

  • What is an RFP? – A request for proposal (RFP) is a document designed to solicit multiple bids for large organizational purchases.
  • What type of information and questions are included in an RFP? – An RFP provides in-depth descriptions of the customer needs, deadlines, and so on. It might ask for company history and details, pricing, related past projects, and projected deliverables, and so on.
  • Why do organizations issue RFPs? – Organizations issue RFPs to gather pricing and service comparisons in their desired formats.
  • Who responds to RFPs? – Some organizations have dedicated response departments. Others might respond through their sales teams.
  • What does RFP software do? – The short version is that RFP software helps organizations win more business using fewer resources. The longer version is that it utilizes your existing applications and teams, along with customizable tools and a robust Content Library, to become a revenue-generating engine.
  • Does RFPIO do more than respond to RFPs? – As a response platform, RFPIO will automatically respond to up to 80 percent of a request for information (RFI), request for quote (RFQ), security questionnaire, due diligence questionnaire, and more. As a sales-enablement tool, its proposal management features and Content Library will help you drive revenue. And as a business application, its built-in and customizable analytics will provide the information needed for informed decision-making.
  • Does RFPIO integrate with existing applications? – RFPIO integrates with more than two dozen applications, including the most popular ones.
  • What if we need to add or subtract users? – RFPIO has a best-in-class pricing model. Instead of purchasing licenses, we provide unlimited access.
  • Is RFPIO secure? – RFPIO has industry-leading security protocols. We are trusted by the world’s leading technology, healthcare, and financial services companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Visa, Cigna, and far more.
RFPIO CPO/CIO talks about human-AI collaboration in new UX

RFPIO CPO/CIO talks about human-AI collaboration in new UX

Products/Features/Solutions

Less than a decade ago, B2B customers would likely approach potential vendors through one of five channels. I’ll give you a hint: their procurement departments weren’t one of them. The number of channels has doubled today, and procurement departments are increasingly tasked with initiating and negotiating purchases, usually through RFPs.

Around that same time, RFP response time was cut in half, from an average of 12 months to six. Additionally, increased regulations and security requirements make the purchasing and bidding processes far more complex.

Today’s business climate is all about doing a lot more with less, but leaving many of their largest potential deals on the table because a company doesn’t have the time or resources to create winning proposals isn’t a viable option.

The best solution is empowering existing teams with the necessary resources to drive more revenue.

I recently sat down with RFPIO Chief Product Officer, Chief Information Officer, and cofounder, AJ Sunder, to discuss how RFPIO’s new UX — introduced in the company’s latest launch — advances collaborative AI capabilities that will help add human-driven value to response departments without overburdening proposal professionals or SMEs.

Wendy: Good morning, Sunder. Please tell us a little about yourself and the vision behind RFPIO.

Sunder

Sunder: Before founding RFPIO with Ganesh Shankar (RFPIO CEO) and Sankar Lagudu (RFPIO COO), I worked in various roles in software development, including as developer, product manager, software test engineer, database admin, architect and information security analyst. I have spent the better part of my career in telecom, healthcare, aerospace and defense before SaaS.

While working together for a startup, Ganesh, Sankar and I had different experiences with RFPs due to our various roles. We found that the RFP management processes we encountered were often inefficient and time-consuming, leading us to create a better solution.

So when we decided to start our own company, we knew that response management was an area where we could make an immediate impact. We aimed to simplify the RFP process and make it more user-friendly, which led to the development of our patented import process, setting us apart from our competitors.

Initially, I focused on engineering and customer success when we started RFPIO. I currently manage product and engineering.

Wendy: Can you describe some of the reasons you decided to reimagine the UX?

Sunder:  We decided to launch a fresh and brand-new interface for our application because we recognized that UI and user experience standards are evolving faster than ever before. Our users are exposed to new and innovative applications every day through their mobile devices and the internet, which leads to rapidly changing expectations. We aimed to keep up with these evolving standards by embracing more recent technologies that provide better performance and greater flexibility.

However, our goal wasn’t to simply rewrite our application. We wanted to reimagine it from every angle, with a particular emphasis on integrating AI. Since the launch of RFPIO, AI has rapidly advanced, and we saw an opportunity to seamlessly incorporate it into the user experience. By doing so, we are able to improve the overall user experience while also making AI a natural part of it.

And finally, the new user interface has allowed us to bring a lot more capabilities, and time-saving features to the platform that would have been more challenging to fit into our classic interface.

Wendy: Can you tell us a bit about your philosophy on improving the user experience?

Sunder: Absolutely. At the heart of our philosophy on improving the user experience is a commitment to investing in both our internal research, expertise and customer feedback.

Internally, we dedicate significant resources to researching and developing new ways to make our application more intuitive, efficient and enjoyable for our users. We also placed great emphasis on soliciting feedback from our customers. This includes conducting user research, gathering feedback through surveys and customer support channels, and regularly engaging with our users. By listening closely to our customers, we were able to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.

Wendy: How much customer or user input went into the new UX?

Sunder

Sunder: At RFPIO, we strongly believe in building solutions in close partnership with our users. We recognize that our customers are experts in their own domains and have unique perspectives and insights that can help us build better solutions. That’s why we regularly gather feedback from our customers through various channels such as surveys, customer support interactions and user research.

For the new UX, we conducted extensive user research to understand our customers’ needs and pain points. We interviewed users, observed them in their natural environments, and analyzed their workflows to identify areas where we could improve the user experience.

While customer input is essential, it’s equally important that our product teams have the expertise and creativity to translate problem statements and pain points into elegant solutions. Our teams work hard to synthesize the feedback we receive, identify patterns and themes, and then design and build solutions that address those needs in intuitive and efficient ways.

Overall, the new UX is the result of a collaborative effort between our customers and our product teams. We’re confident that our customers will appreciate the enhancements we’ve made and that the new UX will help them work more efficiently and effectively

Wendy: Can you tell us more about helping users rapidly evaluate requirements in government RFPs, and other dense, narrative documents?

Sunder: When someone receives a request for proposal (RFP), one of the initial challenges is figuring out whether it’s the right fit for the business, is it worth pursuing, and what it will take to pursue the opportunity. This requires carefully examining the RFP to understand its requirements and key entities. It can be a time-consuming process, so we’ve invested in user experience (UX) and machine learning to help streamline it.

Our machine learning algorithms can quickly analyze dense, narrative documents commonly found in public RFPs and suggest which sections to focus on — what are some of the key requirements, timeline and so on. This way, our users can get a snapshot of what the document is about and make informed decisions about whether to pursue the opportunity.

It’s important to note that this technology is not a substitute for reading the entire document, but it can help users quickly identify the key information and involve the right stakeholders in the decision-making process. By investing in UX and machine learning, we aim to simplify the evaluation process and save our users valuable time and effort.

Wendy: How is the work that your [development] team is doing an important step forward in how proposal and response teams interact with AI technology?

Sunder: We use AI as an assistive technology that supports and enhances the work of proposal and response teams. We recognize AI’s potential to improve efficiency, accuracy and speed, but we are also acutely aware of the responsibility that comes with implementing such technology.

That’s why we have designed our AI systems to work in conjunction with human experts, who are always in the loop to oversee and guide the AI’s decision-making processes. Our approach ensures that our AI technology is transparent and accountable, and that it reflects our core values of ethics and responsibility.

In terms of how our work is an important step forward, I would say that it lies in the balance we strike between the benefits of AI and the importance of human oversight. By using AI to assist proposal and response teams, we are able to automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks, freeing up valuable resources for higher-level, strategic work. At the same time, our human experts ensure that the AI’s recommendations align with our clients’ needs and expectations, and that we remain mindful of the ethical and legal considerations surrounding the use of AI in proposal and response processes.

Wendy:  Can you elaborate on how you see RFPIO users collaborating with AI?

Sunder

Sunder: Certainly. At RFPIO, our goal is to make AI an invisible assistant for our users, seamlessly integrated into their workflow and providing valuable insights and suggestions without being intrusive or disruptive.

In practice, this means using AI to automate time-consuming tasks like document analysis and response drafting, freeing up more time for users to focus on higher-level tasks like strategy and collaboration.

For example, when a user receives an RFP, they can quickly upload it to our system where AI algorithms analyze the document and extract key information such as requirements, deadlines and contacts. This information is then organized and presented to the user in a clear and structured format, allowing them to easily review and assign tasks to team members.

When it comes to response drafting, our AI-powered suggestion engine provides real-time recommendations for content based on the user’s inputs and past performance. This can include everything from specific answers to common questions to more general suggestions for tone and formatting.

Throughout this process, we place a strong emphasis on maintaining the human in the loop, enabling users to review and approve all AI-generated content before it is finalized. This ensures that users retain control over the final output and can make any necessary adjustments to ensure it accurately reflects their organization’s voice and messaging.

Overall, we see AI as a powerful tool for improving collaboration and efficiency in the proposal and response process, and we’re committed to making sure it remains a helpful assistant rather than an intrusive technology to contend with.

Wendy: There’s already been a ton of buzz about GPT assistant. Why is there so much interest in RFPIO’s approach to content-generation technology?

Sunder:  At the heart of responding to RFPs, security questionnaires, and proposals is the task of writing quality content that effectively communicates our customers’ unique value propositions. This is an area where GPT excels, and we’re thrilled to be incorporating this cutting-edge technology into our platform to help streamline the content-generation process.

With GPT, we’re able to offer our users an AI-powered writing assistant that can help them draft compelling and persuasive responses to even the most complex questions. This technology allows our users to tap into the power of natural language processing and machine learning to generate high-quality content more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

Overall, the interest in RFPIO’s approach to content-generation technology is driven by our focus on making the content-generation process more efficient, while also maintaining a high level of quality and accuracy. We’re excited to continue exploring the possibilities of AI-powered content generation and to help our customers achieve greater success in their response management efforts.

Our customers recognize the potential of this relatively new technology.  And this is reflected in the volume of inquiries and the interest we have seen so far. But I should note that this interest ranges from curiosity to outright enthusiasm to embrace it.

Wendy: How does GPT assistant differ from ChatGPT?

Sunder

Sunder: GPT assistant is a proprietary AI application developed by RFPIO specifically for the purpose of assisting with RFPs, security questionnaires, and proposal content generation. ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot built by OpenAI that can be used for a wide range of applications. While both use the same underlying large language models, our GPT assistant is specifically designed to understand the nuances of the content we work with and provide more relevant and accurate suggestions.

Additionally, our GPT assistant is integrated into our RFPIO platform, allowing for a seamless and secure collaboration between the user and the AI assistant. The information and data used by our GPT assistant is kept private and confidential, ensuring that sensitive information is not shared or compromised.

Wendy: Will GPT assistant and other generative AI help encourage SME and executive buy-in, and if so, how?

Sunder: Yes, I believe that GPT assistant and other generative AI technologies will help encourage SME and executive buy-in. By leveraging GPT technology to assist with content generation, we can significantly reduce the time and effort required to create high-quality responses to RFPs, security questionnaires and other content-driven requests.

The potential impact on productivity and efficiency is significant, and we are optimistic that our customers will embrace this technology when they see the real value it can provide.

Furthermore, the ability to generate content quickly and accurately with the help of GPT technology can also help our customers win more business. By creating high-quality responses faster and more efficiently, our users can improve their chances of winning bids and securing new contracts.

Of course, we understand that there may be some concerns around the use of AI in content generation. That’s why we are committed to ensuring that the technology is used responsibly and that it always works in conjunction with human expertise and oversight. Ultimately, we believe that the benefits of this technology will far outweigh any potential drawbacks, and we are excited to continue exploring new ways to help our users streamline their workflows and achieve their business goals.

Wendy: There’s so much positive momentum surrounding the company and its response management platform — why do you think that is?

Sunder: At the heart of it, RFPIO’s response management platform fills a critical need in the B2B space. In today’s fast-paced business world, request response has become the backbone of most business interactions. From RFPs to security questionnaires, businesses are constantly receiving requests for information, and the ability to respond efficiently and effectively can make or break deals.

Our platform allows businesses to streamline and optimize their response process, freeing up valuable time and resources for more strategic pursuits. We’ve seen firsthand how our technology can have a huge positive impact on businesses, both in terms of winning more deals and improving overall productivity.

But it’s not just about technology. We’ve worked closely with our customers to understand their pain points and challenges when it comes to request response. By truly listening to their needs and translating those problem statements into elegant solutions, we’ve been able to create a platform that truly meets the needs of our users.

Overall, the positive momentum surrounding RFPIO is a testament to the power of strategic response management and the value that our platform brings to businesses across industries.

Wendy: Thank you, Sunder. That was fascinating!

Sunder: My pleasure.

If you’d like to learn more about RFPIO’s new user experience and GPT assistant, let us know.

 

Everything you need to know about healthcare RFPs

Everything you need to know about healthcare RFPs

Products/Features/Solutions

With an aging population, it might not surprise you to learn that healthcare is the fastest-growing industry in the world. It’s no coincidence that insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, and other healthcare organizations also have the fastest-growing demand for products and services.

To help ensure all vendors meet their budgets, timelines, and other requirements when purchasing those products and services, healthcare organizations, like those in other industries, issue requests for proposals (RFP).

What is a healthcare RFP?

A healthcare RFP is a way for buyers to collect and organize necessary information for evaluating potential vendors. RFPs are structured in a questionnaire format, giving organizations a clear, side-by-side comparison of the prospects bidding on the project. Most importantly, each new RFP is an opportunity for new suppliers and vendors to win new business.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the unique challenges with healthcare RFPs and best practices to benefit both buyers and vendors.

Elements of a healthcare RFP

A healthcare RFP should include:

  • The project background and an overview of the problem
  • The ultimate project goals
  • Description of needed goods or services and budget
  • The RFP timeline and vendor deadlines
  • RFP decision requirements including qualification, submission and evaluation criteria
  • The organization’s terms, conditions, and regulatory requirements
  • A vendor security questionnaire (although that might fall later in the buying cycle)

Types of healthcare RFPs

The most common types of healthcare RFPs include:

  • Professional services and consulting
  • Medical and surgical equipment
  • Facilities and maintenance
  • Healthcare information technology (HIT) systems
  • Laboratory and research services
  • Medications and pharmaceuticals
  • Support services and staffing

How to issue and manage healthcare RFPs

Issuing and managing an RFP happens in a simple three-step process.

1. Creation

Identify the issue, assess specific needs, and define the scope of a project. Understanding the core of the issue will enable an understanding of what the best solution is. Collaborate with stakeholders to prioritize the factors that will help you make your final selection.

Before writing your RFP, select prospective vendors, conduct research, and explore industry trends to ensure relevancy when drafting your RFP.

Using feedback from your internal teams, your research, and the background you’ve learned, you can draft your RFP.

2. Administration

Whether you issue your RFP publicly or to a select group of prospective participants will depend on the regulations that govern your procurement process.

During the question and answer period, collect and collate any necessary clarifications, providing uniformed questions to all prospects to ensure fairness.

3. Evaluation

Review your collected RFP responses and start by reviewing them for compliance. Next, ensure that vendors meet the stated minimum requirements. After that, score sections that contain closed-ended questions. An RFP software solution can save time by scoring automatically.

Engage SMEs and stakeholders for more complex response evaluation before making your final selection. An RFP management platform can simplify side-by-side comparisons when making a decision.

3 tips for responding to a healthcare RFP

  1. Create and optimize a content library – Cut down on repetitive work by saving and organizing past RFP questions and responses, as well as templates. Proposal software can centralize your knowledge base and automate your workflow by suggesting answers to previously seen questions.
  2. Streamline SME collaboration – A content library can help you complete as much of the proposal as possible before sending it to your SMEs. By suggesting potential answers based on past proposals, you lighten the SMEs’ load and complete RFPs in less time.
  3. Only answer RFPs you can win – Consider RFP deadlines, available resources, requirements and deal-breakers. A powerful software tool can facilitate bid or no bid decisions.

Improve efficiency by removing emails from the response process

RFPIO seamlessly integrates with most of the tools you might use to send and receive RFPs, including five CRMs and four communication apps.

Scale your response process as industry and customer needs change

RFPIO’s AI-enabled Content Library lets admins and approved users quickly update stored messaging to simplify adapting to changing market needs.

Keep your content current

Built-in curation tools quickly help you create content review cycles, find duplicate content, and flag posts that need review.

Ensure regulatory compliance

Embed compliance reviews right into your workflow to make sure all content is compliant and simplify security questionnaires.

Healthcare companies respond faster with RFPIO

RFPIO is the response management platform of choice for leaders in the healthcare industry.

The key area we’re seeing success with RFPIO is being able to handle multiple RFPs at the same time. There’s no way we could have simultaneously responded to 16 RFPs with a two-person team if we were still using a manual process.

Learn from the experts on response

Healthcare procurement and fulfillment is complex with multiple regulatory requirements. RFPIO is a tool designed to streamline the process by helping proposal professionals navigate complexities, enabling them to craft clear and compelling documents.

Schedule a demo. We’ll demonstrate how RFPIO might help you focus on the most important parts of your job and safeguard compliance.

Tender management explained

Tender management explained

Product & Best Practices

When a business, nonprofit organisation, or government agency needs to make a major purchase, such as materials required to manufacture their goods or services to keep the organisation humming, they typically initiate a bidding process before zeroing in on their best option.

If the purchasing organisation is in the United States, the bidding process begins with a request for proposal (RFP). In many other parts of the world, the request is called a tender. In turn, the vendors respond with a proposal, or more commonly outside the U.S., a bid (or response).

In this blog post, we’ll take a deeper look at the tender management process and how organisations can optimise their purchasing outcomes.

What is tender management?

Tender management is the structured process of getting information from the market to make a purchase or responding to a request sent by another organisation to purchase from you. It is about ensuring that bids or purchases align with company values, needs, budgets, security and compliance requirements, and so on.

Tender managers are responsible for coordinating with department leaders to create a list of potential vendors and send a detailed questionnaire that covers everything from vendor history to purchase specifications to legal requirements. They may also be responsible for crafting bids in response to tenders.

Confusing? Perhaps, but it’s also worth noting that in many companies, tender managers both send and respond to tenders. To avoid confusion, let’s call the questionnaire a tender and refer to the response as a bid.

  • Bid vs. tender vs. proposal management

    • Bid, tender, and proposal management are often used interchangeably. Traditionally, bid and proposal management are synonymous. Both are about the process of responding to tenders (or RFPs).

    Today, some companies use tender management to describe both the purchasing and bidding process.

    Who participates in the tendering process?

    There are generally several stakeholders involved in the tendering process. Tender response teams may include personnel from:

    • Sales
    • Procurement
    • Operations
    • Logistics
    • Finance
    • Human resources
    • Marketing
    • Legal
    • Information technology and security
    • And more

    Additionally, larger companies may have a dedicated bid team, which might include a bid manager to oversee the entire process, a writer or two, and an editor.

    How the tender management process works

    As with RFPs and all other questionnaires a potential customer might send, tenders are detailed, specific legal documents with zero leeway deadlines. As such, it’s critical that companies design a repeatable response process before the next tender reaches their inbox.

    RFPIO’s response managers recommend an 8-step process:

  • Step 1 – Go/no-go

    • Tender response is a long process. It can take days and sometimes even weeks. To demonstrate respect for your time, that of your fellow stakeholders, and the company at large, initiate a selection process to determine whether the tender is winnable and aligns with your company’s goals.

    The process should determine whether your organisation is willing or able to provide the product or service. It should also include reports to compare success rates of previous similar bids, whether similar bids you’ve won were beneficial to your organisation, and any available competitive research.

  • Step 2 – Hold a kickoff meeting

    • Gather your stakeholders to assign roles, responsibilities, timelines, and objectives. A project management platform designed explicitly for tender responses will help streamline the process and track progress.

  • Step 3 – 1st draft

    • Up to 80 percent of a tender’s questions are relatively standard. For example, questions about company history or your IT security protocols are common. Establish a well-maintained content library to store previous answers, so you can respond to those questions quickly, efficiently, and with marketing-approved content.

    Ask subject matter experts (SMEs) to review their answers to ensure they are accurate and up to date. Ideally, you should involve them in periodic content audits to help simplify the response process.

  • Step 4 – 2nd draft

    • The second draft is the time to dig down and answer the remaining questions. You will need to involve SMEs to help craft responses to the questions that fall under their realms and your marketing department to ensure the answers meet brand guidelines.

  • Step 5 – Review and revise

    • Check that each question has complete, accurate, well-written, and proofread answers. You should also make sure that all relevant documents are attached.

  • Step 6 – Submit

    • Submit your polished response by the deadline or sooner. In fact, sooner is preferred in case there’s a glitch that requires you to submit it multiple times. Wait until you receive a receipt and let each stakeholder know.

  • Step 7 – Save and audit the responses

    • Record each answer in a centralised repository for use in future tender responses. You should also schedule routine content audits.

  • Step 8 – Hold a postmortem

    • Every response is a learning opportunity. Gather your team to gauge what went well and what didn’t.

    Understanding the challenges of tender management

    Even the best-designed tender response process has its challenges. The most common include:

  • Workflow

    • Without clearly defined roles and responsibilities, you might have people stepping on each others’ toes, or perhaps more likely, too few people willing to make the time.

    Because tender response timelines are absolute, tracking progress is crucial. A robust project management platform that works with your existing tech stack will define roles, eliminate confusion, and help ensure each response arrives within the allotted time.

  • Collaboration

    • If your company is like most, you have work silos. Even if you don’t, your workforce might span the country or even the world. Effective collaboration is a must for tender response management. Look for bid software that integrates with your existing communication apps.

    It’s also worth noting that RFPIO has no user licences, so you can include anyone you feel is valuable to your bid.

  • Disorganised content repository

    • One thing that will slow down the response process every single time is a nonexistent or disorganised content management system. Just to give you an idea of how much it can slow you down, a McKinsey survey found that average workers spent nearly 20 percent of their time tracking down information.

    Because tender responses are legal documents that require coordinating with busy SMEs and input from your marketing team, 20 percent is very conservative. Some customers find they are as much as 5x more productive when they store their information in the RFPIO Content Library.

    Best practices for tender management

    Now that you have a repeatable process in place, how should you specifically approach your next tender?

  • Understand the full scope of the project first

    • An essential part of the go/no-go process is understanding the customer’s request. When you assume rather than reading and comprehending the entire document, you risk alienating the buyer.

  • Only bid on tenders you can fulfil

    • Maybe your product or solution is a perfect match, but when you dive a little deeper into the tender, you find that you can’t meet their timeline or security requirements.

    I’m not suggesting that you should always avoid bidding when you aren’t the perfect fit. Sometimes you want to put your name out there for future consideration, but be honest with the buyer right up front, such as in the cover letter. Otherwise, you could risk damaging your reputation.

    But, as the expression goes, a bird in the hand…

    In most cases, opt for the winnable deals. Most tender response teams, and especially SMEs, are extremely busy. Directing efforts toward realistic, revenue-generating opportunities is far better than those that might only be viable years from now.

  • Develop a collaborative response strategy

    • Two- and even single-person bid teams aren’t unheard of but uncommon. The typical tender response requires choreography that almost rivals the Royal Ballet. Alright, that’s an exaggeration, but collaboration is critical.

    To strategically optimise collaboration:

    • Provide the right tools – The chances are that your company already uses one or more collaboration tools. Look for a tender response software that works with the tools people are already comfortable with.
    • Respect contributors’ time – Your SMEs each have different work styles. Some have more time than others, and some have more stored question-answer pairs. Respect contributors’ time and work styles to help foster future collaboration.
    • Clarify roles and expectations – Avoid team members getting in the way of each other by letting them know precisely what is expected of them.
  • Manage and organise tender content

    • As my mother likes to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You should regularly audit your content library to weed out the ROT, or that content that is redundant, outdated, or trivial.

    Engage your SMEs to check their own question-answer pairs. It’s a much lighter lift if you conduct periodic, such as quarterly, audits.

    The role of tender management systems

    Tender management systems help define, optimise, and manage the strategic tender management process.

    What are the benefits of a tender management system?

    A tender management system offers a structured approach for both buyers and bidders. In both cases, a structured system saves time, fosters efficiency, strengthens communication, and helps both parties achieve their goals.

    More specific benefits include:

  • For the buyer

    • Creating a tender is arguably the least time-consuming part of the tender process, but it still takes a lot of time and effort. A tender management system lets buyers collaborate with the teams requesting the product or service and other stakeholders to ensure that all requirements are covered.

    You may be able to pull similar tenders for reference from your content library.

  • For the bidder

    • The bid process is considerably more complex than the buying process in that bidders need to learn and follow the buyer’s rules. Thoroughness, accuracy, and quality are paramount. A tender management system helps ensure that bids are well-written, complete, accurate, in the buyer’s preferred format, and submitted on time.

    Additionally, a well-curated content library benefits the entire organisation.

    Tender management software

    As businesses become increasingly selective while regulations such as GDPR add complexity, more and more organisations are looking for a future-proof tender management system.

    Organisational structure has seen significant changes over the last few years. If employees aren’t working remotely, they’re often spread out over multiple locations and internal silos. All this is to say that collaboration tools have never been more critical. This is especially true for tender management teams whose members can come from any department. Some organisations even use freelancers to help write or for their expertise.

    Since time management is necessary, tender management software should help ensure you never miss a deadline. It should work how you work but also stay within buyers’ parameters. And it should provide the data that fosters intelligent decision-making and proves its worth.

    Tender response is about projects, not individual use. Individual licences inhibit collaboration and encourage skimping on resources. They also limit scalability. Look for a tender management system that grows when needed and scales back during slower times.

    What to look for when choosing a tender management system

    An ideal tender management system supports a strategic tender management process. Components should include:

    • Data – A strategic response requires data. An effective tender management system should provide customizable reports to assist with your go/no-go decision-making and informed business decision-making.
    • Automation – A tender management system is about accomplishing more while using fewer resources. Look for a system, such as RFPIO’s autoresponse or automated project management features, that intelligently works with you to boost your capacity and overall win rate.
    • Powerful integrations – Today’s CIOs prioritise consolidating their tech stacks instead of adding to them. Look for a system that integrates with your most essential tools.
    • A robust content management system – Your tender management system should not only direct you to the correct answers but also notify you of possible duplicates and outdated answers. Additionally, you should look for an accurate and comprehensive content repository for company use cases that extend far beyond tender management.
    • Import-export capabilities – Tenders arrive in various ways, including Word documents, spreadsheets, and PDFs. However, it can be difficult for multiple stakeholders to work within unknown categorising and formatting. A tender management system should be able to translate a tender into a format each user understands and revert the final product back to the original.
    • Customization – Very few people want to read thousands of words of nonstop text. Tell and show using customised tables, images, and rich text. Make your brand stand out with branded templates.

    How to use a tender management tool

    Tender management tools have multifaceted uses that benefit an entire organisation. A comprehensive content management system should be a single source of truth for two of your company’s greatest assets, its knowledge and essential documents.

    At a higher level, tender management tools save time, improve bid quality, and increase company profits. A tender management platform is a sales enablement tool that benefits all revenue-generating departments.

    And, when it’s time for the procurement department to do its thing, a tender management tool will help them create requests designed to fulfil all requirements.

    How RFPIO can help your tender management process

    If you’re looking for a way to improve your organisation’s efficiency and win rates, RFPIO is an excellent option. Our software is designed to increase collaboration and boost capacity while making tracking progress and managing deadlines easier. With RFPIO, you’ll be able to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time developing winning proposals. Chat with us to see how RFPIO can benefit your organisation.

    Tender management FAQs

    1. What is a tender?

      2. A tender is a legal document that invites multiple parties to bid on a large purchase. A tender might also refer to the bids in response to the documents.

    2. How is a tender different from an RFP?

      3. The word “tender” is far more common outside the United States. Both documents ask for formalised purchasing proposals. Both terms can also refer to the proposals generated.

    3. What is a request for tender (RFT)?

      4. A request for tender is a request for a formalised business proposal.

    4. What are the evaluation criteria for tenders?

      5. Tenders have very stringent evaluation criteria. The winning bidder will have to provide the exact deliverables, security, and business requirements, and a price that fits the buyer’s budget.

    5. How do I know if my tender has been successful?

      6. Tender success can be measured by several metrics, including quality, response time, and of course, whether you win the bid. Tender management software should help you assess quality and response time. It can take weeks or months to learn whether you win the bid. However, customers may ask additional questions, which can indicate you’re on the shortlist.

    What is proposal management?

    What is proposal management?

    Productivity

    I often say that proposal management is like baking a cake. Alright, that might not be the most original thought, but when you bake a cake, you expertly pull together diverse ingredients, typically from multiple sources. Then, you add your skill and flair to create a gorgeous and delicious pastry.

    Proposal management is about pulling together diverse people and information, typically from multiple sources, adding skill and flair to create a compelling and persuasive sales document. Fortunately, at least in my case, a well-baked proposal will add to the bottom line instead of, well, you get the idea.

    Proposals are generally either a response to a request for proposal (RFP) or from a salesperson whose customer wants well-defined information, usually including pricing, onboarding or logistical details, company information, and so on.

    The objectives of proposal management

    The primary objective of proposal management is to help drive more sales. More specifically, the process objectives include:

    • Determining the right opportunities
      • Is the bid winnable based on similar past projects?
      • Can you fulfill the customer’s needs?
      • Is the request consistent with your company’s business objectives?
      • Can the response nurture brand awareness?
    • Selecting the right team – A typical response team might include a proposal manager, writer, editor, and a team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The SMEs, and frankly, the whole team, can come from any department in the company as long as their expertise aligns with the request.
    • Crafting a quality response – Proposal management is just one of the places where sales and marketing intersect. It’s vital that the response represents the company in the best possible light, adhering to the company voice and tone while providing incentives for the customer to buy.
    • Meeting customer expectations – Submit your well-crafted proposal within the allotted timeline and in the customer’s preferred form

    The necessity of proposal management

    If I were to describe a proposal management process with a single word, it would be consistency. Oh wait, maybe I mean accountability. Perhaps there isn’t a single word to describe proposal management, but the consistency and accountability that come from having a proposal management process generate benefits that resonate throughout your organization. Some of those benefits include:

        • Increased productivity – Productivity is perhaps the essential goal of a proposal management system. When you design a repeatable process, you can start right in on your response rather than reinventing the wheel each time you receive a request.
        • Better collaboration – A well-designed proposal management process helps form a team of allies, even in a remote or distributed environment.
        • Streamlined workflow – Project management is a core part of a proposal management system. Track your project’s and stakeholders’ progress to ensure on-time delivery.
        • A single source of truth – Another critical component of a proposal management system is consolidating and continuously auditing your company’s records, documents, and previous proposal question-answer pairs. Democratization of your content library puts knowledge into the hands of everyone who needs it.
        • Greater revenue – The more winnable proposals you produce, the more revenue you will generate.

    Eight elements of brilliant proposal management

    If you’re a proposal manager, you might feel pulled in many directions simultaneously. A brilliant proposal management system will help you maintain a manageable cadence while improving results.

    If you run a sales team, you know that proposals are necessary for any significant sale. The same proposal management system will enable your team to drive more revenue while using fewer resources.

    There are several key features of a brilliant proposal management system, and they include:

        • Project management
        • Automation
        • AI
        • Collaboration
        • Content management
        • Eliminating paper
        • Knowledge sharing
        • Insights and analytics

    Project management

    A proposal manager has a lot of roles. When a proposal response system includes a robust project management platform, they’ll be able to track the team’s and project’s progress and manage their own time more efficiently.

    Automation

    There is a lot of redundancy in a proposal response. In fact, as many as 80 percent of questions on an RFP have been asked by other customers and answered in different responses. An automated system acts as a librarian of sorts, directing you to the correct answers in moments.

    Additionally, automation facilitates better collaboration, helps you establish roles, and maintains brand consistency.

    AI

    Artificial intelligence is an end-to-end proposal response assistant. It can help you:

        • Leverage data to qualify RFPs in your go/no-go process.
        • Estimate how long the project will take
        • Break the project up into relevant sections
        • Auto-identify the response content
        • Assign the right questions to the right subject matter experts
        • Proofread the response
        • Enable an intelligent postmortem process through data analytics
        • Conduct regular content audits

    Collaboration

    Two-thirds of employees work from home at least sometimes. That number is expected to increase. More than half of organizations operate in silos. Communication silos cost the average team about 20 hours a month.

    Even when people call the same office home base, some, especially subject matter experts, might work on the road. It’s no wonder that collaboration tools are some of the fastest-growing software solutions.

    Simplify collaboration with a platform that provides access to all your stakeholders, no matter where they are.

    Content management

    The best way to prepare for the next RFP, even if you have no idea who it’s coming from or what it will ask, is to maintain a comprehensive content library. Store each question-answer pair as they are answered. Systematically audit your content to ensure it is up-to-date, valuable, usable, and regularly used.

    Eliminating paper

    The average RFP response is 132 pages long. You would be shocked, or maybe not, to learn how many companies still rely on analog, paper-intensive procurement and response processes. That could cost a typical midsized organization more than around $1,500 per year in paper alone.

    Of course, there are the environmental costs of chopping down trees and processing and shipping the paper. Then, when it’s time, there’s the cost of shredding out-of-date paper.

    Next-day shipping on a single paper response averages between $50 and $80, with an annual cost of around $18,700.

    Electronic submissions are nearly carbon neutral and usually free.

    Knowledge sharing

    Eighty-one percent of organizations see content as a core business strategy. Ninety-one percent of employees experience knowledge-sharing challenges. Employees spend about 11 percent of their time, or nearly six weeks a year, searching for or re-creating information. Executives lose even more time.

    Collaboration is vital, but when company knowledge is withheld from people who work remotely or in other departments, it doesn’t do anyone much good. A brilliant proposal management system uses collaborative tools and artificial intelligence to help democratize knowledge.

    Insights and analytics

    Sherlock Holmes once said, “It’s a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” That statement is even more current today, 100 and some odd years after Arthur Conan Doyle invented the fictional detective.

    Accurate and well-presented insights and analytics help you determine whether to respond to an RFP. The data helps create company buy-in for establishing and maintaining a response process. It demonstrates your win-loss rate, the amount of revenue you’re generating, the types of bids you win, the quality of your content library, and so on.

    Who is responsible for proposal management?

    Organizations tend to approach proposal management very differently. Some organizations have dedicated proposal managers, while in others, salespeople manage their own proposals. Some proposal managers are technical writers, while others write for their marketing teams.

    Enterprise organizations might have a dozen or more people working on each proposal, while small and medium companies might have just one or two. Obviously, that seems to put small and medium-sized companies at a disadvantage, but we’ll get into how they can overcome the apparent shortcoming in a moment.

    The RFP response team

    An RFP response team consists of everyone involved in the response process. The roles might include:

        • A proposal manager – The proposal manager is the project manager. They’re responsible for overseeing the entire operation.
        • A capture (or sales) manager – A capture manager provides the sales expertise to an RFP response.
        • Proposal writers – Proposal writers are responsible for using the art of storytelling to address customer needs and accurately answer each question.
        • Proposal editors – Proposal editors check each response for errors and typos while ensuring that it matches the brand’s voice.
        • Subject matter experts – Subject matter experts aren’t typically permanent parts of proposal teams. Proposal managers might ask for SME expertise from any department, including finance, sales, product, IT, HR, fulfillment, onboarding, customer service, and so on.
        • Graphic artist – Almost no one likes to read through dense pages of technical details and statistics, which is why it’s vital to break your proposals up with some colorful graphics. Bring in a graphic designer to add charts and images to make your proposal more readable.

    Proposal manager

    Your company’s proposal manager is responsible for overseeing everything that’s proposal-related. They are project managers, librarians, and historians. They’re writers, editors, and sales enablement experts. Some are salespeople, and some are even graphic designers.

    Once a company has agreed that an RFP aligns with company abilities or goals, it’s the proposal manager’s job to keep the response train on the track. They ensure that everyone is meeting their deadlines and that their work is accurate and professional. Then, it’s the proposal manager’s job to oversee the final product before submitting it before the deadline.

    When the proposal is safely in the customer’s hands, the proposal manager should enter each new piece of company information into their knowledge base. Then, they should supervise periodic knowledge base audits.

    The challenges of proposal management

    Most large business deals require proposals, which means that proposal managers are vital to achieving company revenue goals. Dedicated proposal managers understand the challenges of their jobs, and hopefully, they’ve established systems to address the challenges before they become problems. That’s not always the case, however.

    Here are some of the challenges that full- and part-time proposal managers face:

    Company buy-in

    Do you ever feel a little like you’re whistling in the wind at work? You know you need processes for timely and accurate responses. You know you need the cooperation of subject matter experts, but finding support is a challenge. Buy-in from executives and other key stakeholders is critical for a successful response management process.

    Consistency

    One of the key factors in an effective system of any kind is repeatability. For example, your proposal go/no-go process should be nearly identical from one RFP to another, even though each process might yield different results. Your collaboration, writing, editing, and design process should look very similar to your last response, even though the two responses might be very different.

    Quality responses

    Think of each response as a marketing document. It should look as polished as your website or any other asset.

    Take the opportunity to tell compelling stories highlighting how your company will meet the customer’s needs. Be sure to include graphics and other images to break up dense copy. Edit each document for accuracy, character counts (if there are limits), and grammatical errors.

    Submitting your proposals on time (or early)

    When a proposal is due at midnight on Tuesday, it’s due at midnight on Tuesday. Don’t shrug your shoulders, assuming no one will be in the office in the middle of the night to confirm. Customers pay attention to time stamps. Some customers give higher priority to early responses.

    Maintaining a knowledge library

    One of the most time- and resource-saving aspects of a quality proposal management system is a well-maintained knowledge library. In an ideal world, your knowledge library will house, in an easily accessible manner, every relevant piece of information from the day your company opened its doors to today. No one, including SMEs, wants to repeat answers.

    It’s a never-ending circle. Workers spend almost 20 percent of their time tracking down company knowledge. Employees are far less likely to share their knowledge when stored company knowledge is inaccurate or difficult to find. When that happens, workers spend even more time trying to find knowledge, at least until they throw their hands up in frustration.

    How RFPIO can help

    Building your proposal management system is a bit like building a house. The proposal manager coordinates the materials, hammers the nails, and decorates the home. RFPIO can provide the building plans and all the tools to help you overcome the challenges outlined above.

    Company buy-in

    Company buy-in is a top-down process. First, you must prove to executives that a system like RFPIO will improve your proposal management process and drive more revenue. Then, you need to show SMEs that by investing time in setting up the Content Library, they’ll save time in the future.

    RFPIO’s proven ROI is as high as 600 percent. Many customers reach a total return on investment in less than a year. RFPIO’s advanced analytics provide the data executives want.

    Introduce your SMEs to the Content Library. Show them that they have ownership over their content and that you’ll only call on them for clarification or answers they haven’t already provided. Review the content auditing features to ensure that regular content review cycles will require less work in the long run.

    Consistency

    RFPIO is a project management platform. It will provide the data to help with your go/no-go process, help you assign tasks, and track progress. Its built-in integrations with the most popular communication, productivity, and customer relationship management apps help keep everyone together, even if they aren’t physically together.

    Maintaining your Content Library

    RFPIO will track your review cycles and remind you when it’s time to look at a document or answer or when a record approaches its shred-by date.

    Quality responses

    I already mentioned that RFPIO’s auto-response feature could answer up to 80 percent of an RFP’s questions with marketing-approved content. That means more time to craft an accurate, competitive, and genuinely compelling response.

    Submitting your proposals on time (or early)

    RFPIO’s project management features help keep your project humming along and will remind you when each deliverable is due.

    About those small and medium-sized companies

    RFPIO can help you level the playing field by providing the same actionable insights, project management features, Content Library, and accessibility as enterprise organizations receive.

    *Next Action*

    RFPIO isn’t just an RFP response platform. It’s a powerful revenue generator. Schedule a free demo to see how we can help you win more bids and become more profitable.

    Proposal management resource guide

    Proposal management resource guide

    Products/Features/Solutions

    What do nearly all large sales have in common? OK, if you read this blog’s headline, it’s hardly a trick question.

    Whether a sale began through outbound sales or marketing efforts, inbound customer queries, or requests for proposals (RFPs), nearly all customers require written proposals before making a large purchase.

    Proposal management 101

    Proposal management is the process of completing a sales proposal or RFP response accurately, completely, engagingly, and on time. The process typically involves multiple parties, including subject matter experts (SMEs), writers, editors, and of course, a project (or proposal) manager.

    What does a proposal manager do?

    If you ask a proposal manager what they do, there’s a good chance they’ll respond with something like, “What don’t I do?”

    They wouldn’t be wrong. A proposal manager is part salesperson, part writer, part editor, and mostly the ringleader of a many-ringed circus. They are in charge of crafting winning proposals and creating and maintaining processes for today’s proposals, tomorrow’s, and next year’s.

    Create new RFP response processes

    At RFPIO, we gathered our current and past proposal managers to design a response process that’s logical, agile, and repeatable. The 8-step process builds on past wins and losses, perfection and errors, to help set you up for an increased win rate and higher profits.

    • Go/no-go – Not all requests for proposals (RFPs) are worthwhile. Can you meet the customer’s needs? Do their needs align with your company’s goals and objectives? Is the deal winnable?
    • Hold a kickoff meeting – Gather your response team to assign roles, responsibilities, and deadlines.
    • Pen the first draft – Most of an RFP’s questions are relatively standard. You can respond to as many as 80 percent of the queries with answers you’ve used before. Note that doing as much of the work as possible, without calling on SMEs’ valuable time, will go a long way toward fostering goodwill.
    • Pen the second draft – The second draft is where real collaboration comes in. Call upon your SMEs to help answer the last 20 percent or so of your document’s questions.
    • Review and revise – Check and recheck your proposal for accuracy, response quality, and spelling and grammatical errors. Make sure you’ve attached all relevant documents.
    • Submit your response – Submit your complete and polished reply on time, if not early.
    • Save and audit your response – Continue the goodwill you’ve established with your SMEs by saving their answers for future use.
    • Conduct a postmortem – Win or lose, gather your team to discuss what went well and what didn’t. Apply your newfound wisdom to future responses.

    Improve old RFP processes

    Congratulations on establishing a response process. You’d be surprised at how many companies play it by ear. Still, even the best RFP response needs some tweaking now and again.

    • Only go after what’s winnable – Even the best-defined go/no-go process is subject to human excitement. It might be tempting to go after that big sale, but if it’s a bad fit, the wasted work can deplete morale, and having to read through a response that doesn’t fit might cause resentment on the part of the customer.
    • Focus on content – Do you have a content library to store previous answers? Do you regularly audit your content library for use and accuracy?
    • Define roles and responsibilities – While you can’t predict which SMEs you might need to consult for your next RFP, you can establish your core response team. Then, when it’s time to call your team to action, you can involve the SMEs and further hone roles and responsibilities.
    • Get to know your key stakeholders – People’s work styles vary. Respect stakeholders’ preferred communication (RFPIO integrates with the most popular communication applications) and work styles.
    • Repeat – Make sure all your improvements are repeatable. For example, if you assign a designated editor to one response, assign one to all.

    Manage projects seamlessly

    A response manager is, first and foremost, a project manager. It’s their job to decide whether to pursue the sale and who should be part of the response, ensure everyone has their marching orders and meets their deliverables, and record each question-and-answer pair for future use.

    Project management software, especially that which is specifically designed for proposals, will help the proposal manager through each step of the project.

    Set the response team up for success

    One of the biggest challenges facing a proposal manager is coordinating groups of individuals who might work remotely, from different offices, and even in different time zones. Here’s how some of our customers bring out the best in their distributed response teams.

    • Focus on productivity – Some people thrive on 9-5 while others work best from 7-3 or even some time in the middle of the night. Naturally, team meetings should involve everyone, and deadlines might not comply with personal work styles, but when you let people work when they’re most productive, they’ll be…well…more productive.
    • Ask for help – Managing distributed workforces is nearly impossible without assistance from project management software. Strategic response management software such as RFPIO integrates with all of the most popular communication and productivity applications, enables project managers to set up tasks and checklists, and optionally enables access from anywhere there’s an internet connection.
    • Build connections – Teams are built from diverse personalities and work styles. Step away from work mode once a week or so and hold team-building meetings with fun themes to help bring out people’s personalities and create bonds.

    How to manage winning proposals

    While proposal managers are pulled in multiple directions, the primary goal is always to create winning proposals. Here’s how our proposal managers do it.

    Optimize the proposal management plan

    Many, if not most, proposal managers don’t have the luxury of designated proposal teams. In fact, their roles and responsibilities might vary. Many are part of a sales team, and a salesperson is often expected to oversee an RFP’s completion.

    Still, small companies without designated response teams or response managers can compete with enterprise companies by following a well-designed process.

    • Learn to say “no” – Small and medium-sized businesses (and even enterprise organizations) need to conserve resources, which means saying “no” to RFPs that are either unwinnable or unfulfillable.
    • Call for help – Most proposals require input from multiple parties. In other words, it’s more than OK to admit you can’t do everything alone. Call on your sales team and other SMEs to help you complete your proposal. Sales teams may not like responding to RFPs, but they should remember that they have tremendous revenue potential.

    Define team roles and responsibilities

    A response process should begin well before you receive your first request. You should have a regular team with backups in case someone is unavailable. Additionally, you should know your SMEs, their expertise, and, hopefully, their schedules.

    Once you receive an RFP, hold a kickoff meeting to clearly define every stakeholder’s role and responsibilities.

    Establish the building blocks of your proposals

    Response managers aren’t rewarded for originality. Their job is to win bids, and the most efficient way to do that is to reuse and recycle past content, or at least some of it.

    Establish proposal building blocks by utilizing and customizing resources such as white papers, internal training, boilerplate libraries, and so on. You can also pull content from previous proposals.

    Your recycled content is not generic and boilerplate, such as with a press release. Edit or add to it to suit your customer and the specific project.

    Once you’ve identified building blocks, store them in a shared folder, collaboration tool, local drive, or response management software.

    Organize knowledge systems

    Not long ago, companies stored their documents and much of their knowledge in metal boxes called file cabinets. Okay, yes, we all still know what file cabinets are, but we also know that they are highly inefficient for distributed and siloed workforces.

    A well-organized knowledge system enhances collaboration, breaks down silos, and boosts productivity. It also makes RFP response much faster and more efficient.

    Record your question-and-answer pairs after you submit each response, and regularly audit your content to ensure it’s valuable, current, and accurate.

    Format your deliverable correctly

    Your prospect won’t read your proposal.

    The last thing you want to hear, especially after spending hours, days, or even weeks crafting a beautifully written proposal, is that the customer won’t even read it.

    That doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time—far from it. A well-formatted proposal makes it easy for customers to find what they need quickly. Here are some tips:

    • Use the right font – Serif is the easiest to read.
    • Justify left – Justify on the left and use ragged formatting on the right.
    • Use portrait orientation – People are used to reading documents in portrait orientation.
    • Double space – Double spaces between sentences are easier to skim.
    • Limit paragraph and sentence length – More than 3-5 sentences per paragraph is overwhelming, as is more than 20 words per sentence.
    • Use graphics and images – Pictures break up dense text and make it much easier to follow.
    • Avoid reds, greens, and grays – Many people are color blind and can’t distinguish between reds and greens. Grays and other low-contrast colors are difficult to read.
    • Use headings – Headings and subheadings let readers know where to find the necessary information.
    • Define acronyms – You can use acronyms, but you should first define them. Request for proposal (RFP) is one example.
    • Avoid internal references – Don’t make your reader search with statements like “See question #18.” At the very least, summarize the answer and direct the reader to one that’s more detailed.
    • Include a table of contents – Many proposals are 100s of pages long. Prevent frustration by directing customers to what they are looking for.
    • Follow the 3:1 rule – Avoid the hard sell by referring to the prospective customer’s company about three times for every time you mention your company. This is especially important in executive summaries.
    • Proofread – Run your copy through a grammar checker to ensure correct punctuation and grammar.
    • Use a one-third/two-thirds layout – Use one-third of the page as a sidebar for relevant information, such as key metrics.
    • Standardize your formatting – Your stakeholders might have their own ways of working, which is fine, but be sure to bring their content into your standard formatting to create a cohesive style instead of a jarring “patchwork quilt” effect.
    • Use your customer’s logo (maybe) – If you have permission and a non pixelated, high-resolution logo that meets their branding guidelines, attach it to your proposal.
    • Include white space – Space your content so the pages aren’t too dense.

    Deliver an organized RFP response

    Your proposal should be skimmable, but it should also invite the reader to evaluate whether you can fulfill their needs. Write your proposal to draw the reader in and keep them with you.

    • Reassure the reader – As my grandmother often said, the devil is in the details. But if you want the reader to get to the details, you’ll have to reassure them that you know what they’re asking. Summarize the customer’s requirements very early in the document.
    • Detail each step – Lay the proposal out so the customer can follow the buyer and customer journey. Tell a story and avoid jargon.
    • Build your content library – Each proposal is an opportunity to add to your content library. In turn, your content library should hold a wealth of reusable information and documentation for future responses.
    • Use proposal management software – Your proposal management tools should help you manage the project, find relevant content, and standardize the proposal’s format.

    How to improve the proposal management process

    Now that you know what an excellent proposal management process looks like, the next step is implementation. Advanced RFP response software is designed to enhance, refine, and simplify your process, freeing you to produce more bids using fewer resources.

    Upgrade your content management

    RFP software helps you organize your ever-evolving content management system by letting you manage content by tagging it and assigning it to projects. With RFPIO, you can assign star ratings so your best content can rise to the top.

    You should also regularly audit your content for relevance, use, and accuracy.

    Leverage RFP management dashboards

    Track your project’s progress with an RFP response management dashboard that provides insights at a glance.

    Scale your response management process

    Some weeks you have one project on your plate, and others, three or more. RFPIO lets you scale to your needs by allowing unlimited user access with each project.

    Integrate AI into your proposal management solution

    Think of artificial intelligence (AI) as a team member that never tires and always has a great attitude. Leverage it to help you answer up to 80 percent of an RFP. It can also analyze the RFP to help you with the go/no-go process, analyze win-loss opportunities, and help perfect your formatting.

    Using proposal management software

    RFPs are becoming much more common than they were in the past, and mere humans have a tough time keeping up. Proposal management tools help organizations respond to more bids in less time.

    The advantages of bid proposal tools

    The best bid proposal tools are designed by proposal managers to help manage each of the eight steps in the response process. Streamline your process with the following:

    • Project management – Track each team member and workflow through project management.
    • Content management – A great content management system is more than a repository. It should leverage AI to point you to the most appropriate content and help keep the content library current.
    • Collaboration – It’s almost impossible to go it alone when creating a proposal, and there’s a good chance you don’t share office space with some of your teammates. Today’s bid proposal software should include powerful collaboration tools.
    • Integrations – Most organizations use customer relationship management software, communication software, project management software, and others. Advanced bid proposal tools integrate with most of the tools you already use.
    • Business intelligence and analytics – Use insights to help determine what you can do differently in the future.

    Selecting proposal management software

    We consider a few features essential when looking for software to help with proposal management.

    • Import/export capabilities – You might receive an RFP in a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or even a PDF. Look for software that lets you import the document into a standardized platform that your team knows and then exports it into the customer’s preferred format.
    • Content management – Look for an intuitive single source of truth for all of your company knowledge and documents.
    • Integrations – Your proposal management platform should enhance your existing tech stack, not weigh it down. Look for software that integrates with the tools you already use.
    • AI assistance – Intelligent software points you to the best content, does much of the work for you, assigns questions to SMEs, and analyzes past responses and future opportunities.

    Streamlined proposal management with RFPIO

    RFPIO is mission-critical software for companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Zoom, Visa, and many, many more. Its advanced proposal management features include:

    • Import/export capabilities – Import each document from your customer’s preferred format onto your desired working template. From there, export the finished document back to the customer’s format before submitting the proposal.
    • Content management – RFPIO offers the industry’s most advanced AI-based content management system. It will answer as much as 80 percent of your document and help you keep your library free from ROT (redundant, outdated, and trivial content).
    • Integrations – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with more than two dozen of the most popular business applications.
    • AI assistance – RFPIO’s continually-learning AI tool helps you maintain and utilize your content library and generate analytics to help you win more bids and demonstrate value to executives.

    Case study

    TeamDynamix, a cloud-based IT Service Management and Project Portfolio Management platform, has seen a 300 percent increase in RFP volume over the last three years. When shopping for software to address the rise in volume, they looked for scalability and efficiency.

    With RFPIO, TeamDynamix met the 3x increase and reduced turnaround time by about 40 percent, allowing them time to perfect each response and maintain consistency.

    Hop on a free demo to see how RFPIO can help you win more bids and boost revenue with fewer resources.

     

    RFP response management resource

    RFP response management resource

    Product & Best Practices

    You may have heard the adage that 80 percent of a company’s business comes from 20 percent of its customers. Many call these big customers “whales.”

    Whether or not that number holds true for your company, big-ticket sales are the holy grail for any business. While sales teams would love their whale customers to click “buy” on their website and call it a deal, large purchases require time and due diligence on the buyer’s part and at least an equal amount of effort on the seller’s part.

    Requests for proposals (RFPs) precede most large purchases and they specifically outline the customers’ requirements and goals and define the bidding process and desired contract terms. A typical RFP could have 100s to 1,000s of questions.

    If that sounds like a lot, I’m not going to lie; it is. Strategic RFP response management requires expertise from multiple stakeholders across the organization, a tightly coordinated set of deliverables, and an excellent wordsmith or two.

    Now for the good news.

    The right RFP response management processes help make short work of creating winning proposals.

    This blog post will show you how to create timely, accurate, and compelling proposals by establishing systematic response processes and hopefully land more whales.

    Understanding RFP management

    RFP management, at least from the vendor side, is the process of organizing and responding to requests for proposals. Of course, that definition is simplistic. RFP response management is about choosing whether an RFP is worth a response and coordinating subject matter experts (SMEs), stakeholders, deadlines and deliverables, and a postmortem.

    A typical RFP response includes:

    • A cover letter – Much like when you apply for a job, and perhaps even more so, a cover letter is an opportunity to shine beyond the document’s limitations. It may include information that shows you know what they need, how your company can address those needs, and maybe a little flattery, or at least a statement demonstrating that you’d like to work with them.
    • An executive summary – An executive summary dives deeper than a cover letter. It might show how you plan to address the customer’s needs, competitive differentiators, and why your company is an expert.
    • An implementation plan – This is usually part of the questionnaire. The implementation plan is about how you will meet customer needs, including timelines, onboarding and customer service team members, and so on.
    • Terms of the deal – This section details the costs, postimplementation support, and a contract. Note that the customer may not sign that particular contract, but it will show them the terms and conditions.
    • References – Potential customers want to know that you have a track record of meeting similar needs to theirs. Include at least a couple of references from a similar industry, size, or type of product or service.

    The Response management process

    Do you want to know my favorite part of a great RFP response management process? Cheating. As a matter of fact, cheating is encouraged, if not the only way, to respond effectively.

    Below is the RFP process created by our response experts. You’ll get to the cheating part in step three, but please don’t skip steps one and two.

    Step one – Should you bid or should you (no-)go?

    Not all RFPs align with your business’s goals or capabilities. It’s okay to choose not to respond to an RFP that you probably won’t or might not want to win.

    Step two – Hold a kickoff meeting

    The most critical part of an RFP process comes before you ever receive an RFP. You should know your stakeholders and have a list of subject matter experts (SMEs) with their areas of expertise and availability.

    Once you do receive the RFP, call a meeting with your SMEs, writers, editors, and others involved in the project. Fill them in on their roles, responsibilities, and deliverable deadlines.

    Step three – First draft

    Step three is almost fun, at least it should be if you have an up-to-date content and document library. Let the library do much of the work for you by responding to the questions you’ve seen before with its stored question-and-answer pairs.

    Step four – Second draft

    Depending on the age and health of your content library, you might arrive at step four with 80 percent of the work already done. Now is the time to roll up your sleeves and answer the rest of the questions. You will probably need to involve your SMEs.

    Step five – Review and revise

    When attempting to convey that your product or service is the best for the buyer’s needs, your RFP response should be perfect. Are your answers, including those from the content library, accurate and well-written? Are there any typos or grammatical errors?

    Step six – Submit the response

    Your response is polished and perfect and hopefully on time, if not early. Submit it as soon as it’s ready and wait for a receipt.

    Step seven – Save and audit the responses

    Your RFP response contains valuable information that is certain to be useful for future RFPs. Set yourself up for success by auditing your new responses and storing those with value in your content library.

    Step eight – Postmortem

    Even if you’ve answered every question with relevant and beautifully worded responses, your company’s product or service is a perfect match for the buyer, and even if you won the bid, you should always take a moment to assess what went right and what went wrong.

    Perhaps you find a bottleneck in your process or rely too heavily on a particularly busy SME who’s understandably slow to respond. Addressing those or other problems before the next project will help you prevent those issues from undermining your subsequent response.

    The challenges of response management

    Response management is challenging. Even the best response teams need help. Heck, even our response management teams need help. Here are some roadblocks you might encounter:

    • Lack of time – It can take days or even weeks to respond to an RFP. RFP software can cut that time in half or better.
    • Strict deadlines – An RFP deadline is pretty much set in stone. A slow internet connection can mean the difference between winning and losing a deal. Try to submit your proposal early to avoid unforeseen delays.
    • Disorganized content library – A well-maintained knowledge base will save you days on a typical response. A poorly maintained knowledge repository will force stakeholders to search for answers and annoy SMEs, who might have to repeat themselves.
    • Siloed and distributed workforces – RFP response is collaborative by definition. When stakeholders are spread throughout the organization and even the world, let’s just say that herding cats seems like a comparative breeze. A great RFP response platform should have its own collaboration tools and work with your existing ones.
    • Security risks – When a company suffers a data breach, it affects customer confidence and the bottom line. Be sure your RFP response platform has strict security protocols.

    How to manage RFP responses

    Perhaps repeatability is the ultimate sign of a great process—or is it agility?

    Imagine attempting to scale Mount Everest without a guide. An experienced guide knows all the well-worn trails and how to respond to changing conditions. Responding to an RFP is far less perilous than climbing Everest, but the principles are the same.

    Optimize time management with automation

    Your SMEs are some of the busiest people in your organization. Respect your stakeholders’ time by letting your process do most of the work. RFPIO leverages artificial intelligence to guide you to the correct answers to an RFP’s questions.

    Scale your response management process

    Response resource needs are tough to predict. One response might need dozens of stakeholders, while another might only need a few. You might have one RFP on your plate this week, but next week three more will appear.

    Too few user licenses might force you to ignore some RFPs, while too many are a waste. RFPIO doesn’t have user licenses. Our scalable platform enables you to assign the exact personnel you need for each response without it affecting your team’s budget.

    Upgrade your content management approach

    A well-maintained content management system allows you to access company history, documents, hiring procedures, financial information, and much more. It also protects your SMEs’ time by ensuring they won’t have to repeat past answers.

    Regularly audit your content management system to ensure that everything is accurate and up to date.

    Facilitate collaboration

    RFP response management is a team effort. If your company is anything like RFPIO, you have SMEs and other stakeholders distributed worldwide. Even if not, pinning people down for in-person meetings is a challenge.

    RFPIO enhances collaboration either directly through the project management platform or any of its third-party integration partners, such as Slack, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, and so on.

    Employ branded response templates

    Add the final sheen to your polished and perfected response with branded response templates tailored to your organization.

    What is knowledge management?

    Knowledge management is about capturing, storing, organizing, maintaining, and generally managing all of the information that is valuable enough for a company to keep. That might include incorporation papers, financial statements, hiring policies, product information, customer details, and so on.

    Effective knowledge management also includes regular audits to ensure all the information is current and relevant. It should also flag records for disposal according to “shred by” regulations. Ideally, all knowledge should be easily accessible to those who need it.

    Improving RFP knowledge management

    Organizations and their employees lose a lot of time to improper knowledge management. An IDC study found that employees spend an average of 14 hours a week trying to locate data. A McKinsey survey found that searchable knowledge bases can reduce that time spent by as much as 35 percent.

    RFPIO’s Content Library helps organizations improve their RFP (and companywide) knowledge management by providing a repository for all their company content and documentation in an easily accessible and highly-searchable, thanks to machine learning, single source of truth.

    Scale organizational content

    I like to shop. Perhaps you do too. As we both know, if we keep bringing new items into our homes without clearing out the old, we’ll soon overflow and might have trouble locating our favorite comfy sweaters.

    Just as we occasionally need to clean out our drawers and closets, a well-organized knowledge management approach needs regular content auditing to ensure accuracy, relevancy, and timeliness. RFPIO helps you make data-driven decisions when streamlining and scaling your content library.

    Conduct regular review cycles by turning to RFPIO to identify the content you use and the content you don’t. Additional reporting metrics include answer accuracy and who is using the content.

    Remember, RFPIO’s unlimited user model lets you engage maintenance help from any team member.

    Centralize your content library

    You might have a distributed and siloed workforce, but a centralized content library consolidates and democratizes your organization’s knowledge base.

    Future-proof your knowledge base

    Your needs today look very different from your needs tomorrow. You can help future-proof your knowledge base by performing regular audits.

    RFPIO gently reminds you when it’s time for your scheduled Content Library audit, ensuring that your content is accurate and current. The more often you issue new product features or releases, the more you should audit your content.

    Another often overlooked component of future-proofing is creating a succession plan. Sure, you might plan on staying with your company until retirement, but perhaps you’ll receive a job offer you can’t refuse or simply choose to take a vacation.

    Make sure you have a plan in place in your absence, which includes training others on the content library, including familiarizing them with tagging practices, and so on.

    Choosing response management software

    Maximizing your response output without adding employees will likely require help from a response management software. What are the key components of advanced response management software?

    RFP management software: essential features

    When assessing available software, look for the following:

    • Import/export capabilities – RFPs arrive in multiple formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and sometimes even PDFs. Advanced response software lets you import from any of the most commonly used formats, work within your familiar platform, and export into the buyer’s format.
    • Content management – Access all your stored question-and-answer pairs with a few clicks. Better yet, advanced response software leverages machine learning to help you find the correct answers fast and do most of the work for you.
    • Integrations – Response software should work within your existing applications to foster ultimate productivity and collaboration.
    • Artificial intelligence – Access automated answers, track progress, and generate reports using advanced AI.

    How a response management platform can support your revenue team

    The same features that facilitate response management help enable sales. Most large sales include proposals and documents such as due diligence and security questionnaires. RFPIO seamlessly integrates with sales enablement, CRM, and vendor assessment tools.

    Increase your win rate with RFPIO

    Respond to more RFPs, and boost your win rate without adding personnel by leveraging RFPIO’s advanced response software.

    Case study

    RFPIO helped a human resources organization double its win rate thanks to the Content Library. Before RFPIO, their teams spent most of their time searching for answers to questions they’d answered before.

    For those answers they did have stored, they’d often find themselves correcting errors directly in the proposal rather than in the system, meaning the mistakes were being passed down to future responses. RFPIO made it easy to store, find, and correct answers within the system, saving hours on each response, while the professional responses helped significantly boost the win rate.

    See how RFPIO can help you build better bids and increase your win rate by taking us for a test drive.

    Response management software FAQs

    • What is an RFP? – Businesses, nonprofits, and governmental agencies issue requests for proposals when seeking bids for large purchases.
    • Who owns the response management process? – Response management ownership depends on a company’s organizational structure. Some have dedicated response management teams, and in others, sales personnel might own the process.
    • Do manual response processes work? – Manual response processes do work. However, they are inefficient and have trouble keeping up with growing needs.
    • What kind of organizations issue RFPs? – Any type of organization can issue RFPs.
    • How does artificial intelligence help the response process? – I will let data scientists and software developers debate whether AI is actually more intelligent than human brains (I’m team human, at least for now), but it is undeniably faster. It can find relevant responses within seconds, while humans might take minutes or more.
    • How many users can RFPIO support at one time? – RFPIO is a project-based platform rather than user-based. Go ahead and assign as many users as you need.
    • Does RFPIO integrate with other business applications? – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with more than two dozen of the most popular business applications.
    • Is RFPIO secure? – RFPIO offers best-in-class security protocols and is trusted by highly secure tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Visa, Facebook, and far more.
    Response management made simple

    Response management made simple

    Selling & Enablement

    When an organization seeks you out, it’s flattering. Your product or service is getting noticed. While everyone in your organization deserves tremendous kudos for the recognition, receiving an RFX is just the beginning.

    Responding to a request for proposal (RFP), request for information (RFI), request for quotation (RFQ), due diligence questionnaire (DDQ), security questionnaire, or more generically, an RFX, requires a well-honed process that highlights your organization’s professionalism.

    Please excuse the hodgepodge of metaphors, but brush off your lapels, sharpen your pencils, and put your best foot forward. It’s time to respond.

    What is response management?

    While RFXs are as individual as their issuers, they all have one common element: a deadline. An RFX might have hundreds or thousands of pages. In addition to pricing and product-specific questions, you might see questions about company history, culture, finances, the onboarding process, and so on.

    The final proposal will require detailed and accurate answers, a clear and engaging narrative, and (usually) multiple stakeholders from throughout the organization.

    Response management is the process of making that happen. Or more technically, it’s about understanding, defining, and publishing a full process. As with other projects within your organization, it includes establishing workflow, roles and responsibilities.

    Who is responsible for response management?

    Often, RFXs arrive through an organization’s CRM. From there, it might go to a response or proposal team, a single response manager, or a salesperson. Enterprise organizations are more likely to have dedicated RFX response teams than small businesses.

    However, even full-time response teams will need help from subject matter experts (SMEs) throughout their organizations. As a response manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to the project as a whole, or at least their part. Each stakeholder must understand their expectations.

    Owning the response management process

    A response manager might not be part of the C-suite. They might not head up a department, or even have a dedicated supervisory role. When they receive an RFX, however, the buck stops with them.

    Before delving further, we should back up a bit. The response manager’s role begins long before an RFX arrives and ends long after it’s out the door. Truth be told, the process is most efficient when it’s ongoing, regardless of whether the response manager is facing a deadline or not.

    Evaluate processes

    If you’re a runner, you might stretch before your daily five-mile run. During your run, you may track your heart rate, pace, and distance on a smartwatch. Afterwards, you might enjoy a deeper stretch and eat a healthy meal.

    Or, if you’re like most people, you start your work day awakened by an alarm. Then, in no particular order, you might brush your teeth, workout, shower, dress, perhaps put on makeup and style your hair, maybe drink a cup of coffee, and have some breakfast. You might also commute to your office.

    Once you get to work, you probably turn your computer on, check your email, agenda, Slack channel, and so on. Maybe you queue up some favorite work playlists and see where you stand on your goals. At the end of the day, you shut everything down and head home. Once every week, month, quarter, or however your company sees fit, you might see productivity reports.

    If you notice in my two examples, the primary activities, running and working, are really only implied. The rest are processes. None of the processes mentioned above offer quantifiable productivity, although the smartwatch certainly tracks productivity. In both cases, the hypothetical people could argue that without their processes, they would be far less productive.

    In each case, the processes are :

    • Repeatable – On an individual level, we call the processes “routines” or “regimens,” which are by definition repeatable.
    • Scalable – Planning a longer marathon training run or working from home for the day? Both processes can easily adapt.
    • Specific – Run five miles every day, wake up at the same time, arrive at work on time, and so on. All of these are specific milestones.
    • Measurable – Both processes include quantifiable goals.

    Without processes, a company’s accounts payable (AP) department could wreak fiscal havoc. A poorly defined onboarding process could lead to confusion and employee dissatisfaction. Insufficient RFP response processes will result in a poor win rate, diminished morale, SME frustration, and threaten company buy-in.

    So, let’s talk about establishing response management processes.

    Establish an accurate organizational knowledge base

    The best way to get an SME on your side is to do as much of the work as possible before calling them into the process. The best way to alienate an SME is to ask them to constantly repeat themselves. That’s where a well-maintained and accurate organizational knowledge base comes in.

    If your company is like most, it’s siloed. Perhaps you have two knowledge bases, an internal one (such as company wikis, products, services, marketing collateral, archives, and so on) and an external one (sales-based content). It’s not even unheard of for a response department to have its own knowledge base built from previous proposals.

    For efficiency’s sake, one knowledge base is certainly better than two or more. However, you need to be sure that proprietary information doesn’t end up in a customer proposal or private HR records in a company email.

    As with the overall process, the knowledge base should be:

    • Repeatable – If you record answers to commonly-seen questions, SMEs will only have to double-check accuracy.
    • Scalable – Your knowledge base should have the ability to grow with your company.
    • Specific – Are you able to provide access only as needed? Does your system help you find relevant information?
    • Measurable – Who uses it? What goes in it? The better you can measure its worth, the more likely you will have company buy-in.

    Eliminate repetition

    Repetition isn’t always bad. Knowledge base repeatability helps prevent SMEs from having to repeat themselves, but you also want to eliminate repetition–which can lead to confusion and dated or inaccurate responses–within your knowledge base.

    To help avoid repetition, define and document your layout. Use collections, response headers, and how you classify and organize your content to define your knowledge base’s layout. Make sure everyone is on the same page by documenting everything.

    When you spend hours staring at a screen, you might lose objectivity in defining and documenting. There’s a term in IT called “rubber ducking.” Essentially the concept is that if you’re stuck on something, explain it to the duck. Expressing the problem out loud helps take you out of your head for a moment.

    If you walk through it from an outside perspective, it makes it easier to see. Lay out the process and walk through it. For example, “I get this from sales, and then send it on to someone who does their part.” So, if you’re stuck, rubber duck it.

    Additionally, it’s much easier to see when it’s visual. Identify redundancies and where things might fall through the cracks. Don’t be afraid to go analog at first, such as arranging index cards on the floor.

    Automate responses

    At RFPIO, we believe in reusing and recycling content as a step toward saving the environment and hours of a response team’s time. Odds are, the RFXs sitting in your inbox right now contain multiple repeat, or near repeat, questions.

    Leveraging artificial intelligence to find past responses to similar questions will show your team, especially your subject matter experts (SMEs), that their time matters.

    Define roles, responsibilities, and the process, by starting with intelligence that is already in your knowledge base. Ask what you can do in your process that isn’t necessarily affected by other people.

    Improve SME collaboration

    Often, SME relationships feel one-way, at least to them. Put yourself in their shoes when you’re looking at your process. What are their touch points? When do they hear from you—is it only when you need something? If so, they’ll feel used.

    Understand what’s on their plate. Get their feedback and use it when you can. Talk about and offer help with tight deadlines. Ask for things like customer success stories that you can use now or in the future. They might know about the roadmap in their department to help tell the company story. They are also invested in the process. Keep them updated.

    Be specific

    It’s human nature to make assumptions about what an RFX is asking. If, for example, a prospect is looking for a specific product or service that you don’t have, don’t respond with another one. Not only do you risk alienating the potential customer, it will skew your data.

    For example, let’s say you sell a cloud computing platform and many of the RFXs you receive ask for an application security product you don’t sell. If instead of responding that you don’t have the product, you respond with your application’s security protocol, the data could be misconstrued within your company to show that there’s a sudden interest in your application’s security protocol when in reality no one asked about it.

    Scale response capacity

    If your company is like many, the demands on your response team might be light at the beginning of the year, but by the time Q4 rolls around, you barely have time to grab a cup of coffee.

    You can free up at least enough time to get a cup of coffee, and maybe even lunch, by standardizing and automating what you can.

    Response software that tracks activity can quantify how long things are taking and help you determine when you might need additional resources. It’s also worth noting that RFPIO’s pricing structure automatically scales by charging by the project rather than being locked into a specific number of users.

    Measure growth and continuously improve

    Help maintain company buy-in by quantifying your system’s value. Feed innovation with concealable and actionable data such as tracking sales and product lifecycles. You should also periodically review the overall process as a company to see where you stand on your maturity roadmap.

    • Were your responses submitted on time?
    • Were your responses accurate?
    • Did you lose anything in a competitive or compelling space?
    • What else can you do to improve your process?

    Once you have armed yourselves with data, enact incremental changes as you discover them. However, too many changes at once lend themselves to risks and red flags.

    With RFPs, you’re dealing with direct customer and market requests. Share with the company, specifically marketing and product. Go through RFPs and RFIs yearly to see what else you might offer customers and market trends. Have those conversations before the next year’s roadmap is created. Respond to the question at hand and pay attention to the questions when creating a roadmap instead of the answers.

    RFPIO can help you drive revenue growth with a smarter response management solution

    When the focus is on responding to an RFX, it’s easy to forget that the ultimate goal is to drive revenue growth, not just fill in the blanks. Fuel your revenue-generating engines with:

    Repeatability

    RFPIO saves time and work at every stage of the response process.

    • Intake – Receive RFXs through your CRM or directly through RFPIO.
    • Content Library – A typical RFX contains very few original questions. RFPIO’s Content Library leverages machine learning to help you automatically fill in up to 80 percent of the document, freeing your key stakeholders to focus on unique content and other revenue-generating opportunities.
    • Export – Export your response to a customized template or the customer’s preferred format

    Scalability

    Today’s workload is going to look very different from tomorrow’s, next month’s, next quarter’s, or next year’s. RFPIO scales with you and provides actionable insights to help your company intelligently respond to changing demands.

    Tracking – Track how long projects are taking to help determine when you need to rev up or cut back on resources.
    Pricing – Licensed-based pricing models limit you during busy times and are a waste when things slow down. RFPIO allows for unlimited users on each project and only charges for the number of projects you have going at any given time.

    Reporting

    Response teams are at the forefront of market trends and advanced analytics helps companies address competitive weaknesses and make informed decisions to shape the future. RFPIO provides annual, quarterly, monthly, and project-level reporting with just a few keystrokes. Built-in reporting metrics include:

    • Project type – How many of your projects are RFPs? How about DDQs?
    • Project stage – How many requests have you received? Where are you on each one?
    • Time to completion – How long is it taking you to complete projects?
    • Content Library usage – How often is your Content Library being used? How is it being used?
    • Auto respond usage – How many total questions? How many did the Content Library identify and how many were automatically responded to?
    • Win/loss analysis – How many and what kinds of bids do you win? What areas need improvement?
    • Near limitless customization options – Create your own reports in your desired layout.

    *Next Action*

    You’ll respond to more RFXs in less time and improve your win rate with RFPIO. However, RFPIO is more than a response project management tool; it’s a sales enablement platform, a company knowledge repository, a virtual librarian that points any user to relevant content, and a 24/7 on- and off-site statistician and data analyst.

    Talk to one of our specialists. Take a free ride to show you how RFPIO is a turbo-charged revenue-generating machine.

    13 top blogs for response professionals

    13 top blogs for response professionals

    Templates & guides

    I like to think of RFP response managers as the unsung heroes of their organizations. In a typical company, around fourty-five percent of revenue begins with an RFP, and response is becoming more and more competitive every day.

    In addition to having a range of titles — proposal manager, bid manager, capture manager, or RFP manager — response managers wear a lot of hats. They’re part researcher, part writer, part salesperson, and part ringleader, although they may claim that they’re more than part ringleader. Keeping up with that evolving skill set can be exhausting!

    You could go back to school, I suppose, or you can hone your skills through blogs. Every morning, I read a handful of curated blog posts to help up my game. They’re quick, convenient, and easy to come back to when interrupted, and the great ones make me feel a little bit smarter.

    In this post, I will share some of my favorite blogs. Some are about RFPs and response management and others dust off and refine all those other hats you wear.

    1. Gartner
    2. McKinsey
    3. Learning Hub from G2
    4. Insight Partners Blog
    5. Hubspot
    6. Seth’s Blog
    7. Martech Blog
    8. Proposal Pro
    9. Presentation Zen
    10. RFPIO
    11. Winning the Business from APMP
    12. Grammarly
    13. Business Writing

    Best blogs for general business trends

    1. Gartner

    Gartner is a fantastic resource for all things tech. They offer business consulting and some of the most thorough statistical research out there. The blog contextualizes their research and offers invaluable actionable insights to increase revenue and navigate a dynamic business environment.

    Post you should start with: Is now the time to stand up or invest in sales enablement?

    Generating revenue is the single most important business goal. As a writer, I like to feel as though I am part of the revenue generation process, although not directly. My colleagues in the marketing department and I are responsible for creating brand awareness and helping our sales department sell. Does that make marketing “sales enablement?” Is RFPIO a sales enablement platform? Doug Bushée with Gartner thinks so.

    “(Sales enablement is) an opportunity to help your sales force be more effective, not just through technology or training but with a complete package that includes content, technology, communications, sales process, and training to enable your sales teams to drive revenue.” – Doug Bushée

     

    2. McKinsey & Company

    McKinsey & Company is an OG in the management consulting world. While their blog isn’t specifically geared toward RFP response, they offer insights and best practices for all verticals and organizational structures. Many in the response industry look to McKinsey for inspiration or statistics for their own blogs. McKinsey’s blog covers a wide range of topics including mergers and acquisitions, analytics, risk management, sales operations, and more.

    Post you should start with: Better forecasting for large capital projects

    You’d be hard-pressed to find an industry with more variables, at least when it comes to proposals, than construction. The larger the project, the more difficult the bidding process. Most (we hope) companies don’t want to underbid, but all too often, it happens. This blog post explores the psychological factors behind underbidding.

    “Why do project planners, on average, fail to forecast their effect on the costs of complex projects? We’ve covered this territory before but continue to see companies making strategic decisions based on inaccurate data. Deliberately or not, costs are systematically underestimated and benefits are overestimated during project preparation—because of delusions or honest mistakes on one hand and deceptions or strategic manipulation of information or processes on the other.” – McKinsey & Company

    3. Learning Hub from G2

    I am sort of obsessed with reviews. I refuse to try a new hair stylist, dog groomer, or restaurant without first checking their online reviews. I’m that annoying person who scans QR codes in the aisles of Costco or Target to make sure I’m making the best buying decisions.

    Before accepting my job with RFPIO, I made sure it was a cultural fit for me and I checked G2 to see what their customers had to say about the platform. G2 is more than a software review site. Its blog is a phenomenal source of information for nearly every vertical and every skill set.

    Post you should start with: What is accountability in the workplace? 12 ways to foster it

    Most RFP responses require several stakeholders, which is where that unofficial role of ringmaster comes in. Guest blogger Susmita Sarma has several very helpful tips to create accountability in the workplace, which is sure to help you spend less time chasing stakeholders down and more time doing the rest of your jobs.

    “In reality, accountability at work is all of the above, which runs like a machine. But if the employees keep no accountability mechanism in place, things quickly fall apart. To avoid this, every employee should be accountable for their own actions at work. It builds confidence within teams and organizations because people know they can depend on one another.” – Susmita Sarma

    4. Insight Partners Blog

    Do you follow economic or industry news? If not, I completely get it. Sometimes our plates are so full that it’s difficult to see the world outside. Few know more about business trends than venture capitalists, which is why my go-to blog for all things business is Insight Partners.

    Post you should start with: SaaS pricing tactics for a high-inflation environment

    Pricing is one of the key components of an RFP, and the ultimate component of an RFQ (request for quote). Should you offer the same pricing structure today as a quarter ago? Should you raise prices to cover inflation or lower them to gain a competitive advantage?

    “Properly setting prices is an untapped opportunity for SaaS providers to squeeze more value out of what they offer. We often see companies who haven’t touched their pricing for three years or more — which might explain the lack of inflationary growth in the sector. Usually this means companies have built up a significant amount of pricing power through market growth and product improvement which they haven’t yet monetized. While this was also the case well before the current inflationary environment, now the opportunities are even greater — while the risks of not adapting your pricing are more severe.” – James Wood

    Best marketing blogs

    5. Hubspot Blog

    Hubspot is one of the top CRM platforms and it has a strong focus on marketing. Their blog could have gone under the “general trends” category, but I read Hubspot for their marketing tips. In their blog, industry experts discuss everything from a product’s life cycle to how to be more productive.

    Post you should start with: 12 free personality tests you can take online today

    Aren’t online personality tests so early 2000s? In most cases, I’d agree, but there is value in learning how you tick. By understanding your personality and triggers, you can help establish a more harmonious and productive work environment. And because more data is almost always better, have your teammates take the tests.

    These tests are great conversation starters, especially among groups of people who don’t know each other very well. They can help create connections and establish common ground at work. Learning about your colleagues’ personality traits can reveal how each team member prefers to receive feedback and criticism. This can help your team avoid unnecessary miscommunication down the road, as well as lead to more productive projects and meetings.” – Caroline Forsey

    6. Seth’s Blog

    I guess you could call Seth Godin a marketing guru. He’s a Stanford Business grad, a published author, and a dot com alumnus. Now he blogs. Some of his posts read like streams of consciousness and others like social media posts. I call them bursts of marketing wisdom.

    Post you should start with: Contracts and Power

    Proposals aren’t technically contracts but many contain the same terms. Who has the power? Would it surprise you to know that the power shifts depending on where you are in the sales cycle? Can you control the shifts?

    “In the moment before a contract is signed, the lower-powered party momentarily has more power. That’s because the other entity wants what you have. But as soon as they have it, it’s only the contract that offers concrete protection against future events.” — Seth Godin

    7. Martech Blog

    The content-rich Martech blog is the leading resource for tech marketers. Their team of marketing professionals blogs about diverse topics such as content strategy, World Cup marketing, and how to survive the death of cookies. They have a robust search engine, so if you have a marketing, or marketing-adjacent, question, just plug your query in to get expert tips. Check the site often as they typically post three or more blogs per day.

    Post you should start with: Only 28% of B2B content marketers report having the technology they need

    This post caught my attention because it’s one of the many areas where marketers and proposal professionals share common ground. Twenty-eight percent of B2B marketers have the technology they need. Proposal management is somewhat better; 43% say they have the technology they need to perform their jobs.

    “The technology issues are likely the results of two things. First, too many B2B companies are letting features and functions determine what’s in their stacks, when it should be determined by their own strategy. Second, they may not understand the level of complexity and amount of resources needed to manage and maintain their martech tools.”

    Best proposal blogs

    8. Proposal PRO

    I’ll be the first to admit that we don’t spend as much time talking about nonprofit grant proposals as we should. Even when taking profit out of the equation, as with any for-profit company, nonprofits still need to create a compelling case for organizations to untie their purse strings. Competing for an organization’s budgeted grant money is challenging. Because you have to demonstrate that your nonprofit meets a donor’s values, a captivating and clear narrative is perhaps even more important than with for-profit industries.

    Jodie Eisenberg, the founder of Proposal PRO, specializes in government grants and has more than $500 million in federal grants and contracts under her belt. In her blogs, she shares the tips and tricks to win those super-competitive federal grants.

    Post you should start with: 4 ways that grant-writing can ruin your personality

    Confession time: one of my closest friends is a grant writer. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard more polite variations on #4, “Don’t talk to me—I’m on a deadline!” Proposal writers of all kinds are arguably some of the busiest in their organizations. Jodie empathizes and offers advice that might help save grant writers from themselves.

    “Let’s face it, deadline pressure is a thing, and if you’re still waiting for people to sign documents, provide a final budget item, or just call you back with an OK to submit, things can get tense.” – Jodie Eisenberg

    9. Presentation Zen

    The first thing that caught my eye with Presentation Zen was, well, the name. I’m willing to bet that your job, like mine, is fast-paced and requires you to turn on a dime. Presentations, where perfection is expected, only add to the stress. Presentation Zen is all about bringing confidence to your presentations by featuring the best advice from presentation experts.

    Post you should start with: Pixar Studios *still* offers free storytelling lessons online

    You may wonder why I recommended a post about the largest animation studio in the world. I’m not suggesting you include cartoon characters and fantasy in your responses, but proposal writing, like most writing, should offer strong narratives and follow a similar arc to your favorite Pixar movies.

    Pixar may be the best at the technical side of animation, but what really made them successful is their understanding of story and storytelling. In an old interview regarding Pixar’s success, Steve Jobs said this: “Even though Pixar is the most technologically advanced studio in the world, John Lasseter has a saying which has really stuck: No amount of technology will turn a bad story into a good story.”

    10. RFPIO Blog

    I know how it sounds to recommend our own blog, but we’re truly passionate about improving the full-circle RFP process with response management software. That means that within our blog we cover procurement in addition to proposal themes. This broad range of topics helps deepen understanding and collaboration between buyers and sellers. Not only that, but many of the posts in our blog are inspired directly by recent conversations with our customers.

    Post you should start with: RFPIO CEO sees opportunity in the changing economy

    This post from Ganesh Shankar, CEO at RFPIO, offers a vision of how response teams can help their companies navigate economic uncertainty. Currently, for many, RFPs are manual, time-consuming, painful, and downright annoying — but they don’t have to be. In addition to identifying challenges faced by organizations, the post explores how technology, transparency, and collaboration can drive significant revenue.

    “In the grand scheme of things, this is a time when companies are looking for ways to be more efficient. Technologies tend to help companies become more efficient.
    Better efficiency doesn’t mean that automation will take people’s jobs. I strongly feel that technology will allow companies to produce more and deliver better outputs with less infrastructure.” – Ganesh Shankar

    11. Winning the business

    APMP (the Association of Proposal Management Professionals) is the resource for proposal managers and stakeholders. Their blog, not surprisingly, is a wealth of information. Some of it is serious and some is rather tongue-in-cheek although most posts focus on best practices and industry news.

    Post you should start with: Is a business proposal different from a marriage proposal?

    If you google “proposal,” you’ll find that most dictionaries offer two definitions. One is a written proposal and the other involves a ring and a knee. Is it a reach to compare the two? Winning the Business makes the case that the two types of proposals have a lot more in common than we think.

    “This article considers the logical progression of the capture methodology by comparing it with (the) universal experience of personal courtship. Couples go through a multi-stepped process that is remarkably like the four-step capture methodology. Both scenarios have several similarities including a common means to prompt a positive response during the proposal stage.” – Alan L. Lewis, CP APMP

    Best writing blogs

    12. Grammarly

    What do proposal managers and college students have in common? In a word, writing. And in both cases, grammar matters. sixty-two percent of procurement departments say that they regularly receive error-riddled RFP responses. Sadly, grammatical and spelling errors can take a bidder right out of the running, which is understandable since most customers want to see attention to detail throughout an RFP response.

    There are several writing and grammar tools online, but I love Grammarly because it covers many of the confusing basics like when to use accept vs. except.

    Post you should start with: How to write a great business proposal

    Grammarly is far more than just an online grammar checker. Its blog offers real-world advice and business writing tips. Grammarly can help boost your win rate by showcasing your company in its best light. Rachel Meltzer offers guidelines for creating a business proposal, whether solicited through an RFP or unsolicited.

    “A business proposal is a document that presents one company’s products or services to another company in detail. Business proposals are often customized for the potential client. It’s a way for the company to market its product and get on the same page as its potential client before they agree to work together.” – Rachel Meltzer

    13. Business Writing

    While I love Grammarly, its reach is broad. There are tips and tools for students, fiction writers, and writing hobbyists. If you’re looking for something that’s specifically focused on business writing, there’s the Business Writing blog. Like Grammarly, they write entire blog posts covering confusing words like “council vs. counsel,” but their posts all have business angles.

    Post you should start with: Is “data” singular or plural? Does it matter?

    A tech copywriter, technical writer, and data scientist walked into a bar to ponder the word “data.” Okay, I’m open to suggestions as to a punchline, but a debate over whether “data” is singular or plural could get a little raucous, especially if one of the writers is, shall we say, traditional. Business Writing’s Ryan Fisher tackles that surprisingly controversial issue just to conclude that we’re all right.

    “A look at Google’s Ngram graph shows that in American English, while the plural form (the data are) has been predominantly more common, the singular form (the data is) has been rising and is now on par with the plural form.” – Ryan Fisher

     

    How to respond to a security questionnaire

    How to respond to a security questionnaire

    Product & Best Practices

    If you’re like me, you regularly receive emails advising you to change your passwords because one company or another has suffered a security breach. Unfortunately, data breaches are all too common.

    In 2021, there were over 1,800 reported data breaches. That is a significant uptick from prior years. 83% of those breaches involved sensitive customer information, such as Social Security and credit card numbers.

    The average data breach costs $4.4 million, and much of that is passed on to customers—the same customers who had their sensitive data compromised.

    No wonder many businesses now consider cybersecurity their number one concern. Not only does a data breach cost money, it also runs the risk of damaging credibility and eroding trust. Some companies, especially small companies, never recover.

    More than half of organizations have experienced third-party data breaches, often despite having what they think is a rigorous security protocol.

    The average tech stack might contain dozens of different applications and tools. Sometimes, bad actors sneak in through one of those third-party applications, so it’s critical to properly vet each vendor’s security protocols as you would your own.

    The most common way to vet vendors is through security questionnaires. But what are security questionnaires, and how do you respond to them in a way that you, as a vendor, will instill trust?

    What is a security questionnaire?

    After reading this far, you probably have a good idea of what a security questionnaire is. Still, to boil it down, it’s a questionnaire designed to determine whether a vendor or potential vendor is compliant with your security and legal requirements.

    Not surprisingly, security questionnaires are complex and highly technical. The good news is that most questions have “yes” or “no” answers.

    DDQ vs. security questionnaire

    Many people confuse security questionnaires and DDQs (due diligence questionnaires). It’s easy to see why, as both are issued to assess a company’s compliance with the issuer’s regulations and security requirements.

    Neither DDQs nor security questionnaires are specifically part of a sales cycle, although they may be issued before entering into a contract. They might also be issued before an organization is even buying to weed out non-compliant companies before and if the buying process begins.

    There are significant differences between the two types of documents, however. You’re most likely to see DDQs if you’re in the financial segment. They are broader in scope than security questionnaires and may ask about business plans, profits and losses, revenue, etc. They might also ask about cybersecurity policies.

    A security questionnaire is more straightforward and can be issued from any segment to any organization, although primarily to tech companies. While DDQs ask broad questions about processes, often in narrative form, a security questionnaire forces you to pony up your proof of compliance.

    You might see both a DDQ and security questionnaire before receiving an RFP. Generally, the DDQ will come first. Once the issuer is satisfied that you meet their requirements, they might send a security questionnaire to gather certificates and other forms of proof.

    In some cases, a security questionnaire follows an RFP and could be the last step before finalizing a deal.

    Preparing for a security questionnaire response

    Security questionnaires usually arrive via the response manager or perhaps through a CRM. Since most questions center around cybersecurity, SMEs can be from IT, risk management, sales engineering, accounting, information security, operations, and even HR.

    The response turnaround time is typically shorter with a security questionnaire than with an RFx. The issuer might want it within days.

    Components of a security questionnaire

    There are many, many types of security questionnaires, and it would be impossible to list them in this blog post, but here are some examples of what a security questionnaire might assess:

    • Network security
    • Information security
    • Datacenter and physical security
    • Web application security
    • Infrastructure security
    • Business continuity
    • Security audits and penetration testing
    • Personnel policies, hiring practices, and training programs
    • Security certifications
    • SLAs and uptime vs. downtime

    Types of security questionnaires

    There are several types of security questionnaires, but primarily, you will see these:

    Security Questionnaires and Security Questionnaires Lite – Standardized Information Gathering Questionnaires

    • VSAQ – Vendor Security Assessment Questionnaire
    • CAIQ – Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire
    • VSA – Vendor Security Alliance Questionnaire
    • NIST 800-171 – National Institute of Standards and Technology Questionnaire
    • CIS Controls – Center for Internet Security Questionnaire

    How to respond to security questionnaires – and how RFPIO will help

    If you are a response manager, you’re likely very comfortable responding to an RFx or even a DDQ. Both allow for a bit of creativity, in that, along with answering questions, you’re constructing a narrative to show how your company is the right fit for the issuer.

    Security questionnaires aren’t about narratives. They are straightforward and stringent, and accuracy is a legal requirement. Clearly, there’s no room for error. If you’re ready, let’s grab a cup of coffee, or your favorite motivational elixir, and dive right in.

    Step 1 – Search for all available materials

    While security questionnaires are undeniably bulky and complex, there’s a lot of redundancy. You have probably answered many similar questions before. Search your existing database for those answers.

    Often, issuers send a boilerplate questionnaire rather than customize it to each product. Eliminate the questions that don’t apply to your product. Don’t be afraid to ask the issuer to clarify questions that seem confusing or unnecessary.

    Step 1 with RFPIO – Prebuilt centralized Content Library

    RFPIO features the industry-leading AI-powered prebuilt Content Library. Every previous security questionnaire and all your documentation are housed in one place, accessible to any authorized user.

    Step 2 – Answer only the pre-existing matching responses

    Response management isn’t like school. In fact, copying other people’s work is encouraged. Search your existing database for pre-existing matching responses and use them when you can.

    Step 2 with RFPIO – System-driven identification of sections and questions

    RFPIO’s import capabilities, which include Lightning import through Salesforce, leverages machine learning to automatically find matching responses, without you having to initiate the process. This feature alone can do up to 80% of the work for you.

    Step 3 – Group all unanswered questions and collaborate with SMEs

    Once you’ve found all the applicable existing content, you’ll need to collaborate with SMEs to finish the process. Group all your unanswered questions, broken up by SME, and inform them of their timelines.

    Step 3 with RFPIO – Automate through AI

    RFPIO’s auto-respond feature and recommendation engine find existing documents and similar, although not specifically matching, content for SMEs’ review. As a side benefit, once SMEs recognize the time-saving capabilities of RFPIO, they’ll be far more likely to help you in the future.

    Step 4 – Follow up and track the status of responses

    Make sure every team member is completing their portion in a timely manner.

    Step 4 with RFPIO – Streamline collaboration through project management capabilities

    RFPIO’s Project Module offers up-to-the-minute reporting and reminders to ensure that the questionnaire will be ready on time.

    Step 5 – Manually collate and complete the questionnaire

    Whew! You’ve answered all the questions and all you have to do is collate the answers and export them back to the original document. Unfortunately, for many companies, that’s a manual process which could take hours—and sometimes days.

    Step 5 with RFPIO – Export to the source file

    RFPIO eliminates all of the cumbersome manual work with automatic exporting to the response file, all within seconds.

    Security questionnaire response obstacles

    There’s no direct line from a security questionnaire to revenue generation, which is why they’re sometimes left on the back burner. But that’s not the only reason there might be reluctance on the part of your response team. Other obstacles include:

    • Length – A security questionnaire can have hundreds to thousands of questions. That’s more than a little intimidating if the answers aren’t ready to go.
    • You’re time-bound – Sometimes the questionnaire gets stuck in an internal limbo, and sometimes the issuer sends it expecting an almost immediate turnaround. Having most of the answers ready will cut your response time to a fraction of what it could have been.
    • SME cooperation – SMEs are busy people, so understandably, they might not put the security questionnaire at the top of their “to-do” list. Assure them that you value their time by completing as much of the questionnaire as possible.
    • You don’t have all the certifications and protocol – Most companies won’t be able to answer every question in the affirmative. Submit what you have and perhaps see this as an opportunity to reevaluate where your company might be lacking.
    • Too much jargon – Security questionnaires tend to be jargon-heavy, and if you aren’t familiar with what they’re asking, you might not provide an accurate answer. SMEs can help but so can a well-organized, searchable even by jargon, Content Library.
    • Scattered knowledge (identifying and locating the right content) – If you have a siloed knowledge base, tracking everything down is challenging and time-consuming. Upload all of your certificates, documents, and Q&A pairs to a single source of truth accessible to any authorized stakeholder.
    • Non-compliant content management software – If your content management software isn’t compliant with your company’s requirements, SMEs, especially those in security, won’t use it. RFPIO is even secure enough for Microsoft.

    Priorities and tips for the response process

    As you’re staring down a seemingly infinite inbox and a calendar filled with back-to-back meetings, speed might be your top priority. However, security questionnaires are legal documents, so accuracy is the most crucial consideration. Fortunately, response software with built-in content management helps ensure both.

    Streamlining workflow

    RFPIO has several tools to help streamline your workflow, including:

    • Import/Export capabilities – Avoid disorganized, inconsistent, illogical formatting by importing security questionnaires right into your customized template for uniformity, making each stakeholder’s job much more manageable. Once you’ve completed the questionnaire, upload it onto your branded response template or straight to the source document.
    • Project management – If your workforce is like ours, you have people working from home, on other floors, in other buildings, and across the world. RFPIO helps you virtually gather your scattered stakeholders and track progress without chasing people down.
    • Content management – If I, for some reason, were forced to choose my favorite RFPIO feature, it would be the AI-powered Content Library. It:
      • Busts down silos – RFPIO’s Content Library is a single source of truth, with all of your company’s knowledge and documents in one repository.
      • Does most of the work for you – Once you upload the questionnaire, the Content Library’s magical gnomes—we call them the recommendation engine—comb through past responses to make suggestions. All you have to do is accept, edit, or reject. Since security questionnaires ask yes/no questions, there’s little to no editing.
      • Stores content – As the company creates more knowledge and documents, the Content Library will store them for future use.
      • Organizes content – Format, tag, and generally organize the content how you want.
      • Helps keep you compliant – Since we’re talking about security questionnaires, your security team will love this! RFPIO reminds you of expiration and “shred by” dates. It also reminds you when to review specific content and when to audit.
    • Integrations – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with nearly all the communication apps, CRMs, and productivity apps your company uses every day.
    • RFPIO® LookUp – Access the Content Library from anywhere in the world.
    • Autograph – With RFPIO’s Autograph, there’s no need to hunt signatories down. They can sign right from their computers.

    Improving Content Library

    Keep your Content Library clean, up to date, and organized by consulting with sales engineers and others involved in answering security questionnaires. Ask for their input in categorizing and tagging.

    Keeping information up-to-date

    Because security questionnaires are legal documents, accurate and up-to-date information is vital. RFPIO reminds you to clean out all the ROT (redundant, outdated, and trivial) information and documents. It even helps you locate all the ROT.

    Software for security questionnaire responses

    Many companies still rely on manual responses, which are time-consuming and inefficient.One way to differentiate your company from your competitors is to use advanced response software for security questionnaires.

    Response software, such as RFPIO, gives each security questionnaire the thoroughness and scrutiny required while saving your team’s time, keeping SMEs on your good side, and helps keep you compliant.

    Automation

    If you use a CRM or project management software, you probably already know the benefits of automation. Most users do. In fact, IT professionals, such as those helping answer security questionnaires, save up to 20 hours a week using automated processes.

    Automation is a morale booster! 45% of knowledge workers report feeling less burned out when they use automation tools, and 29% say automation lets them leave their jobs at the end of the official workday.

    RFPIO’s automated response processes automatically fill in most of your answers to a security questionnaire and pull corresponding documents. One customer reports that after RFPIO security questionnaire automation, they can answer 100 questions in just 2 hours!

    Templated responses

    Most security questionnaires arrive in Excel, which, as you know, is about as standardized as the snowflakes covering Mount Everest. Excel isn’t to blame. Microsoft designed the OG of spreadsheets to track everything from kids’ activities to trips to space.

    RFPIO imports the hundreds to thousands of lines on a security questionnaire spreadsheet onto your customized template, ensuring that everyone knows exactly how to find what they need. Additionally, since many questions are redundant, RFPIO answers those duplicate questions for you.

    RFPIO’s approach to security questionnaire responses

    Breathe a little easier next time you receive a security questionnaire, knowing that RFPIO has your back. You will save loads of time, create accurate, complete responses, and stay on your SMEs’ good sides.

    If you don’t already use RFPIO, try a free demo.

    How to respond to a DDQ

    How to respond to a DDQ

    Selling & Enablement

    Entering into a business relationship, whether it includes making a large purchase or even a merger or acquisition, is complicated. With today’s security challenges, it is riskier than ever.

    When a company receives a DDQ, the document shouldn’t be taken lightly. Lack of due diligence on the part of the responder can risk future deals, future partnerships, and even the company’s reputation.

    What is a DDQ?

    DDQ stands for due diligence questionnaire. While that sounds somewhat vague, a DDQ is all about mitigating risk by determining whether the company receiving the DDQ complies with the issuer’s standards and regulations.

    A DDQ could be a precursor to an RFP, a merger or acquisition, or an audit from an existing customer. It could even be a way of creating a list of “safe” companies for future dealings.

    Naturally, DDQs are as varied as the companies, and especially the industries, that issue them. Tech companies, for example, emphasize security and privacy compliance. Financial institutions want assurance that vendors won’t put them in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission, among other regulatory agencies. And those in the healthcare industry need to verify HIPAA compliance.

    Naturally, it’s not that simple. There’s a lot of overlap. Every industry, for example, is concerned with security and privacy. Nearly every DDQ, regardless of sector, probes companies about their history, investments, organizational structure, etc.

    In short, the job of a DDQ response team is to paint a picture of a company that is stable and compliant.

    A DDQ is not a sales document. Most DDQs will not ask about product functionality, market share, hiring practices, etc., although they might ask about major new product releases, as they could affect financial forecasts.

    Who issues DDQs?

    While any organization could issue a DDQ, they’re primarily issued by technology companies, financial services companies, and government agencies.

    DDQs can have dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of questions, but even the simplest DDQs require input from multiple stakeholders. If you’re in charge of responding to DDQs, you may need input from the following roles:

    • Financial – You could receive questions regarding your company’s financial health. These may include questions about anything from investors, to financial statements, to liens, to the amount of taxes your company pays, etc. If you work for a privately held company, you might not choose to answer those questions, but the issuer will ask.
    • Legal – Most legal questions fall under the purview of RFPs. However, you may see DDQ questions related to legal compliance.
    • Mergers and Acquisitions – Companies must issue DDQs before entering into mergers or acquisitions.
      Analysts – While raw data might be enough to answer some questions, many will need a deeper understanding and even forecasting.
    • Compliance – Gauging compliance is the core function of a DDQ.
    • IT – IT departments are at the front line of enacting and maintaining security protocols.
    • Procurement – In many companies, procurement departments are DDQs’ project managers. It’s rare, however, to see questions related explicitly to procurement.

    Why do companies issue due diligence questionnaires?

    Issuing a DDQ simplifies the collection and delivery of vital information needed before engaging in or continuing a business relationship.

    A DDQ enables the issuer to learn about current or prospective partnerships’:

    • Financial status – It’s easy to understand why a company might want to learn about a potential vendor’s financial position. A financial misstep from a vendor could have reverberations down the line. However, many, if not most, privately held companies will not open their books to people outside their organization. Publicly traded companies are another story; their financial statuses must be public.
    • Business holdings – Business holdings are part of financial due diligence and could reveal debts and potential tax liabilities.
    • Compliance standards – Compliance requirements are numerous and deep. If a vendor is out of compliance with an issuer’s obligations, the issuer could find themselves out of compliance,

    A DDQ helps a company measure risk in a variety of types of business transactions. Reasons for issuing DDQs include:

    • Completing a merger – A merger is a marriage, so to speak, between two companies. It’s a legally binding agreement that essentially states, “what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.” It would be irresponsible to enter into a merger without knowing what the “yours” that will be “mine” is.
    • Assessing an acquisition – An acquisition is much like a merger in that transparency is critical, and a DDQ will reflect that.
    • Considering an investment – Large investors want to vet their potential investment before writing a check.
      Third-party vendor risk management – Even if a company is 100% compliant, their vendors could put your customers at risk. Risk assessments have to dig below the surface.

    Responding to a DDQ

    An effective DDQ response provides enough information to empower buyers, prospective investors, or business partners to confidently move forward.

    A DDQ response process has a lot in common with an RFP response process, but there are some differences. Here are the key steps for responding to a DDQ:

    1. Define your response strategy

    Just as responding to an RFP requires a strategy, so should a DDQ response. First, you must determine:

    • Whether the SLA (service level agreement) is defined and available.
    • Who to put in charge of intake.
    • When you will be ready to start answering questions.
    • Who will answer the DDQ.
    • How long the DDQ will be in question/answer mode.
    • When the DDQ will be ready for review.

    2. Assign tasks and due dates

    A typical DDQ will have several SMEs and stakeholders. Make sure everyone knows their precise roles and responsibilities and expected timelines.

    3. Answer commonly seen questions

    Most questions on a DDQ, or for that matter, an RFx, are identical or nearly identical to questions you’ve answered before. A well-developed Content Library should automatically provide those repeatable answers, enabling you to accept them as is or edit them as needed.

    4. Consult with collaborators

    Once you’ve answered all the common questions, it’s time to turn to the experts. Consult with your response team and SMEs (subject matter experts) to complete the DDQ.

    5. Review

    Go through the DDQ with a fine-toothed comb to ensure there are no errors or missed (answerable) answers.

    6. Submit the Questionnaire to the issuer

    On time, right?

    Due Diligence response best practices

    Even though companies send DDQs with different goals in mind, and they are as varied as any other type of document your proposal team may see, there are a few best practices you should follow for all your submissions.

    Understand your position in the sales funnel

    Your latest DDQ may or may not be part of the sales process. If it leads to a potential sale, you’ll typically see a DDQ high up in the funnel, perhaps as a way of selecting compliant vendors before issuing an RFP.

    Occasionally you might see a DDQ after responding to an RFP and as the prospect is nearly ready to select a vendor.

    Sometimes, though, the DDQ is so far removed from the sales process that it’s nothing more than information gathering, either on current vendors or maybe-one day-in-the-future vendors.

    No matter where the DDQ is in the sales funnel, if it’s in the sales funnel at all, it’s not a good idea to set the document aside. Maybe it will lead to future deals, or perhaps it will expose some of your own vulnerabilities.

    Aim for a consistent and systematic approach

    Some DDQs have thousands of questions, which might feel intimidating, and your instinct might be to answer each question as succinctly as possible. While that approach might save you time, proving compliance requires a detailed and consistent response.

    Still, you can take steps to ensure that you don’t skip questions and to help you manage the time required to provide complete answers. They include:

    • Prepare a customized checklist – Create a customized checklist of the types of information you might need, preferably categorized by industry. You could require an organizational chart, financial information, legal documents, and of course, governance, risk, and compliance documents. Here’s one you can download right now.
    • Create due diligence questionnaire templates – Consistency saves time. If you upload your DDQs into a customized template, each stakeholder will know precisely where to locate what they need.
    • Leverage RFP response management software – RFP response management software also works for DDQs. Intelligent response management software will help you create and store both checklists and templates.

    Centralize response information

    Most of the questions on a DDQ are very similar to questions you’ve answered in previous questionnaires. Storing your responses and documents in a single source of truth for information can save hours, days, and sometimes even weeks on your response process. Beyond saving time, a Content Library:

    • Ensures accuracy – A company is legally bound to their answers, so accuracy is critical. The Content Library will hold on to the company-approved answers, enabling users to produce accurate responses.
    • Supports transparency – Transparency is critical for both trust and employee morale. When all the necessary information is right there for authorized users to see and use, it creates trust among the rest of the response team and potential customers.
    • Improves knowledge access – Anyone with the proper credentials can access the knowledge they need.

    Automate the response process

    You may not be using automation in your response process, but your competitors and many—if not most—of your customers and clients are. There are several reasons leveraging automation improves the DDQ response process, including:

    • Tracking real-time vendor completion progress – Automated response software has (or should have) project management built right in. It tracks each stakeholder’s progress.
    • Streamlining response time – Automation can answer up to 80% of your DDQ with just a few clicks.
    • Scaling ability to respond to DDQs – Automation helps determine the size and scope of the ideal response team as well as timeline estimates.
    • Efficiently managing tasks and deadlines – Define and manage tasks and expectations with automation.
    • Improving collaboration – Automated responses value and save SMEs’ time, creating more willingness to collaborate.

    Due diligence checklist

    While all transactions differ, a DDQ checklist facilitates a more thorough response through better organization and time management.

    Common materials collected during a DDQ response include general corporate information, financial information, compliance certifications, licenses, legal documents, etc.

    Organization and ownership

    A DDQ might be a potential vendor’s first encounter with your organization, which means they need a proper introduction. The DDQ could ask for:

    • An organizational chart
    • Partnership/profit sharing agreements
    • Records of shareholder meetings
    • Senior leadership information (e.g., age, tenure, promotions, etc.)

    Human resources

    DDQs don’t generally dive too deeply into human resources issues, but you can learn much about a company’s long-term viability and potential problems from the HR department. DDQs might ask HR about:

    • Projected headcount (by function and location)
    • Benefit plans
    • Key employment agreements
    • Personnel turnover data
    • Incentive stock plan overviews
    • Employee litigation

    Financial

    DDQs are common in financial service organizations. Also, because DDQs might precede a lengthy business relationship, the issuer will want to know your organization is financially stable. It is important to note, though, that many privately-held companies will not provide financial documents. Requested financial records might include:

    • Annual and quarterly financial information
    • Accounts receivable
    • Capital structure
    • Summary of all debt instruments
    • Financial projections
    • Revenue (by product type, customers, and channel)
    • Major growth drivers and prospects
    • Summary of current tax positions
    • Schedule of financing history (equity, warrants, and debt)

    Fund information

    DDQs are necessary for mergers, acquisitions, or business partnerships. It probably goes without saying that fund information is crucial for financial or investment partner due diligence. The document might request information about:

    • Fund strategy
    • Product and fund descriptions
    • Market share
    • Timing of new products
    • Cost structure
    • Profitability

    Governance, risk, and compliance

    Assessing governance, risk, and compliance is the primary purpose for issuing a DDQ. Be prepared to offer documentation for:

    • Policies
    • Code of ethics
    • Fund exposure
    • Service provider risk
    • SEC communications

    Legal

    Legal documentation helps issuers determine whether a company is in good legal standing. You may be asked to provide information on:

    • Pending and past lawsuits
    • Environmental and employee liabilities and safety
    • Intellectual Property
    • Insurance coverage details
    • Summary of material contacts
    • History of regulatory agency issues

    Streamline your DDQ response process with RFPIO

    Issuing and responding to DDQs can be repetitive and time-consuming, and not just for dedicated response teams. RFPIO’s automated response software saves time, improves quality and accuracy, and helps foster good working relationships.

    Due diligence software offers several features to help optimize the DDQ response process, including:

    Knowledge library

    RFPIO’s AI-powered Content Library is a centralized knowledge source—a single source of truth—that enables streamlined responses by intelligently answering most of a DDQ’s questions and providing the corresponding documents without asking SMEs to reinvent the wheel each and every time a similar question arises.

    Answer intelligence

    Using machine learning, RFPIO response management software understands the questions and knows how to respond to routine (and some not routine) requests based on previous answers. All you have to do is edit or accept the suggested responses.

    Collaborative integrations

    RFPIO offers best-in-class integrations with all the productivity, sales enablement, communication, and CRM tools you already use.

    *Put your best answers forward with RFPIO*

    Learn how RFPIO can help your company respond to DDQs with accuracy, efficiency, and expedience. Schedule a free demo – RFPIO, DDQ management software.

    See how it feels to respond with confidence

    Why do 250,000+ users streamline their response process with RFPIO? Schedule a demo to find out.