“As our remit expanded, and after exploring a number of options, we decided that Responsive was the optimal solution for us. They had the technological scale and people to truly support us in this global initiative.”
Maria Flores
VP Bid Management at IFS
The gist
As IFS expanded global bid management, rising RFP volume and complexity pushed the team to test a custom GPT for faster drafting. The pilot proved AI could accelerate first drafts, but scaling across the enterprise required governed knowledge, subject matter expert (SME) collaboration, workflow controls, compliance, and ongoing maintenance.
After evaluating its in-house approach and 10 other solutions, IFS chose the Responsive Platform for end-to-end Strategic Response Management. Responsive Professional Services helped IFS onboard approximately 15% faster than the standard enterprise timeline, while Responsive Academy accelerated adoption across SMEs and sales teams.
The rundown
IFS’s response challenge
- The global bid management team was expanding while facing increasing RFP volume and complexity.
- A previous proposal management system could not keep pace with business growth and was not scalable.
- An in-house RFP GPT pilot showed that drafting could be accelerated, but it did not provide enterprise-scale governance, workflow management, audit trails, or built-in verification.
- Maintaining Q&A data and tracking LLM changes for the RFP GPT would create an ongoing burden for IT resources focused on core product innovation.
- IFS needed a global operation model that could support consistent response, collaboration, compliance, and long-term AI adoption.
Impact and results
- 15% faster implementation than the standard enterprise timeline with support from Responsive Professional Services.
- 90%+ bids advance to the next stage, driven by a governed knowledge base and end-to-end workflows that give IFS a foundation for managing RFPs, DDQs, security questionnaires, and ad hoc customer requests.
- Responsive Academy provides structured, role-appropriate training to support adoption among SMEs and sales teams.
- Responsive reporting helped reveal that 35% of deals progressing beyond the bid stage were going dormant.
- Pre-built Responsive Agents and custom no-code agents created in Responsive Agent Studio extend automation beyond drafting.
An in-house AI pilot reveals the real scope of enterprise response management
By late 2024, IFS was at an inflection point. The bid management team, led by Maria Flores, VP of Bid Management at IFS, was expanding globally, and the organization wanted to explore how AI could improve efficiency. Because the team reported to the CTO and IFS already had deep AI expertise, building a custom GPT for RFP responses was a logical experiment. Initial results were promising, but the GPT wasn’t designed for enterprise-scale governance.
Responding to RFPs, DDQs, security questionnaires, and ad hoc customer questions requires coordination across teams, validation from SMEs, structured reviews, and clear ownership of outcomes. It involves knowing what to say, who needs to weigh in, understanding response completeness, and how it aligns with the broader deal strategy.
Drafting is the starting point, but to move the business forward, AI also needs to support end-to-end workflows, content governance, and collaboration that occur in parallel to drafting. The pilot that started as a lightweight experiment quickly uncovered the true scope of global bid management at IFS.
Drafting vs. lifecycle management
The pilot proved that while AI excels at initial drafting, high-stakes enterprise RFPs require an interconnected lifecycle, including real-time collaboration with SMEs and committee review workflows.
Data verification & compliance
IFS operates in asset-intensive industries like manufacturing, aerospace, energy, and construction, which require absolute accuracy. The pilot highlighted that a standalone GPT lacked the built-in audit trails and automated verification needed to confidently eliminate compliance risks in security and legal claims.
The reality of maintenance scale
With expanding global bid volumes, maintaining manual Q&A data updates and tracking LLM updates would divert high-value IT resources away from core business objectives.
“Because the IT team possesses deep AI expertise, they quickly recognized the operational reality: their core focus was driving core product innovation, not the continuous, heavy backend maintenance required to keep a standalone RFP data model alive.”
Maria Flores
VP Bid Management at IFS
Recognizing the need for a scalable enterprise AI platform
Based on their experience using the in-house GPT and their evaluation of 10 other RFP and proposal solutions, IFS chose Responsive as a complete, end-to-end Strategic Response Management system. From a practitioner standpoint, several capabilities stood out to Maria, including:
- A governed knowledge base: A single source of truth built from proven, winning responses, kept accurate and up to date with AI and easy-to-build agents.
- Built-in SME collaboration: The ability to get the right experts involved without chasing answers, while keeping content accurate through automated updates.
- End-to-end workflow management: From intake to submission, every step is tracked, visible, and controlled so a single team can simultaneously manage exploding volumes of RFXs, security questionnaires, and other customer requests.
- Auditability and compliance: Confidence that every answer was accurate, approved, and defensible through features such as TRACE Score™, a confidence rating provided with every AI answer.
- A platform for continuous improvement: Reporting and analytics that reveal where buyer expectations aren’t being met by existing content and guide teams on how to strengthen responses to win more deals.
- An ongoing partnership to manage growth: Responsive Professional Services works closely with IFS to fast-track onboarding and stay aligned on data strategy, content structure, and governance.
- Advanced agentic AI capabilities: Pre-built agents answer questionnaires, summarize requirements, execute deal-fit analysis, and craft executive summaries. The IFS global bid management team can also easily create their own no-code agents in Agent Studio.
“We love that Responsive has agents in the platform and that we are empowered to stand them up.”
Maria Flores
VP Bid Management at IFS
Selecting Responsive was only the beginning. IFS needed to centralize global proposal management while creating a foundation that teams could use consistently across regions and business units.
Responsive Professional Services worked with IFS stakeholders from the start to align on data strategy, content structure, and governance. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all rollout, the team built an implementation plan around IFS’s operating environment and adoption goals.
“The Responsive implementation team closely collaborated with us from day one. We truly felt like we had a partner in the room with us as we shaped our strategy and next steps. They brought deep expertise and guidance, tailoring an individualized plan to meet our unique needs and supporting us through what was a truly Herculean implementation effort.”
Maria Flores
VP Bid Management at IFS
The collaboration helped IFS complete implementation approximately 15% faster than the standard timeline for an enterprise company, creating momentum for broader adoption.
Accelerating adoption with accessible on-demand training
IFS recognized that long-term AI value would depend on people knowing how to use the platform well. Responsive Academy gave users centralized, role-appropriate learning paths designed to make onboarding clearer and more engaging.
The training approach helped SMEs and sales teams focus on the parts of the platform relevant to their work, supporting adoption without requiring every user to become a proposal technology expert.
“Providing our teams with easy-to-understand training on the aspects of the platform they use is key to adoption and engagement. Responsive Academy made it fun and genuinely engaging for our SMEs and sales teams to learn about how to best use Responsive.”
Treslyn Doetch
Proposal Specialist at IFS
Turning Responsive data into business intelligence
IFS’s use of Responsive also shows how response management data can inform decisions beyond the proposal team. For example, while the bid management team maintains a 90%+ rate of bids advancing to the next stage, overall deal win rates were declining.
By combining Responsive data with the team’s expertise, IFS identified that 35% of deals progressing beyond the bid stage were going dormant. The finding pointed to gaps later in the sales cycle, giving the organization a clearer view of where pipeline hygiene and account management needed attention.
The level of visibility depicted in this example shifts the role of response management from a production function to a source of reusable intelligence about buyer requirements, deal progression, and revenue execution.
A blueprint for using LLMs to validate enterprise-scale SRM
IFS’s maturity model from RFP GPT to Responsive mirrors what many teams are going through:
- Innovation: Identify AI opportunities to accelerate RFPs and bids.
- Internal proof-of-concept: Build an internal GPT to pressure-test use cases.
- Strategic evaluation: Define full-scale enterprise workflow and compliance requirements.
- Platform optimization: Partner with Responsive for end-to-end Strategic Response Management that scales growth securely.
For IFS, the in-house GPT pilot validated AI’s potential while clarifying what enterprise-scale Strategic Response Management (SRM) requires. Generative AI could accelerate drafting, but sustainable impact depended on governed knowledge, trusted workflows, auditability, collaboration, and continuous optimization.
By pairing its own AI leadership with the Responsive Platform, IFS gained the infrastructure and support to scale without pulling technical resources away from product innovation. Hands-on guidance from Professional Services, thoughtful enablement, and accessible training through Responsive Academy laid the groundwork for broader adoption across regions and business units as part of a long-term SRM framework.
IFS’s experience offers a practical blueprint for organizations moving from AI experimentation to operational execution: build where differentiation matters most, and partner where specialized platforms can accelerate scale, governance, and measurable impact.
*Responsive’s AI Supplementary Terms provide that customer data is not used to train AI models and that all inputs and outputs remain IFS's confidential data. AI-generated content is reviewed by IFS personnel prior to submission. Please contact legal.americas@ifs.com with any direct questions about the IFS RFP process. For more information about IFS’s commitment to its customers regarding data processing, please visit their Legal page.
