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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 […]

Category: Tag: RFP software

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.
RFP response resource guide

RFP response resource guide

Selling & Enablement

If you ask any salesperson about their ideal lead, you’ll likely hear that the perfect prospect is a confirmed buyer with clearly identified needs and pain points.

Hmmm, that sounds an awful lot like companies that issue RFPs.

An RFP, or Request for Proposal, is a document issued by buyers seeking bids for products or services. Every RFP includes a detailed description of the customer’s needs, and unless someone pulls a plug somewhere, the ultimate goal is to buy.

Confirmed buyer ✅
Needs and pain points clearly identified ✅

If that’s not enough to demonstrate the value of RFPs, here are a few statistics:

Still, most companies see RFPs as nuisances, which shows in their work. More than half of customers say the RFP responses they receive are sloppy and riddled with grammatical and spelling errors.

So, when did these enormous revenue-generating opportunities become the business equivalent of pop quizzes that no one studied for?

What is an RFP response?

RFPs and proposals are often confused. An RFP is a request from a potential customer that goes to multiple vendors. Depending on the request, an RFP generally asks for a proposal, which includes pricing, product or project details, information about the bidders’ companies, deliverables, and so on.

RFX is the parent category of several types of response request. Some examples include RFQs, or requests for quotes, which means the customer wants to see the pricing and little else.

Another is the RFI, which is a more formal way of collecting information. Often, companies use RFIs to create preferred vendor shortlists and may pair them with RFPs.

An RFP asks for things found in both RFQs (pricing) and RFIs (information). So the RFP is like a combo of the RFQ and the RFI. Many people use RFP as a more general term instead of RFX.

Components of an RFP response

The components of an RFP vary. However, first and foremost, it starts with what the customer wants. The document may ask for the following:

  • Answers to the questions asked
  • Sample contracts
  • Financials
  • Quotes or a cost estimate

RFP response examples

RFP proposals are sales documents, but that doesn’t mean you can send a customer a bunch of sales collateral with a price quote and call it a proposal.

If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone who endlessly talks about themselves, you know how annoying that can be. It’s the same with RFP response. Instead of responding with boilerplate answers about what you can do for the customer, take the effort to learn about them and how you can best partner with them.

And while you’re thinking about your prospect, the response should be organized and readable. You don’t want a customer to have to work to find answers. Instead, they want to be able to easily compare competing proposals from bidders.

Even though it might be more laborious on your part to put the response in the format they request, they’re asking that format for a reason, and not complying could take you out of the running.

The ideal proposal tells a compelling and engaging story for the reader. It’s informative and inclusive of the customer’s needs. A well-written response will stand out, as will a disorganized one that lacks thought and effort.

An RFP response typically should include the following:

  • Cover letter – Explain the type of information that is included in the proposal
  • Executive summary – Summarize the proposal and why the customer should choose your company
  • The response – Answer the RFP’s questions
  • Additional information – Include applicable case studies, company history, your recommendations, etc.
  • Attachments – Include exhibits, documents, samples, reports, contracts

For more specific examples, read here.

How to respond to a request for proposal

An effective RFP response is never haphazard. Like any project, it should be organized with clear deliverables and stakeholder assignments. Strategic response management software such as RFPIO takes much of the work off the response manager’s shoulders by documenting and clarifying responsibilities and integrating with existing tools such as Salesforce, Slack, and dozens more.

Of course, project management software is a time- and resource-saving tool, but it can’t replace human beings. A systematic and organized response management system should include these human-managed steps:

Step 1 – Determine whether you are the right fit

It might be tempting to respond to every RFP, regardless of whether your company’s solution is the best fit. For example, the prospect may need a product or service only a large enterprise company can provide. In that case, why waste your resources and risk the chance of wasting your prospect’s time?

This isn’t necessarily a hard and fast rule. RFPIO’s CEO and co-founder, Ganesh Shankar, recently spoke with another CEO whose company strategically responded to RFPs they knew they wouldn’t win as a way to get their brand in front of the customer for future needs and to strengthen existing relationships. The keyword here is “strategic.” Perhaps coordinate with your marketing department to determine the best approach to brand awareness.

Step 2 – Set up your process

Your subject matter experts (SMEs) are vital to your RFP response process. However, if you have yet to choose your SMEs before the RFP is in your hand, you will use up time finding the person in your company that holds the answer. Remember that the clock begins ticking the moment you receive the document.

According to many of the RFPIO customers I speak to on a regular basis, timelines are getting shorter and shorter each year. Companies expect faster turnaround times. You should know your process before receiving your RFP.

While RFPs vary, there are certain elements you will almost always see. For example, you will likely see questions about your company’s overview, history, product or service features, and so on. Know who you can rely on to answer your standard questions, or better yet, have the answers to these questions in your Content Library, so your SMEs will only have to review existing information.

Step 3 – Break down the components

In school we were told that “on time is late and early is better.” It’s the same with RFP response. A late response will almost always be discounted, but beyond that, it could sour the customer to your company for future opportunities.

A late response might cause a customer to question whether you value them and wonder whether you can meet your promises if you win the bid.

An RFP may be hundreds or even thousands of pages long. You must have a complete picture of what is requested and how you should approach it. You should first determine your timeline and work backward from there. Assign team roles, responsibilities, and timelines by breaking down the components.

Step 4 – Determine what you’ll need to include

Once you have determined your timeline, it’s time to determine what the customer is asking for.

  • How do they want the response to be formatted?
  • What questions do they need answered?
  • What exhibits or attachments do they need?
  • What additional information, such as financial statements or contracts, do they want to see?

How to improve the RFP response process

Workplace processes have never been more advanced. Messaging apps have all but replaced, or at least minimized, the use of email and phones. Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms track customer interactions from initial lead through their entire lifecycle. Project management software turns distributed and siloed workforces into collaborative teams.

Why? Well, automation works.

  • 89% of companies report that their businesses grew last year, thanks to automation.
  • 92% say that automation frees employees to focus on more critical and complex tasks.
  • About one-third of businesses report achieving a 100% or more ROI in the very first year after investing in automation.

Unfortunately, companies still need to prioritize automating their response processes.

  • 84% of companies use inefficient RFP processes.
  • 44% of proposal managers use no response software.

That’s not to say software is required for an efficient response process, but it certainly helps–a lot. Nor does RFP software replace jobs; it simply enables employees to focus on generating revenue.

Automate manual tasks

As I said, RFP software isn’t out to steal anyone’s job, but you know those annoying manual tasks like chasing people down for their deliverables or trying to keep track of which documents and question and answer pairs need reviewing? Automation takes care of that for you.

If you are a response manager or oversee a response department, you have a lot of control over what’s automated and what’s not. In a moment, we’ll discuss the sorts of tasks you might consider automating. But first, what are the goals of an efficient response process?

The goals of an efficient process include the following:

  • Automating manual tasks
  • Keeping content up to date and accurate
  • Optimizing time management
  • Collaboration

To reach those efficiency goals, consider automating:

  • Processes involving multiple stakeholders
  • Time-consuming tasks that don’t add value
  • Anything that might help with compliance
  • Anything you feel you are reinventing each time
  • Tools and templates
  • Answers to frequently asked questions

Up-to-date content

Let’s drill down a bit and talk about one of my favorite features of advanced response automation, the Content Library.

Depending on how long your company has been in business and how often you audit your content, you could have hundreds of thousands or more records–many, if not most, of which are never used.

I get it. Reviewing content isn’t much fun. Fortunately, as with your home, once you do that deep clean most of the rest is just maintenance.

So, where do you start? A regular review of content. My colleague and friend Monica Patterson recently published a super informative blog post on this topic, but in a nutshell:

  • Review the content you use the most – This step is relatively easy because most used content is generally up to date. However, you still want to run it by your SMEs, including every regularly reviewed Q&A pair, document, attachment, or exhibit.
  • Review the content you don’t use — Don’t automatically archive never used content. First, ensure it’s no longer relevant and doesn’t have customer-specific or periodic use.
  • Schedule regular maintenance reviews – Establish a regular cadence of looking at content, so you don’t have things that are so out of date that you have to find a new answer.

Having the cadence that works best for your subject matter experts is essential, which means having a relationship with your SMEs to establish a mutually agreed-upon time. If not, it will cause them more work in the future.

Optimize time management

When you receive a massive RFP, it’s intimidating unless you optimize your time management plan in advance. RFP response time management tactics include:

  • Understanding the scope and timeline of the project
  • Determining who to ask for clarifications
  • Defining roles within your team and engaging SMEs
  • Repurposing and reusing content where applicable
  • Tracking and monitoring deliverables and time spent

Better collaboration

Response teams and sales teams have a whole lot in common. Every employee in your company should have the same goal: to make the company more profitable.

But for revenue-generating departments, such as sales and RFX response, it’s all about winning business. Unfortunately, in many companies, the two departments are siloed. When responding to an RFP, it becomes even more challenging when the response team is siloed from the SMEs they need to consult.

While collaboration is possible using email and communication tools, response project management is hardly their forte. Response software that contains collaboration tools allows response managers to track and review progress and content across multiple channels, ensuring accurate and timely responses.

Key performance indicators for the RFP process

Boards of directors, C-suites, and everyone else in leadership positions want to see quantifiable results. As for the RFP response process, they want to see:

  • The types of projects you work on
  • Time and resources spent
  • Time to completion
  • On-time and late submissions
  • Win rate

Some KPIs don’t boil down to just numbers. To best measure the efficiency of your process, survey your team and implement a project post-mortem to identify areas where you can make improvements.

How to choose RFP response software

Before choosing software, take time to understand your process. If you don’t understand what you need, even the most advanced tool will not fulfill every requirement, and you could choose the wrong vendor. Look for agile, scalable software that seamlessly integrates with your existing sales enablement and communication tools.

Make sure that the software company is flexible, listens to customer feedback, and does things with it.

Why you need RFP software

A shared Google or Word document doesn’t exactly lend itself to group collaboration. First, the document could have many pages, and a multiparty editing process is sloppy and difficult to track at best.

In a siloed, distributed workforce, RFP software is a single place to go—a single source of truth. It enables you to gather answers to questions, exhibits, and documents. The software is a place where everyone sees the one correct answer. It’s also a place where everyone can work together without causing the RFP coordinator to pull their hair out.

Essential features

An advanced RFP response platform is a partner. It shares your goal of quantifiable and qualifiable results with the resources and bandwidth to manage multiple users and projects. Look for several features, including:

  • A content management system that serves as a single repository for all company knowledge and documents
  • End-to-end project management, including in-depth tracking capability/activity log
  • Response recommendation engine
  • Customizable analytics
  • Tech stack integrations
  • Scalability
  • Ability to import different formats
  • Ability to customize parameters

RFPIO is your partner in proposal management. To accomplish what RFPIO does would require a full-time assistant 100% of the time, and that’s for just one RFP. Teams rarely have just one.

Building response functionality onto sales enablement software would be very expensive and include features you probably won’t use. You want software for response teams and response management. RFPIO offers:

  • A best-in-class Content Library – A single company repository for Q&A pairs, company knowledge, documents, exhibits, and other attachments.
  • Advanced project management – Built-in analytics, advanced in-app collaboration tools, project tracking, role assignment, and clarification.
  • AI-powered Recommendation Engine– RFPIO leverages machine learning to recommend answers.
  • Integrations – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with more than two dozen of the most popular business applications, including Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft Office, Hubspot, and more.
  • Scalability – RFPIO’s unique project-based pricing model fosters collaboration by providing access to unlimited stakeholders on each response. The system grows with your needs and scales back during slower times.
  • Ability to import different formats – With RFPIO, you can import from Word, Excel, other documents, and even PDFs.
  • Customizable parameters – Track project metrics in a way that makes sense to you, including by vertical, company size, product line, project type, project stage, number of questions, project value, and so on.

Common challenges of the RFP response process

RFP response involves a lot of moving pieces. RFP response is a collaborative process that requires input from multiple and diverse experts across the organization. Yet, more than half of companies work in silos.

Additionally, not every company has dedicated SMEs, so you could be fighting competing priorities. And then there’s the good old problem of time. Timelines are getting shorter. Things pop up–like PTO, life in general, and, unfortunately, pandemics.

You should also set aside time to update the content library; otherwise, you’ll spend more time in the RFP process, as it’s faster to validate content is accurate than to track down the SME and have them update content you know isn’t up-to-date.

Then, of course, departments compete for their part of the annual budget, and sadly, some companies don’t want to, or can’t, invest in software for small teams, even though response teams pack powerful revenue-generating punches.

Case study

In my dealings, I’ve found that RFPIO is mission-critical software, but the proof is in the pudding. Celtra, a creative management platform organization, had a broken RFP response process. Their content was siloed, and workflow and collaboration needed optimization.

The result was rushed responses and a poor success rate. After researching the response management industry, they chose to work with RFPIO. They found:

  • They value the support and educational content, especially around best practices.
  • They appreciate the industry-leading integrations and clean user interface.
  • Now they’re responding to twice as many RFPs in less than one-fourth the time with fewer than half the people.

RFP FAQs

If you have questions about RFPIO or the general response process, you can contact us anytime. Here are some of our most frequently asked questions:

  • What is an RFP? – Organizations issue requests for proposals (RFPs) to enlist bids for specific products or services from multiple vendors.
  • What is included in an RFP? – RFPs are highly detailed and contain in-depth project descriptions, background information, specific requirements, deadlines, and so on.
  • Why do organizations issue RFPs? – Organizations issue RFPs to obtain detailed bids to compare and contrast before purchasing.
  • Who responds to an RFP? – Responding to RFPs requires input from multiple stakeholders throughout an organization. Many organizations have dedicated response teams, while in others, sales teams steer the process.
  • How does RFP software help the process? – Advanced RFP software helps ensure quality and on-time response with time management capabilities, collaborative tools, tech stack integration, scalability, a flexible pricing structure, and a robust content library.
  • Does RFPIO work with our existing processes? – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with the most popular business applications, and our import/export capabilities ensure that both response teams and customers receive the format that works best for them.
  • Do we need to purchase multiple licenses? – RFPIO has a pricing structure that is rare among SaaS companies. Instead of a fixed number of licenses, RFPIO charges by active concurrent project, enabling access to unlimited users.
  • How secure is RFPIO? – I could bore you listing our security certifications and protocols, but let’s just say that our platform is secure enough for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Adobe, and VISA.

Optimize your RFP responses the RFPIO way

Learn more about how your company can break down silos, effectively and efficiently manage time, and create a single source of truth in a platform that scales to your specific requirements without burdening your tech stack.

How Accruent responds to 5x more RFPs using RFPIO

How Accruent responds to 5x more RFPs using RFPIO

Customer Stories

Accruent is an SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) company dedicated to helping customers and clients with their physical space and asset management. In recent years, the company has seen notable growth as they’ve acquired other companies to increase their share in the space. They now have nine different products—all of them technical in nature.

Between all those products, the proposals team has a lot of RFPs (request for proposals) to manage and is regularly juggling several at once. According to Jack Pearce, Manager of the Proposal Team, the technical nature of Accruent’s products means the proposals team doesn’t have the knowledge required to answer all the questions themselves. But the company’s subject matter experts (SMEs) are busy people, and the team has to be cautious how much of their time they ask for.

Before Jack became the proposal manager at Accruent, he was a proposal writer. As such, he knew the company had access to RFPIO. But he never used it himself. “None of us did,” he explained. “It wasn’t really rolled out properly. No one was trained on it, everyone just thought it was another system they had to learn.”

They had some content stored in it, but none of it was organized. As a proposal writer, Jack hadn’t fully understood the value of RFPIO. But as a proposal manager, his view changed. Suddenly, he saw how much potential the tool had to make all their lives easier.

Making RFPIO’s potential a reality

In 2020, Jack embarked on a project to re-roll out RFPIO at Accruent. He worked with his colleague James May, at that time a Proposal Writer new to the organization, to better organize the content already contained in RFPIO’s Content Library. They reworked the collections the content was organized within, and created a better tagging structure. They now have nine content collections—one for each product—and another collection for security questions.

Beyond that initial project of getting the Content Library in good shape, they make a point of performing ongoing content maintenance. Whenever James—now considered the company’s resident RFPIO guru—isn’t busy working on an RFP, he devotes time to cleaning up the tags, makes sure the moderation queue is at zero (or close to it), and works with SMEs to keep all content up to date.

RFPIO is now central to Accruent’s RFP process

The proposals team now knows to start the RFP process in RFPIO, and to complete as much of it as they can using the content available. That creates a better relationship with the company’s SMEs, who now know that anytime the proposals team asks for their help, it means they’ve already done as much as they can on their own. Even better, they know each answer they provide will go in the Content Library, saving them that much more time on future RFPs.

In addition to the Content Library, the team also gets a lot of value from RFPIO’s collaboration features. Between everyone involved in the proposal process, they often have 3-8 SMEs working on RFPs at a time. Enabling efficient communication between the various people involved is important.

Before RFPIO, “Every time someone didn’t like an answer, we’d have to have a call about it,” explains Jack. “Now we just use the comments function in RFPIO to facilitate that conversation.” That makes for a more efficient process, and keeps all the correspondence in one place.

The proposals team aren’t the only ones who feel the difference. Chris Low, a Senior Account Director at Accruent, has also shared his feelings on the change: “RFPIO and the processes the team created around it make collaborating with our amazing proposals team even easier. From a simple intake form, to answering questions at a canter with the library, it’s been a huge help and certainly attestable to winning new business.”

The result: submitting more RFPs, with more confidence

With the help of the Content Library in RFPIO, the proposals team is now able to complete around 50% of all RFP questions on their own. That increases efficiency to the degree that they’ve gone from working on 5-6 live RFPs at a time to tackling 15-25 live projects at once. “That is simply because we can do more because of the platform,” Jack says.

Completing more RFPs has also made them better at determining which ones are worth their time. In practice, that has meant fewer no-gos than before. “It’s given us the confidence to take on more opportunities,” Jack shared.

They’ve also seen a big difference in how they handle security questionnaires. The responsibility for those has generally fallen to one person—and it was really too much work to put on him alone. Now, the proposals team is generally able to get 75% of the questionnaires completed on the first pass. That’s cut the response time from ten days to five.

Before RFPIO After RFPIO
Answering RFP questions meant asking busy SMEs to give up their time The proposals team is able to answer around 50% of all questions on their own, giving SMEs that time back
They juggled 5-6 live RFPs at a time They handle 15-25 live RFPs at a time
Security questionnaires were primarily the responsibility of one SME, and took around 10 days to complete The proposals team can answer 75% of the security questionnaire before they send it on to the SME, and they’re completed in half the time
They were limited in how many RFPs they felt comfortable responding to Replying to more RFPs has increased their confidence in which ones they believe they can win, meaning an increase in the number they submit

Jack and his team don’t mince words when they talk about the difference RFPIO has made. “A life without RFPIO would not be worth living,” he says. “It would be bloody difficult. And you can quote me on that.”

According to T.C. Kaiser, SVP – Global Solution Consulting at Accruent, “Our proposals team has a high volume of projects live and RFPIO enables them to deliver with speed while maintaining a high level of quality. Our team relies on the platform to deliver value to our organization and make the best impression with our customers.”

When it came time for Jack to make the case to superiors for renewal last year, he reports, “I said, ‘this is non-negotiable. If we don’t have RFPIO, we cannot do as much work as we do currently.’”

Not that anyone needed much convincing. The proposal process is so centered on RFPIO that people have taken to referring to the proposals team as the “RFPIO team.” According to Jack, “that is probably the biggest compliment we can give the system.”

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 an optimizable RFP 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.

1. Bid or no-bid decision
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 using a bid or no bid discussion.

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

3. First 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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

For example, 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 Responsive 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 RFP response metrics check out this blog: 9 key RFP metrics for minimizing risk and enhancing efficiency.

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

Encourage collaboration

A Facebook poll by Responsive 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 Responsive 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. Proposal management features in the Responsive platform can help you create winning sales proposals complete with automation and reporting.

And because salespeople spend time on the road, Responsive 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?

The Responsive approach to the RFP process

Responsive 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? Responsive has many standard and nearly unlimited customized reporting features.
  • Integrations – Responsive platform integrations work seamlessly with more than two dozen of the most popular business applications.
  • Remote access – Responsive LookUp provides access to your content library through Google, Microsoft Office, and many other applications.
  • Loyal customers – Our response platform is used by many of the world’s most successful companies, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Visa, Lyft, Zoom, and hundreds more.

Case study

While Responsive 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 Responsive, 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 the true value of the Responsive platform without seeing it in action. We invite you to request a demo to see how responsive 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 Responsive do more than answer RFPs?
As a strategic response management platform, Responsive  automatically answers 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 Responsive integrate with existing applications?
There are dozens of Responsive integrations to empower you to work as efficiently and effectively as possible.

What if we need to add or subtract users?
Responsive has a best-in-class pricing model. Instead of purchasing licenses, we provide unlimited access.

Is Responsive secure?
Responsive 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.

How to respond to an RFP like an all-star champ

How to respond to an RFP like an all-star champ

Selling & Enablement

Organizations issue requests for proposals (RFPs) because they have a need that cannot be fixed internally — a big need — one that will cost lots of money. This isn’t calling a plumber to fix a clog. It’s soliciting bids from multiple contractors for complete remodels, or to construct full-on additions. So, they send out a request for proposal. Now, to win that business, you need to know how to respond to an RFP. 

Admittedly, RFPs can be challenging. So, we’re here to explore how you can master the process, create compelling bids and (hopefully) win. First, we’ll explore common obstacles you may face when you respond to an RFP. Next, we’ll offer the key steps for how to respond to an RFP as well as best practices. And finally, we’ll offer insight on how technology like RFP software makes responding a lot faster and easier. Let’s dig in.

Obstacles in the RFP response process

The scale of an RFP can be huge

RFPs contain up to thousands of questions and requests for specific content. If your company has a solution to the problem put forth by the issuer, then you respond with a proposal that includes all the answers and requested content. Depending on the size of the RFP, it can take you hours, days, or weeks to prepare a response. As long as you submit your completed RFP response by the deadline, your solution will be considered.

Competition is fierce

The issuer compares your RFP response with all of the other RFP responses received from your competitors. Sometimes, the lowest price wins. Other times, the best solution wins. Sometimes, it’s both…or neither.

Success requires more than paperwork

Much of the time, the winner results from the best pitch — an umbrella term that includes the RFP response, relationships built with sales and subject matter experts (SMEs) during the process, pricing, reputation and a variety of other factors. Then there are the times when winners are selected based on prior or existing relationships between the two organizations.

No matter what the deciding factor between an RFP win or loss, the ultimate truth is that you have to compose an RFP response to have a chance. Why not put your best foot forward?

How to respond to an RFP

1. Qualify the bid

Is this worth going after? Starting off with a bid or no-bid discussion gives you an opportunity to evaluate your win probability. Essentially, building a proposal is like investing in your future. Every investment requires close scrutiny.

2. Understand requirements

What do you need to get it done? This ranges from the type of content, to who produces it, to who is responsible for signing off on the final proposal. The list can be extensive, but it must be comprehensive to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

3. Answer repeat questions

Pull from your content library to fill in answers to repeat questions. If anything needs to be reviewed by a subject matter expert, be sure to get their eyes on it before submission.

4. Note due dates and tasks

Whose expertise do you need? After you determine the requirements, identify all the milestones. There’ll be due dates for content, reviews, edits and approvals. The trick is to respect everyone’s time while driving the process forward.

5. Assign questions for review

Who needs to sign off on this content? Generally, you’ll have multiple approvers to sign-off on content related to sales, product, support, legal, branding and so on.

6. Review and polish

Make sure you’re telling YOUR story. Add visuals or other supporting content to help convey your message. If you have the good fortune to have a dedicated proposal team, look to them for proposal formatting guidance. If you don’t have a proposal team, look to your marketing team. Ensure your proposal is in a clean, easy-to-read format. Or, even better, put it into a branded template.

7. Proofread

Don’t let poor grammar and typos be the reason you lose the bid.

8. Submit to issuer

Push send with no regrets.

The Benchmark Report: Proposal Management

Learn about the state of proposal management, and see what teams need to do to be successful moving forward.

Read the report here.

Best practices for responding to an RFP

Whether you have a dedicated team of stakeholders from each department or you assign a new team for each project, what matters most is that everyone in the organization recognizes that they have skin in the game.

RFP wins, proactive sales proposals and fast turnaround on questionnaires equate to revenue and may determine whether the company grows, shrinks, or offers an extra percentage point in next year’s retirement fund match.

Build the right team

Proposal managers lead the proposal team. Proposal managers may think of themselves as the director of a motion picture. After that “Directed by” end title flashes, another three minutes of credits roll by.

The proposal team I’m referring to is made up of the individuals you rely on for a variety of roles:

  • Prospect and customer interaction – Customer-facing teams have their fingers on the pulse of competitors and customer needs.
  • Subject matter expertise – Many RFP questions require detailed answers, and for those you should turn to the people who know the most about their particular area of expertise.
  • Brand messaging – Consult with marketing before submitting your response to ensure that you are on brand.
  • IT support – Can your company support the issuer’s needs?

… and all of the others who are vital to creating a winning proposal.

Even a one-person proposal department needs input from internal or external SMEs to build a high-quality response.

Only respond to RFPs you can win

As part of your bid-qualifying at the beginning of your RFP response process, add a go/no-go checkpoint to ensure that you only respond to RFPs you can win. Whether it’s a scheduled team meeting or a checklist, you need to answer:

  • Is the RFP the right fit for your organization and solution?
  • Do you have a comprehensive solution that addresses all of the challenges presented in the request?
  • Does your pricing match the budget?
  • Do you have an existing or prior relationship with the issuing organization?
  • Do you have any insight into why the RFP has been issued?
  • Can you meet the submission deadline?

Basing the answers to these questions on data rather than anecdotal evidence will help validate the go/no-go step as well as your role as a proposal manager. The Responsive platform’s AI-powered analytics tools provide that data.

Respect contributors’ time

If you want SMEs and other stakeholders to feel a sense of ownership for their proposal responsibilities, then you have to respect their time. RFP responses will suffer if contributors end up working after hours and weekends, rushing to meet deadlines. Get their buy-in ahead of time on deadlines and time required for reviews and approvals.

Document your process

A documented RFP response process will anchor your team during the most chaotic times. It’s up to you to own the process, but RFP software will make it easier to automate, execute and monitor processes from beginning to end on multiple projects running simultaneously.

Conduct a win/loss review

The win-loss review gives your team an opportunity to close the loop. Internally evaluate what worked and what didn’t.

Did you win? Why? How can you repeat it for future proposals?

Did you lose? Why? How can you avoid it in future proposals?

Include the whole proposal team in a wrap-up summary, but make the extra effort to work hand-in-hand with sales enablement so they can bring in the customer perspective.

Let technology do the heavy lifting

Remember earlier when I said the RFP response process is cyclical? The win/loss review will inform your new go/no-go step, increasing your predictive accuracy of which RFPs you can actually win. It helps to have RFP software for a win-loss review because you have everything that went into the response—the planning, communication, content and the actual response—in one place.

Software is the single most effective way to overcome lack of time, experience and other resources. It’s the difference maker that will help you respond like a boss. With only 43 percent of organizations using RFP-specific technology, there’s a huge opportunity for you to get a leg up on competitors.

How Responsive can help

Responsive RFP software makes it easier to collaborate with an extended team and leverage the power of technology. With automated processes for scheduling, collaboration and completing wide swaths of massive RFPs using our industry-leading Content Library, you can blaze through the first pass of a response faster than working without RFP software or with less advanced software solutions.

You create more time to spend customizing the responses that really matter and focus on differentiating yourself from the competition. And that’s only the beginning!

Using software at every step in the RFP response process

Here’s a quick overview of how Responsive RFP software helps during each of the seven steps of RFP response:

  1. Qualify the bid — Check data from past similar RFPs. What took weeks without RFP software may only take hours or minutes with it. All things being equal, is this RFP winnable?
  2. Understand requirements — Let the tool create a checklist of open items based on what remains after the automated first pass conducted at intake by your Content Library.
  3. Answer commonly seen questions — Responsive RFP technology consolidates all your previous Q&A pairs into an intelligent content library, so you can automatically respond to repeat questions in just a few clicks.
  4. Assign due dates and tasks to key collaborators — Assign each RFP question or section as a task to individual collaborators from the project dashboard in Responsive. They’ll then receive a notification from where they’re already working (e.g., email, Slack, or Teams).
  5. Assign questions for review and approval — Simplify the review and approval process with automated reminders and cues across multiple platforms.
  6. Polish — From intake, work within a branded template and support answers with approved content that’s always up-to-date according to the SME in charge of that content.
  7. Proofread — Still important, but working with already-approved content will decrease how much you have to proofread.
  8. Submit to issuer — Push send from Responsive or your integrated CRM.

We recently created a Proposal Management Benchmark Report where we found that organizations using RFP software already managed 43 percent more RFPs than those who do not use RFP software. If you’re looking to speed ahead of the field in RFP response, then gain traction faster with RFP software.

I’ll just leave these other tidbits right here…

Recognize SMEs and salespeople at quarterly meetings. Salespeople are competitive and like to be recognized for winning.

Implement formal kickoff meetings for RFPs. Make them quick and include pre-reading materials in the invitation to hit the ground running. Some organizations combine this with a go/no-go checkpoint.

Hold 15-minute daily standup meetings or calls as you approach the RFP deadline. Focus on status reports and action items.

Commit to professional development time. Join this LinkedIn group, the response management Slack community, or connect with APMP. This is especially valuable for small shops, where it can be hard to build a network.

If this has inspired you to investigate RFP software, then request a Responsive demo today!

How to choose the best RFP software

How to choose the best RFP software

Products/Features/Solutions

The best RFP software breaks down silos and encourages collaboration. It is agile — it addresses its customers’ needs in the moment and quickly adapts to future needs.

The best software is built by (and for) humans. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and natural language processing technology adapts to its users’ needs empowering greater efficiency. The best RFP software companies go even further by using customer feedback to routinely improve their products.

Indeed, great RFP software and software companies do all that but with the specific goal of encouraging efficiency, compliance and confidence in the RFP response process. The most successful responders see the best results by collaborating within a single response management platform … RFP software.

What is RFP software?

Request for proposal (RFP) software helps organizations respond to more RFPs in less time. Of course, that barely scratches the surface of advanced RFP software capabilities. Advanced RFP software helps optimize every step of the RFP process, from before the document is received to after the bid is submitted.

Essential RFP software features

An efficient response management platform includes features that streamline your team’s workflow. At the very minimum, RFP software should feature:

Import and export capabilities

Before the advent of RFP software, there were *gasp* manual processes. Of course, the challenge is that issuers send RFPs in a variety of formats, including Microsoft Word and Excel, Google Docs and Sheets, and sometimes PDFs. And—this will surprise no one—issuers weren’t (and still aren’t) consistent in their formatting inside their docs, spreadsheets, or PDFs.

Have you ever searched a poorly organized spreadsheet? Where do you search docs or PDFs if you don’t know what you’re looking for? Manual importing is tedious and time-consuming. In fact, it can be the most time-consuming part of a manual RFP process.

RFP response software should be able to recognize critical questions and information, regardless of the format, and import them into your RFP software.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who say there are two kinds of people and people who don’t. There are also spreadsheet people and doc people, although some live on the wild side and do both.

Spreadsheets are mathematical and formulaic, but that doesn’t mean the formulas are standard from RFP to RFP. RFP software imports spreadsheets in a couple of ways:

  • Standard template – Basic RFP software allows for standard template import, where you download the template spreadsheet, copy/paste the questions, and then upload it.
  • Advanced configuration – Forget copy/pasting. Advanced configuration lets you process raw source files, customized how you want them. Beyond that, Responsive automatically detects predefined dropdowns and automatically configures the sections.

Word and Google Docs, on the other hand, are more visual. The biggest challenge with Word and Google Docs is knowing what you need to reply to. Word and Google documents often have a lot of filler, such as company detail, at the beginning of an RFP.

While most RFP software can import the text from Word, they have difficulty distinguishing between what’s useful and what isn’t. Responsive reads the document’s style guide and can auto-identify sections and questions.

Often, RFPs arrive in mixed formats. Many Word documents have Excel tables or charts inserted into the doc. Not a problem, at least when you’re using Responsive. Many of the same rules apply to importing Word and mixed documents as to Excel sheets:

  • Identify the sections, questions, and answers in the original document.
  • Process the source document and customize it using the advanced configuration in Responsive.
  • Preview to make sure everything is in the right place.

The Responsive platform’s advanced import and export capabilities can shave as much as half the response time.

Content management

In the early 2000s, workers whose jobs required access to company knowledge spent about 2.5 hours a day searching for information. If you’re old enough to remember, those were the days of dial-up, AOL, and Ask Jeeves. Software as a service (SaaS) was unheard of.

Twenty years later, nearly everyone has the internet. Need an answer to a question? Google it. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a business problem that can’t be addressed using a SaaS application. Surprisingly, the time spent searching for knowledge has increased from a bit over ¼ of the workday to nearly half.

Why would that be? There are probably a couple of reasons, including that businesses are a lot more siloed now than they were at the turn of the millennium—and of course, there’s a heck of a lot more knowledge to search.

Not surprisingly, disjointed content is one of the top challenges of an RFP process. The Responsive content library not only simplifies the search but also does much of the work for you.

The content library in Responsive Content:

  • Stores marketing approved content in one place – Your company’s single source of truth.
  • Lets you stitch together high-quality content – Browse previous responses to create customized answers.
  • Makes creating content easy– Once you answer a question, you can store the Q&A pair for future needs. As your company accumulates knowledge or documents, it’s simple to upload it into your content library.
  • Streamlines content formatting – Organize and format content however you like.
  • Automates responses – With just a few clicks, Responsive customers answer up to 80 percent of the questions on an RFP, regardless of the format.
  • Encourages regular content audits – Keep your content library fresh and up to date with regular audits. Responsive will remind you when it’s time to review specific content.

Integrations

When it comes to breaking down silos, Responsive walks the walk with industry-leading integrations. Users from across your company can access Responsive through more than two dozen applications you already use, including:

  • CRMs – Responsive is an ideal solution for all revenue-generating teams, not just response management. Access the content library and other Responsive features through your company’s chosen CRM, including Salesforce, Pipedrive, Dynamics 365, PipelineDeals, and HubSpot.
  • Communication apps – Responsive enables company-wide collaboration through your existing communication apps, including Slack, Google Hangouts, Jira, and Microsoft Teams.
  • Cloud storage apps – Worldwide, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day. Cloud storage enables companies to manage data without accumulating vast technical debt. Responsive seamlessly integrates with Sharepoint, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.
  • SSO authentication apps – Responsive works within your company’s security protocols through SSO authentication integrations with Microsoft ADFS, Microsoft Azure, OneLogin, and Okta.
  • Browser extensions – Access the content library through Responsive® LookUp and Chrome.
  • Vendor assessment apps – Securely import directly from third-party platforms using Whistic.
  • Productivity apps – Work faster using Responsive with Microsoft Suites and Google Sheets.
  • Sales enablement apps – Revenue-generating employees can access Responsive through Seismic or Highspot.

AI assistance

RFP automation slashes time spent answering RFPs. Responsive goes beyond simple automation. We use machine learning to intelligently assist you through every step of the RFP response process.

Leverage Responsive to:

  • Auto-identify response content – The advanced artificial intelligence in the Responsive platform automatically identifies response content.
  • Get automated answers – The AI-powered recommendation engine pulls from the content library to recommend answers based on previous similar questions.
  • Assign questions to pertinent subject matter experts – With Responsive, there’s no more trying to figure out the best people to help with your RFP. AI technology identifies relevant and available SMEs.
  • Analyze win-loss opportunities – Not all RFPs are worth a response. Have you won similar bids in the past? Is this one worth it? Responsive learns from previous wins and losses to help you decide whether to pursue the next one.

The benefits of RFP response automation

Roughly 80% of a typical RFP consists of questions you’ve answered many, many times. Response automation lets you focus on the questions that matter most, the questions that will help you win the bid, by answering the routine queries with a click of a button.

The benefits of leveraging RFP automation include:

  • Streamlined workflow – Responsive is not just a response management tool; it’s a project management platform. It uses automation to establish roles and ensure on-time deliverables.
  • Decreased response time – When a workplace tool does most of the work for you, it’s bound to increase productivity and reduce response time.
  • Improved response quality – Automated replies free you to craft winning responses to the essential questions.
  • Centralized content library – Automatically store and catalog responses in a single source of truth.
  • Improved collaboration – The suite of Responsive integrations enables company-wide collaboration.
  • Increased revenue growth – Responding to more of the right RFPs in less time means more opportunities to drive revenue.

Steps for choosing the right RFP management software

Choosing the right RFP management software shouldn’t be taken lightly. There are several factors to consider:

1. Assess your RFP response process

Before you commit to an annual RFP software subscription, schedule a meeting with your entire RFP response team (subject matter experts, executive stakeholders, bid writers, etc.). The goal is to discover gaps and opportunities in your current workflow, then make improvements through RFP automation.

2. Prioritize RFP software features

Now that you know what your RFP response team needs to thrive, it’s time to prioritize RFP software features. Divide features into two columns—”must-have” and “nice-to-have.” If having a holistic view of RFP projects is a top priority, project dashboards are a must-have. If communication is dialed in, then Slack or Microsoft Team integrations are a nice-to-have.

3. Explore RFP software comparison platforms

Third-party validation is a vital part of decision-making for any purchase, including RFP software. Think of G2 Crowd and Capterra as Yelp for software products. Use these RFP software comparison tools to compare and contrast features and check out customer feedback. Seeing use cases in the real RFP response management world will inspire ideas and validate decisions.

4. Make a data-driven value assessment

Have no idea how many hours your team spends on RFP responses? Demystify these costs by tracking everyone’s time. Use our ROI calculator to determine how much you will save on hours and resources with RFP response automation. Armed with data, you’ll rely on stats instead of emotions to make a strong case for additional funds to cover RFP software.

5. Understand the product and the service

Once you have narrowed down RFP software providers, request a demo to see the solution in action and meet the team you’re considering working with. Bring your priority features list, along with questions that need to be addressed. Pay special attention to the user experience as the solution should be quick and easy for all RFP contributors to learn.

rfp repsonse software

Important questions to ask RFP software vendors

Adding to your existing tech stack can be a challenging sell for executives and your IT department, so it’s essential to ask the right questions of potential RFP software vendors.

  • What is the average ROI customers report after using your product? – There’s no surer way to secure executive buy-in than demonstrating your return on investment. ROI will vary from company to company. The ROI from Responsive customers is as high as 600%. Calculate your ROI here.
  • How would you describe your training and onboarding process? – You have executive buy-in; what about user buy-in? The onboarding process is vital for training and creating buzz over new software. The Responsive onboarding process is incremental, easy to follow, and designed to set you up for success.
  • How do you manage customer requests and feedback? –Because needs vary from company to company and change from day to day, there’s no such thing as perfect software. Responsive recognizes the importance of a bespoke solution, which means listening to every customer and addressing their individual needs.
  • What integrations are available? – Toggling between multiple applications is a pain. Responsive integrates with over two dozen of the most popular business tools.
  • How would your software solve problems x, y, and z? – Is the RFP software going to address your company’s needs? It’s hard to imagine a response management problem Responsive can’t solve, but if we’re not the right solution for some reason, we will tell you.
  • What are your data import and export capabilities? – If all RFP issuers used the same format, RFP response platforms might not be such a critical tool for response teams. Responsive imports and exports from Microsoft Word, Excel, and even PDFs.
  • Do you offer lifetime updates and enhancements? – Technology changes, as do your needs. Responsive provides regular updates and enhancements.
  • What are your competitive differentiators? – What makes one RFP solution better than others? As mentioned, Responsive offers more integrations and import/export options than any other RFP response software. We lead the pack in AI-powered automation. Additionally, we have an unprecedented pricing model. Instead of charging per user license, Responsive charges based on the number of projects going at any given time.

Automate your RFP process with a management solution that’s right for you

If you’re ready to see how RFP software will help you craft higher-quality responses to more RFPs in less time, request a free demo.

Why you need RFP software

Why you need RFP software

Products/Features/Solutions

The response process should be scalable, repeatable, and consistent.

Perhaps you remember the childhood game of “telephone.” In the game, one person thinks of a sentence and then whispers it to the next person in line; that person then whispers it to the next in line, and so on. Once everyone has heard the sentence, the last person has to say it out loud. Almost invariably, the final sentence has very little in common with the original.

An RFP might land in someone’s inbox in a variety of formats, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or even as a PDF. You might share the RFP, or parts of it, with dozens of stakeholders, each with their own area of expertise.

You could even have multiple stakeholders working on a single question or a single subject matter expert (SME) working on multiple RFPs, which, without the right processes in place, leads to inconsistent responses—a giant red flag to procurement teams.

In other words, an RFP can be like a written game of telephone. Multiple hands without centralized processes can delay and distort the response, meaning the response manager might have to spend hours, days, or even weeks trying to craft a cohesive response out of an anything but cohesive array of answers.

The solution is RFP software that is advanced enough to frame a response process that is consistent, repeatable, and scalable, regardless of the number of stakeholders involved. Let’s explore how RFP software can smooth out the response process, enabling you to drive more revenue in less time.

What is RFP software?

Clothing sizes, sports referees, traffic, RFPs—is consistency too much to ask? To be fair, consistency can get a little boring, but consistency in the RFP response process leads to better responses and perhaps more time for you to enjoy more of the chaos we call life outside of work.

As much as we’d love it if all RFPs arrived in consistent formats, they don’t. An effective RFP response tool is the foundation of a fine-tuned RFP process, creating consistency, repeatability, and scalability—transforming any RFP format into a predictably easy-to-navigate response.

Intelligent RFP software is able to import documents into a single format that’s simple and easily accessible by each stakeholder. In turn, the stakeholders submit their answers via the online portal, so project managers, writers, SMEs, etc., know who said what, when it was said, and how to find it, every single time, regardless of the RFP’s original format.

Once answers are in the system, you can store the Q&A pairs in the Content Library, or as I like to call it, The Single Source of Truth, for future use. But SMEs don’t have to wait for an RFP to add vital information to the Content Library. As they accumulate knowledge, rather than storing it on paper or in their heads (surprisingly common), they can add it to the Content Library, where it will remain accessible to all who need it.

Additionally, RFPIO’s advanced RFP software is a project management platform, with features such as assigning and tracking roles and responsibilities, scheduled review cycles, trend analytics, built-in collaboration tools, and seamless integration with the most popular CRMs and other sales tools.

In short, RFPIO software is both a scalable content management system and a project management tool, allowing teams to respond to more of the right bids in less time.

Perhaps less tangibly, but as importantly, it instills trust in SMEs and other stakeholders, as they know that their efforts won’t be duplicated or wasted and that there’s a single repository of consistent and repeatable company knowledge. This enables companies to build on things as opposed to just trying to keep afloat.

Fundamental features to look for in RFP software

The two main features to look for in RFP response technology are project and content management. While response teams might function with one or the other feature, it’s far more difficult.

You can answer RFPs without an automated and intuitive content management system, but that would make them a lot more difficult. On the other hand, you could have just a content database, but you’d lose context, such as where the content is, where the gaps are, and where you have old information that’s being pulled in without actually doing the RFPs.

Still, organizations should look for what their specific needs are. What are the most significant pain points? How will the needs grow in the future?

The most common pain points we hear are:

  • Too much time spent on responses – An up-to-date and easily accessible content library means the difference between tracking stakeholders down and clicking a few buttons.
  • Low response capacity – More often than not, low response capacity comes from trying to do too much. All too often, replying to each and every RFP is seen as the safer bet. Imagine if dating singles took the same approach. Instead of “swiping right” on every opportunity, choose those that fit. An automated response process can help you choose wisely and simplify those worth pursuing. More importantly, automation helps ensure that responses are accurate and on time, but also compelling and competitive, which helps propel your bid to the top of the stack.
  • Disjointed workflow – For proposal teams, a disjointed workflow is a confidence killer! When stakeholders cannot follow the process, they may find themselves wondering “why bother?” RFPIO’s project management features ensure up-to-the-minute statuses on each proposal. And when someone is stuck, others can see where they are stuck and help.
  • Inconsistent deliverables – RFP software eliminates the differences between formats, makes questions easy to locate, and simplifies collaboration, even in siloed organizations. Perhaps more significantly, RFP software enforces rules and parameters, such as character limits.

Why you need RFP software

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, the growth of remote work opportunities has brought the term “distributed workforce” into the mainstream. However, with worldwide offices, multiple brands under single umbrellas, etc., distributed workforces have been around for a very long time.

It’s common for a response to require SMEs from multiple time zones or for a single SME to work on responses from half the world away, and even from different brands under their corporate umbrella.

Response software such as RFPIO allows for different versions of questions and answers. So rather than responding to each RFP from scratch, RFPIO lets SMEs add to or change content to tailor each RFP, ensuring that there’s less of a risk of discrepancies.

RFPIO features include:

  • Content management – Repeatable company information in a single source, ready to go at the click-of-a-button.
  • Integrations – RFPIO seamlessly integrates with more than two dozen of the most popular CRMs, project management systems, communication apps, sales enablement tools, etc.
  • Automation – RFPIO continually learns as you work and suggests answers as you go, providing repeatability. The platform also automatically transfers RFPs from multiple formats into a single, consistent, accessible, predictable one.
  • A unique, project-based pricing approach – User-based pricing limits response teams, creates bottlenecks and incentivizes teams to limit their use of SMEs. Instead, RFPIO includes unlimited users in all of the pricing levels.
  • Scalability – RFPIO has no data or user limits. The software grows as the company grows and changes. Moreover, as the RFP industry evolves, so does RFPIO, without burdening existing tech stacks..

How RFP software can help

I will let you in on a little secret. RFP software, even cutting-edge RFP software such as RFPIO, is not a magic wand. It will never replace response teams, but advanced RFP technology will make their jobs more efficient and productive, ultimately making everyone, even CFOs, happy.

However, the only way RFP software can truly add value is if it works with response management teams rather than the other way around. That includes:

More productive collaboration

Improving collaboration is key to effective RFP management. Most organizations have distributed workforces, and even those that don’t might have off-premises response stakeholders and SMEs.

Chasing people down for answers is a waste of time. RFPIO allows any stakeholder to log in at any time and see exactly what is being asked of them.

Integrations

RFP software should work with tech stacks instead of adding to them. RFPIO does precisely that by seamlessly integrating with more than two dozen of the most popular workplace tools, including:

  • CRM – Break down the silos between sales and response teams with CRM integrations, including Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Pipedrive, PipelineDeals, and HubSpot
  • Communication apps – Stay in touch with stakeholders with Google Hangouts, Jira, Microsoft Teams, and Slack
  • Cloud storage – Sharepoint, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive
  • SSO authentication – Login through Microsoft ADFS, Microsoft Azure, OneLogin, and Okta
  • Browser extensions – Access RFPIO through Chromium Edge or Google Chrome
  • Vendor assessment – Streamline security questionnaires through Whistic
  • Productivity – Import RFPs from nearly any format, including Microsoft Suites, Google Sheets, and PDFs
  • Sales enablement – Import and export content using Seismic or Highspot

RFPIO’s project management features allow project managers to ensure efficiency, establish roles and deadlines, protect your RFP response content, and curate and cultivate your Content Library.

Automated import process

Manual imports are the most time-consuming part of the RFP response process. RFPIO’s advanced import tools turn RFPs from nearly any format into consistent and easily-collaborative content.

Content Library

As I’ve mentioned, consistency is key in response management. In fact, repeating yourself is perhaps the easiest way to streamline your response process, especially since most questions are repeats, or at least variations on questions you’ve seen before.

Keep all your content in one easily accessible place with RFPIO’s AI-empowered Content Library. When you encounter one of those repeated questions, the Content Library will automatically suggest a company-approved answer. All you have to do is click a button and tailor the answer if needed.

A  knowledge management tool decreases RFP response time by:

  • Providing a searchable information hub
  • Housing reusable content
  • Enabling customization using previous responses
  • Facilitating content accuracy

AI-powered recommendation engine

We like to think of RFPIO as a response team’s brilliant assistant. Stumped on a question or you don’t have time to scour the database? That’s what the AI-powered recommendation engine is for. It:

  • Answers common repetitive questions
  • Auto-identifies response content
  • Assigns questions to pertinent SMEs

Enhanced security

RFPIO’s multi-level security enhancements protect organizations’ most valuable assets, company knowledge, with RFPIO’s state-of-the-art security controls.

  • SSO – Using Single Sign-On, you won’t have to memorize passwords. Simply login using your company credentials.
  • Automate user management – Automatically delete users when they leave the company
  • 2-factor authentication – If your company doesn’t use SSO, RFPIO also supports 2-factor authentication.
  • Control access – Define what users can and can’t see.

Let’s talk about the bigger picture. The ultimate goal of more effective RFP management is to win more business! RFPIO gives response management teams more time to craft better answers to more RFPs. It sounds simple, right? Again, it’s all about scalability, repeatability, and consistency.

With RFPIO, you can increase your win potential by responding to the right opportunities in a consistent, repeatable voice, using consistent, scalable answers in a repeatable, easily collaborative, and searchable format.

Scale your team’s ability to answer RFPs

By optimizing the amount of time spent on repetitive manual processes, your team is freed up to dedicate their resources to pursuing new business.

Produce higher quality responses, consistently

In a highly competitive landscape, businesses cannot afford to gamble by underperforming at the proposal stage. RFP software enables consistency through dependable accuracy, helping ensure finely-tuned responses, and creating reliable deliverables through export functionality.

Start winning more bids with RFPIO

RFPIO is the industry-leading response management platform, designed to securely increase RFP win rates and drive revenue.  Learn more by scheduling a Free Demo. 

Now, if only we could do something about clothing sizes.

Next, we’ll discuss knowledge management best practices.

What is RFP software?

What is RFP software?

Products/Features/Solutions

In many companies, proposal and sales teams are stretched to their limits. Even though high-revenue sales requests often arrive via RFP, it’s often easiest to grab those ready-to-close sales leads, even if it means less revenue.

Feature-rich advanced RFP software allows overstretched response management and sales departments to reach for the brass rings—those winnable and profitable RFPs—using significantly fewer employee hours and resources.

If your organization uses dated software or a manual RFP process, or if time constraints prohibit RFP responses altogether, read on to learn about RFP software and how it could benefit your organization.

What is an RFP?

A request for proposal (RFP) is a document that a buyer issues to suppliers that outlines the product or service requirements for procurement. RFPs come in a variety of different formats and narratives (similar to essay questions).

An RFP is the highest form of communication in the procurement process. Most deals are for more than $20,000—often significantly more, like with extra zeros and another comma. They are most common in government, software, insurance, business services, healthcare, and other complex, highly-regulated industries.

Security questionnaires determine whether a vendor (or even the vendor’s vendors) is compliant with the customer’s security requirements. They may include questions about security and privacy, business continuity management, supply chain management, business continuity management, etc. Not surprisingly, security questionnaires are lengthy and complicated, sometimes with hundreds of questions.

Additionally, there are requests for quotes (RFQ)—typically for purchasing goods rather than services—and requests for information (RFI). RFQs, as you might imagine, are about the bottom line, which makes sense when purchasing several gross of industrial screws, but not services that require a more bespoke approach. On the other hand, an RFI might be used to narrow potential suppliers down for future RFP solicitations.

Of course, RFPs often include RFQs, security questionnaires, and RFIs.

What are the objectives of an RFP?

The main objective of an RFP is for organizations to formally announce that they are opening a project for bids. RFPs are more formal and exacting than simple requests for pricing, and they’re typically for larger purchases.

An RFP will describe the needs and expectations of the issuer’s project and create the parameters to compare solutions.

RFPs generally require specific information about regulatory compliance, security, etc. In fact, it helps to think of an RFP response as the precursor to a sales contract and something that would even pass muster with legal departments—and quite often, legal has to approve responses before they’re sent to the customer.

RFPs ask for accurate, compliant, contract-ready answers to customer questions. Compare it to purchasing a house. You might want to know the current state of water or electrical systems, and as part of the presales contract process, the homeowner has to submit the answers in writing. The seller is then legally bound to the accuracy of their answers.

Common problems in the RFP response process

The RFP response is more complex than the uninitiated might think, which is why manual processes only allow for a couple of responses per year. There are a few notable challenges in the RFP response process, including:

The workload – Single RFPs often include hundreds of pages, requiring input from multiple stakeholders. Imagine answering dozens of RFPs per year when you use manual processes!

Content quality – You have one shot at answering an RFP correctly. Content should be centralized, current, and accurate, which requires advanced cataloging.

Collaboration – If an answer isn’t in your content library, the RFP will require collaboration, which means consulting with subject matter experts (SMEs). Having multiple people provide different answers is like herding cats, and extremely difficult without response management.

Detail – RFPs require impeccably detailed and accurate answers using existing knowledge and collaboration from SMEs.

Deadline – RFP deadlines are firm and many responses are time stamped. Missing a deadline by just a few seconds can rule your company out. Response management should keep you on track throughout the response process.

Consistency – An RFP response process should ensure consistent and on-time deliverables.

What are the three levels of RFP software?

There are three levels of RFP software. The first, manual processes, include some software, such as documents, spreadsheets, and a folder tree, but little else. Manual processes are generally acceptable for companies that only respond to a couple of RFPs a year.

I typically refer to the next level of RFP software as “the document suites.” This includes word-processing software composed of essential collaboration tools, content management, templates, and formatting. Document suites are suitable for companies that answer a handful of RFPs each year.

When RFP-based deals are an essential source of revenue, most organizations opt for the third level—a Response Management solution. These solutions help businesses with responses ranging from RFPs to security questionnaires, and offer the most advanced functionality for creating RFPs and managing their workflows. They save time, money, and costly errors through machine learning, robust integrations, and comprehensive and intuitive content management tools.

What are the benefits of RFP software?

RFP software solutions remove most of the above challenges by automating as much as 80% of the response process.

To a harried response manager, RFP software is a game-changer. To their employer, RFP software offers a demonstrably impressive return on investment.

Because RFPs are unique, even when they come from existing customers, and because businesses and regulatory requirements are in near-constant flux, most responses require additional input from SMEs. Through RFP software automation, but still at the response manager’s discretion, the SMEs’ answers will then go into the content library for future use.

Features of Response Management software

RFP solutions are capable solutions designed to help organizations engage with external stakeholders in an efficient, strategic, and consistent manner. They support the process of responding to customers and other stakeholders by leveraging new developments in machine learning and collaborative cloud technology to break down knowledge silos and automate repetitive tasks.

Responding to RFPs is one of the most popular response management use cases, and for this reason, most solutions have been designed to meet the specific needs of proposal managers.

So what are the key features?

Machine learning – With machine learning, you are the teacher. The system learns how you work and how you answer questions, enabling a click-of-a-button response the next time you encounter similar queries.

Scalability – A scalable solution that can grow and adapt to support your company as its operations grow and business needs change

Workflow Automation – Customizable automated workflows and dozens of integrations allow for easy collaboration.

Professional Document Production – Create professional high-fidelity response documents with the correct formatting in just a few keystrokes.

Data insights – Analyzing the efficiency of the RFP response process requires good reporting, including tracking the response team’s progress, the types of responses you’re issuing (and winning), win/loss analysis, etc. You shouldn’t be limited to the data the software designer thinks is important. RFPIO lets you create reports the way you want them. If you use reporting suites, we probably integrate with them too.

Advanced Content Management – RFP software solutions provide enterprise-grade content management to ensure content repositories are current and complete.

The benefits of using RFP software

Has this ever happened to you? The moment you begin reading a proposal request, you experience a sense of déjà vu. It’s not your imagination. You have answered most of these questions before…many times before.

Most of a typical RFP includes relatively standard questions. RFP software automates most of the response process, freeing you to consult with SMEs and coordinate the response process.

Optimized workflow

RFPIO optimizes workflow by smoothing out the content creation process, establishing workflow roles, providing selective collaboration, curating and cultivating your content library, and letting you spend more time on presentations instead of herding cats.

With RFPIO software, users can rename and customize fields and intake forms, and customize frameworks and business processes. RFPIO software is a tool that fits with your processes instead of the other way around. In fact, RFPIO integrates with more workflow tools than any other response management platform.

Unified collaboration

The response process can include dozens of stakeholders from multiple departments and time zones. Timely collaboration can be a challenge, but not with RFPIO. RFPIO integrates with most project management and messaging apps, and collaboration is built into RFPIO’s platform.

RFPIO’s collaborative tools allow you to:

  • Consolidate project-specific conversations – Never lose track of comment threads again.
  • Break down knowledge silos – Each stakeholder on a response has a singular goal…winning the bid! RFPIO allows you to share knowledge with stakeholders as needed, and vice versa.
  • Track progress of response completion – See whether the project is running on time and whether each stakeholder is doing their part.

Improved win rates

The average RFP win rate is 45%. Advanced response software uses AI to streamline the response process, which means you have more time to respond to more RFPs and win more bids. Additionally, RFPIO’s Content Library helps improve response quality by suggesting pre-approved answers to most queries, leading to an increased win rate.

Even if your win rate has only nominal gains, you will still produce more revenue because, as with many other things, RFP response is a numbers game. If you have the time to respond to more RFPs, you will have more victories and drive revenue.

“Since implementing RFPIO, we’ve been able to do so much more with the same headcount. We’ve increased efficiency by at least 30-35%. We’ve diverted the effort and time to more value-added activities, creating a win-win both for the organization and the team members”.
–Shashi K, Assistant VP of Content at Genpact

RFPIO’s project management features help expedite response turnaround time, scale response capacity, and facilitate consistent deliverables.

The RFPIO approach

RFPIO is the most advanced RFP solution on the market

“RFPIO is perfect! 10 out of 10, a hundred percent 10 out of 10. RFPIO is a superb product. It is the best platform for RFP management out there.”
–Jack Pierce, Proposal Team Manager, Accruent

Features include:

Proprietary import and export technology

Most RFPs show up in your inbox as Word or Excel docs. Some appear as PDFs, which less advanced RFP response platforms can’t read. RFPIO simplifies the import/export process, even with PDFs, thereby shortening the response time and delivering accurate, timely, and impressive bids. RFPIO’s industry-leading import/export features include:

  • Machine-learning-driven functionality that interprets questionnaires and parses them into components.
  • Specific functionality for the import of several standard questionnaire formats (CAIQ, CORL, ILPA, etc.)
  • Modern, intuitive UX for guiding our machine learning during import.

Adaptive knowledge library

The most time-consuming part of the response process isn’t strategizing. It isn’t even herding those metaphorical cats. Most of an RFP’s questions have probably been answered before, whether for that customer or others—sometimes several others. Answering those redundant questions is where the bulk of response time lies.

RFPIO’s AI-enhanced Content Library expedites the response process by automatically providing pre-approved answers to those tedious questions with just a few keystrokes. RFPIO’s web-based Content Library includes:

  • Auto-suggested answers
  • Auto-assigned content to relevant owners
  • Intelligent, easy search function
  • Cloud-based content storage

Built-in integrations

RFPIO is scalable and seamlessly integrates with over two dozen of the most popular sales enablement tools, productivity apps, CRMs, cloud storage providers, communication platforms, and SSO authentication software products.

  • CRMs – RFPIO integrates with the most popular customer relationship management (CRM) tools, including Salesforce, Hubspot, and several others. Users can start, monitor, and collaborate on projects within the CRM. For example, with the click of a couple of buttons, the RFP goes from Salesforce to RFPIO and puts compliant content at the finger of frontline teams.
  • Communication apps – Distributed workforces have made communication apps such as Slack and Microsoft Teams a modern necessity. RFPIO functions within those apps to keep teams aligned and projects on track.
  • Cloud Storage – RFPIO integrates with Google Drive, Google Cloud, Sharepoint, OneDrive, etc., so all documents can be stored in the cloud.
  • SSO authentication – Users can log into RFPIO through Microsoft ADFS, Microsoft Azure, Okta, or OneLogin.
  • Vendor assessment – RFPIO teams with Whistic to seamlessly import third-party vendor security questionnaires.
  • Browser extensions – Stakeholders can access the company content library directly through Chromium Edge or Google Chrome.
  • Productivity – RFPIO users can search, import, and export using productivity tools such as Google Docs and Microsoft Suite applications.
  • Sales enablement – Two-way RFPIO integrations with Seismic and Highspot allow users to import and export collateral, spreadsheets, diagrams, etc. between apps, and improve collaboration between sales, presales, and executives.

Robust project management tools

RFPIO’s management solution alleviates common challenges in meeting deadlines with better workflow assessment, even with distributed workforces. RFPIO Project management capabilities include:

  • Trend analytics – Using insightful at-a-glance dashboards, built-in analytics allows users to analyze time and resources dedicated to an RFP, and track which questions are answered manually or through the content library.
  • Task management – RFPIO breaks projects into bite-sized pieces and helps project managers assign tasks to those who aren’t buried under other responsibilities, and track progress.
  • Review cycles – Multiple stakeholder RFPs should have multiple stakeholder review processes. RFPIO allows companies to set up review cycles on questions, sections, or the entire RFP.

Deliver better proposals with RFP software

If your team is reluctant to respond to even winnable RFPs because of a lack of time and resources, or if your RFP win rate is less than impressive, it’s worth a few minutes to learn more about RFPIO’s time-saving and bid-winning response management software.

RFP automation: What it is, how it works and best practices

RFP automation: What it is, how it works and best practices

Products/Features/Solutions

If you’ve ever responded to a request for proposal (RFP), you know they tend to be about 80-85% boilerplate content. The remaining 15-20% is where you really have the freedom to adapt your proposal to a client’s specific needs. Unfortunately, if you use a manual response process, you likely invest more time finding previous responses than you do creating valuable, customized content. It’s a challenge that proposal teams are increasingly solving with RFP software that enables RFP automation.

Without RFP automation, valuable time is spent on repetitive tasks. Indeed, subject matter experts (SMEs) could spend up to 30% of time they didn’t have to spare responding to RFPs. In addition, information and departmental silos keep teams from reaching their fullest revenue-generating potential as a collaborative unit.

Fortunately, automating the RFP response process means less repetitive labor, more time for other high-priority tasks—and the chance to make each RFP you submit pack a bigger punch.

In this blog, we’ll cover:

What is RFP automation?

RFP automation is a cloud-based B2B sales technology that helps teams maximize resources and time being spent on RFPs. As a result of these time savings, team members are able to return to other high-priority tasks.

But let’s take a step back.

Billions of years ago (in the late 2000s), marketing automation caused an important shift in email marketing. Automation allowed marketers to achieve more as a team and make a bigger impact on revenue.

Over the past few years, the proposal management industry experienced the same transformative effect with RFP automation.

It’s a collective effort to respond to an RFP, with involvement from multiple departments—sales, marketing, legal, finance, product, compliance, IT—and the list goes on. Often (but not always) there is a dedicated proposal manager directing these projects to keep everyone moving toward the same target…a timely, quality RFP response.

In the olden days, an RFP would come in. The proposal manager would “shred” it and assign questions to an SME—the all too familiar questions the SME had answered many times before on other proposals.

The SME then would spend too much time looking through folders and documents to copy and paste previous responses. There would be little time to ensure quality control.

With RFP automation, an SME only has to answer a question once, and then it’s captured in a content library. The proposal manager can then reference the Content Library to populate the responses with relevant content. SME involvement consists only of oversight, making sure the content is accurate and optimized.

Automation helps teams maximize resources and time being spent on RFPs. Time savings allow team members to return to other high-priority tasks. Some of your most valuable and costly resources are involved in RFP responses. If you respond to 100 RFPs in a year, this really adds up. To calculate your RFP automation cost savings, check out our ROI calculator.

How do you automate an RFP response?

Automating an RFP response comes down to two main things: Artificial intelligence and content. AI-enabled RFP automation technology uses AI to match existing content with new incoming RFP questions. The more content you have, the more accurate the result.

When we set out to build a consolidated (and better) solution for RFP response management back in 2015, over and over we heard that responders wanted a platform that would help them improve collaboration and automate workflows.

A few RFP automation solutions existed, but they weren’t easy to use. And these solutions didn’t integrate with systems that teams were already using across an organization, including CRMs like Salesforce, communication tools like Slack, or cloud storage like Google Drive. With more than 8,000 solutions in the marketing technology landscape, the last thing an organization needs is a solution that doesn’t play nice with other technology its stack. 

marketing technology landscape

To make sure we built a solution for proper RFP automation, we focused on three aspects:

  • Artificial intelligence: (AI) is changing the way we all work, including how proposal management teams “shred” their RFPs. It’s easier to break up relevant sections, auto-identify response content, and assign questions to subject matter experts.
  • Integrations: Our integrations keep all team members working in their preferred tools. Salespeople don’t want to leave their CRM to respond to RFPs and they no longer have to. SMEs are unreachable by email, but they’ll engage through Slack.
  • Content management: The Content Library is the content management hub — not only for RFPs, but for all company information. Anyone has access to the latest and greatest content, which can be easily searched, selected, and inserted into a variety of business documents … even emails.

Benefits of RFP and proposal automation

Achieving more with RFP automation also means responding to more RFPs. Organizations that use RFP software respond to 43% more RFPs per year, on average. Because the time-savings realized from automation can be re-invested to maintain or improve response quality, imagine what this scenario, based on data from our research, would do to your revenue forecast:

  • Prior to RFP automation, let’s say you responded to an average of about 50 RFPs every year.
  • Each RFP win equals, on average, $1-3 million.
  • Add 43% more responses per year with RFP software.
  • At an industry average of 45% win rate, that equates to 22.5 more wins per year.

In this scenario, your revenue forecast from RFPs could increase upwards of $22.5 million to $67.5 million in a year!

Without automation, response management teams can only dream of increasing RFP responses, let alone revenue forecasts. They respond to RFPs in a reactive state, which, of course, is not the way to produce a quality deliverable for the prospect.

Saving time through efficient processes turns into extra hours to consider viable business opportunities—perhaps even breaking into new markets. RFP automation gives your team the space to establish a proactive process, where technology handles much of the heavy lifting. Team members are brought in to use their strengths to strengthen the content—and the chances of winning the deal.

Responding to RFPs: Is it a good AI use case?

Someone has to say it. Doc Brown of Back to the Future fame wasn’t a scientist. He was a tinkerer who built Rube Goldberg machines. Everything from his dog Einstein’s automatic feeder to the Delorean’s lightning rod was an overly complex chain-reaction contraption. Until he invented the Flux Capacitor. That was the real science that made time travel possible.

How is Doc Brown’s evolution from tinkerer to scientist relevant to automation? In the case of responding to RFPs, you cannot simply automate all of the manual tasks that go into a response. If you do that, then you’ll end up with an RFP Rube Goldberg machine that may not be as reliable as the manual processes you’re trying to eliminate. But in situations where AI is appropriate? That’s the real science that makes automation possible.

As promising as AI is, it’s still just plain hard. Projects are costly, unwieldy, and difficult to complete. According to the Wall Street Journal, only 53 percent of AI projects make it into production. And, according to Venture Beat, those that do are only profitable about 60 percent of the time.

RFP automation best practices

For example, within the Responsive platform automation works to:

  1. Populate the “first pass” of a response for an entire project or section of a project.
  2. Reference content library records in conjunction with a series of filters and the ranking of metadata
  3. Use a recommendation algorithm to prioritize and rank the results
  4. Preview results so users can decide whether or not to use the answers

To do this, AI operations factor in, among other things:

  • Access to the Content Library content by user
  • Similar questions or alternate questions in the Content Library
  • Answer Type/Compatibility
  • Content-to-search match percentage
  • Star rating (content quality)
  • Used count (how often the content is used)
  • Last used date
  • Last updated date
  • Exact word/phrase match

When effectively executed, AI enables RFP automation because the solution has been built by qualified data scientists, extensively tested, based on accurate data models, and designed to scale. It’s also important to note that AI isn’t meant to be used to replace humans; it’s intended to enhance us.

The secret to RFP automation success: Organized content

Even artificial intelligence needs a brain. Don’t worry. This isn’t a Skynet scenario. For RFP automation, the brain is your content library. More specifically, in Responsive this is known as the content library.

With a robust, well-maintained content library as a resource, your AI can grow in sophistication from machine learning. Users will be able to filter at higher levels, access the cleanest Q&A pairs, and move faster through the response process. Additionally, time saved from RFP automation can be re-invested into developing better content and curating existing content to improve its quality.

A long-term benefit of RFP automation is increased visibility into which content is most popular and where you have gaps. Data from these insights will be valuable in your content strategy moving forward.

So through RFP automation using a reliable content library you get to create better content and find time to continuously organize content, all while responding to more RFPs. That sounds like a profitable use case for AI.

Are you ready to see if RFP automation is right for you? Request a demo to find out.

Integrating Salesforce is a simple way to add tons of value to RFP software

Integrating Salesforce is a simple way to add tons of value to RFP software

Integrations

This is about as “meta” as it gets in RFP software sales: RFPIO client Salesforce is currently in the process of integrating Salesforce with its RFPIO response management solution. How can a CRM integrate with itself? As Cosmo Kramer once said, “I must be at the nexus of the universe!” 

More than 30% of RFPIO customers who use Salesforce have already integrated the solutions. The Salesforce integration is by far the most popular CRM integration at RFPIO — 20x more customers use it than our next most popular CRM. So why do customers love it so much? 

Visibility and efficiency to start, but there’s more to it than that. 

“Each response we complete builds upon the experience of previous responses (good and bad). Our account executives spend a significant amount of time in Salesforce and the integration is valuable to them once a project has been submitted. My first RFP response using RFPIO reduced prep time by almost 70%, so now we can focus more on customised content instead of boilerplate responses.” ~ PerfectMind (read the full case study here)

Why you need it: Integrating RFP software with your CRM makes everything easier

Integrating Salesforce and RFP software workflows gives proposal and sales teams bi-directional access to all response management functionality. In other words, whether they’re working in Salesforce or RFPIO, users can perform all response management functions—from launch to development to publishing—seamlessly, without any redundancy or confusion. Here’s one possible workflow of how it can work for you:

Step 1: Sales rep launches RFPs, RFIs, Security Questionnaires, or any other response project directly from Salesforce. Expedite project creation by launching with existing Salesforce data in a few button clicks.Sales teams can send intake requests to the proposal team right from their favorite CRM (Salesforce).

Step 2: Proposal manager receives automated trigger notification of new project launch, analyzes what’s needed at intake to determine if it qualifies as an active project, and either rejects it or begins proposal development in RFPIO.Track and monitor progress in real-time

Step 3: Sales rep and proposal manager can track and monitor project progress in real-time from either application.When a new project launches, proposal managers are automatically notified

Step 4: Response packets and related documents are automatically published back to Salesforce so sales rep can send them to the prospect or customer.Sales reps can automatically send response packets to their prospects after they're published back to Salesforce

Step 5: Fine-tune proposal operations for sales and proposal teams with in-depth analytics output through Salesforce Reports Builder.Sales and proposal teams can fine-tune operations with detailed ananlytics

“The Salesforce integration has helped us align sales and proposal teams. Now, sales has full visibility into project status. They can see how a current project is progressing, or check which future projects are in the queue, all from the RFPIO dashboard in Salesforce.”

-Lauren Joy, Proposal Team Manager at Hyland (full case study here)

How you get it

The Salesforce integration raises awareness of RFPIO with more people in your organization. It becomes recognized as more than just a tool for the proposal team. It becomes the platform for expanding opportunities with prospects and customers. For example, after an integration, you can use the Salesforce Proposal Builder to create personalized proactive selling documents based on the up-to-date, brand-approved RFPIO Content Library. 

CRM integration is usually a high priority for our customers. Especially one or two years into a subscription, after their proof of concept for response management has hit its goal. 

Compared to other applications available through the Salesforce AppExchange, integration with RFPIO is a light lift. It all starts with a demo. This can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the stakeholders you want in the “room” and what you want us to prepare for them.

After you decide to add the Salesforce integration, the process moves pretty quickly. The integration fully supports Salesforce Lightning as well as the classic Salesforce configuration. It works with either or both. A seasoned Salesforce admin can have it ready in 1-3 hours as long as there isn’t a lot of custom mapping. If there are a lot of custom fields, then the configuration can stretch into a few days–still on the lighter side of configuration. 

We often recommend a trial integration. Connect an RFPIO production environment with a Salesforce sandbox to test the integration in a safe space that won’t create disruptions in your Salesforce production environment. It’s simple to migrate this trial setup to a production environment.

If security is a concern, it shouldn’t be. We’re already published on the Salesforce AppExchange, which means we went through the Salesforce security review. Also, we are quite comfortable navigating any enterprise security review. So far, we’ve passed 100% of every one we’ve been through.

“We’re using the Salesforce integration to pull data in from an existing account or opportunity. This both ensures the data is matching and also means there are fewer fields to fill out–saving time and avoiding errors”

-Lisa McNeely, Proposal Services Team Manager at Hyland (full case study here)

What you can expect 

You’ll start seeing the value of real-time visibility and increased efficiency from the Salesforce integration almost immediately. Another huge value comes from the reporting capabilities, and this value grows over time. By creating associations between Salesforce objects and RFPIO projects, managers, directors, VPs of sales, and other teams can identify which projects were successful, which RFPs were won, and how that impacted the Salesforce opportunity outcome. You can find patterns that help identify more successful opportunities and the teams involved with those opportunities, which will ultimately lead to higher conversion rates and more revenue.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Salesforce integration with RFPIO, then contact us to set up a demo.

“The Salesforce integration for intake requests is a game changer. When I started the proposal process from the ground up at my company, sales people had no idea where to send RFPs—they were just throwing them to legal. Now there’s an easy way to request support right in Salesforce!”

How RFP automation software helped Elevate Capital streamline their RFP process

How RFP automation software helped Elevate Capital streamline their RFP process

Customer Stories

Elevate Capital is an inclusive venture capital fund that specifically targets investments in underserved entrepreneurs, such as women and ethnic minorities, or those with limited access regionally to capital and opportunities.

They believe there is tremendous opportunity to invest early and offer mentorship to these entrepreneurs—which is why they provide the venture capital and guidance they need to turn their startups into great companies.

In order to effort to continue to support this underserved group of budding entrepreneurs, Elevate Capital launched a new fund in 2020. Shortly after launching this fund, they received a 24-page RFP from an institutional investor.

Much to their surprise (and delight), they finished the behemoth of an RFP in the same amount of time it usually takes them to finish RFPs a sixth of the size.

“And there’s no way we could have done it so quickly and efficiently without RFPIO,” asserted Nitin Rai, the Founder and Managing Director at Elevate Capital.

Working in real-time with built-in collaboration tools

Before the Elevate team implemented RFPIO, their RFP response process was confined to static Word Documents. Each collaborator would update a given Word Document using track changes or comments.

Several versions later, all the contributors would come together for an in-person meeting or conference call to go through the RFP, line-by-line, to make sure everything was accurate and up-to-date.

With RFPIO, they were able to work together all in one place, using in-app comments and @-mentioning. Nitin Rai described collaboration in RFP software as “an amazing experience. Instead of going back-and-forth in 10 different versions of the same Word doc, we were working together in real-time. Working in RFPIO is what collaboration is supposed to be like.”

“We ended up producing a 75-page response from a 25-page questionnaire and we did in just three weeks. There’s no way we could have done it as well as we did without RFPIO.”

A more efficient RFP response process means more time for other things

Because the collaboration process was so much easier, the Elevate Capital team was able to complete and submit a beautifully polished RFP in 3 weeks—the same amount of time it typically took to respond to RFPs that were 6 times shorter.

In-app collaboration tools meant the Elevate Capital team wasn’t spending time sending emails, searching for the right version, or scheduling in-person meetings and conference calls.

By eliminating inefficiencies from the response process, their team was able to quickly pull together a beautifully polished RFP—with enough time to spare to stay focused on their other responsibilities.

The future of RFP response at Elevate Capital

Now that Nitin has populated RFPIO with content relevant to Elevate Capital’s most recent fund, he and his team will be able to respond to future RFPs even more quickly.

Instead of writing each RFP from scratch, or searching through their hard drives to find previous RFPs, they can automatically respond to any repeat questions using RFPIO’s AI-enabled Auto Respond feature. The more RFPs the team responds to, the more accurate Auto Respond will become.

Nitin anticipates that Elevate Capital will quickly see a return on their investment—and he believes that an automated solution to the RFP response process is definitely something other venture capital funds would benefit from.

“After using RFPIO to respond to RFPs, I will never go back to a manual process—it has made a huge difference.”

Why RFP software is every responder’s solution of choice

Why RFP software is every responder’s solution of choice

Selling & Enablement

Responders like you add tremendous value to your organization’s sales process. Your team’s collective knowledge is what makes RFP responses great…and what helps win deals.

When an RFP is afoot, your response management team likely experiences a mixture of emotions. Some are excited about the big opportunity and others are running for the hills. Everyone understands that collaborative content ultimately helps the organization succeed, but that content takes time to create.

High-performing organizations maximize the time of all their resources by turning to all-in-one technology platforms. RFP software has become the solution of choice for responders. Let’s look under the hood at the ways RFPIO supports your response process and frees up your valuable time.

Clear up your process with centralized RFP responses

43% of subject matter experts said their top challenge was spending too much time on RFP responses. 68% of salespeople struggle with focusing on sales activities. 43% of marketers feel they do not have time for extra projects. 50% of proposal managers said keeping up with response content is their biggest challenge.

Much of this “lost time” feeling with responders is spent chasing down previously answered RFP questions. Your RFP response process should be like a road sign—obvious and direct. RFP response software champions a clear process with its core feature: a centralized library with built-in content automation capabilities.

RFP responses are stored in the Content Library, so all responders have quick access. This eliminates Q&A déjà-vu—all responders have to do is answer a question once. From that point forward, draw from previous content with each subsequent RFP and customize as needed.

Since the proposal manager also has quick access to Content Library content, they easily fill in responses before assigning questions or sections to subject matter experts. All that’s required of SMEs is a simple “yay” or “nay” approval.

Across departments, everyone saves time when response content is automated, allowing your team to recapture hours spent hunting for RFP responses to focus instead on other high-value work.

RFP language translation assists global teams

Multi-lingual teams need RFP response software that builds bridges across language roadblocks. RFPIO’s language translation capabilities are designed for global teams, allowing your organization to enjoy authentic communication internally and with customers.

Within RFPIO, all you do is:

  • Click on the Q&A pair that needs to be translated.
  • In the “source language” drop-down, select the current language of the Q&A pair.
  • In the “target language” drop-down, select the language you want the Q&A pair to be translated into.
  • Click “translate” after that and you’re all set.
  • Bonus: Save translated content for future use.

Clarification needs are much more challenging when you speak a different language than your proposal management team or your customers and prospects. RFPIO’s translation tool helps your team translate response content into many different languages to improve global communication.

Everyone uses one solution for efficient content creation

Responders at your organization represent a vast ocean of talent. That’s why RFP response software like RFPIO supports an infinite sea of users (aka unlimited user licenses).

To create compelling and accurate RFP responses, multiple responders across the organization must be involved. Having unlimited user licenses means large collaborative teams get involved to efficiently craft the best possible content. Resource needs are divvied up in the response process, protecting resources so contributors never feel overwhelmed by too many RFP responsibilities.

Since everyone is using the same solution, the response process becomes more systematic and protected. For example, if down the road, a proposal manager or SME transitions out of a role or moves on to another job opportunity, a rich Content Library is left behind for the rest of the response management team.

Flexible and adaptive to support how you work best

When RFP response software is married to a streamlined process, your team experiences across-the-board efficiencies. Since RFPIO is easy to get off the ground, you can be up and running within a week and see immediate improvements.

Navigate the Content Library with ease

RFPIO’s user-friendly tagging and search capabilities allow your team to file away your content to be retrieved later at the drop of a hat. Tag content based on author, topic, language, vertical—or any other tags your team uses to organize the Content Library.

Up-to-date knowledge base

Since your content is centralized in the Content Library, it’s easy to update RFP responses so your team always finds the most current company information. Pre-scheduled content audit cycles help you stay on top of your content as well.

AI-powered answer recommendations

RFPIO’s recommendation engine is powered by artificial intelligence, automatically delivering the most relevant content in seconds. Automation eliminates the way your response team used to work, repeating content creation unnecessarily. Now key subject matter experts can focus on fact-checking and customization to increase the impact of your response content.

RFPIO is the solution of choice for thousands of responders. See why RFPIO is the best solution for you too.

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.