"Responsive AI has been a true force multiplier. It excels at tackling those complex, multi-part questions and ensures the entire response is consistent and coherent. We're shaving days off our delivery time, while maintaining high-quality, consistent results."
Vicki Bokhari
Proposal Manager of Global GTM Operations at Tenable
The gist
Tenable, a global leader in cybersecurity and exposure management, has been a Responsive customer since 2016. As the company grew, it needed faster, more consistent responses to RFPs, DDQs, and security questionnaires. By centralizing knowledge through Responsive in a vetted Content Library, Tenable created a single source of truth for proposal teams, subject matter experts (SMEs), and 900+ global sellers, who now self-serve accurate answers with Responsive LookUp.
Responsive AI agents automate content governance and provide strategic roadmaps before drafting begins. These autonomous AI systems help the proposal team create faster first drafts, protect SME time, deliver measurable cost savings, and sustain win rates well above the industry average.
The rundown
Tenable’s response challenge
- Fragmented, manual response processes led to inefficiencies, especially as the volume of RFPs and questionnaires increased.
- Teams previously relied on spreadsheets, email chains, and shared folders to track down content.
- Repetitive, time-consuming content requests constantly pulled SMEs away from critical security work.
- The proposal team was bogged down in administrative work and could not adequately support an expanding sales team.
Impact and results
- Responsive AI saved 2,320 staff hours in a single quarter, valued at $122,000.
- Time-to-first-draft of RFP proposals and completed questionnaires reduced from 10 to 2-3 days.
- AI agents maintain the accuracy of the knowledge base and execute RFP analysis to give proposal teams a strategic roadmap before drafting begins.
- Responsive LookUp gives 900+ global sellers self-service access to the knowledge base, enabling fast, accurate, and consistent responses to client questions and requests.
- A three-person proposal team manages a 25% YoY increase in RFPs, RFIs, DDQs, and security questionnaires — and is moving faster than before.
Tenable and Responsive: A longstanding partnership
Tenable, one of Responsive’s earliest adopters, has been growing with the platform since 2016. Their journey began with an “a-ha” moment during the very first demo. Tenable’s team had been struggling with an RFP for weeks. During the demo, a Responsive salesperson generated a complete response for the same RFP in just five minutes. To top it off, Tenable won the RFP and closed a major deal, setting the stage for nearly a decade of partnership.
Even in its early days on the Responsive Platform, Tenable saw immediate results. Vicki Bokhari, Proposal Manager of Global GTM Operations at Tenable, started by building a single, centralized source of truth with a Content Library that is continually refreshed with product updates, release notes, and curated responses.
Using Responsive’s advanced knowledge management tools, Vicki and two of her colleagues oversee a robust Content Library with:
- Tags and collections that make content easy to find and access, whether they’re responding to an RFP, DDQ, or security questionnaire.
- Seamless content review and approval workflows to update knowledge as Tenable adds new products and markets.
- Capabilities such as deduplication and automation of SME content review workflows.
By using its Responsive knowledge base and AI automation powered by machine learning and natural language processing, the company initially cut time-to-first-draft from 10 days to just 5 (and then down to 2-3 days when Tenable started using Responsive generative AI), setting a new standard for efficiency.
As Tenable scaled in a few short years to support 900+ global sellers and 60+ concurrent requests, the value of Responsive AI in delivering speed, accuracy, and consistency grew exponentially.
A leap forward with AI agents
With AI, proposal drafting, sales enablement, and more riding on an up-to-date Content Library, Vicki has always made governance a top priority. However, Tenable is continually advancing its product portfolio, and keeping the library current sometimes lagged behind her other responsibilities.
Agent Studio, Responsive’s no-code environment for building custom AI agents, gives Tenable’s proposal team the power to automate library governance tasks based on the team’s unique workflows. Tenable created its first agents to keep its Content Library clean, accurate, and evolving with the business.
Tenable’s governance-focused agents:
- Archive outdated content to maintain accuracy
- Rename and restructure tags for better taxonomy
- Apply dynamic tagging that automatically categorizes content
"With AI handling the data retrieval, our experts can provide meaningful insight into the narrative and presentation for each customer. It's a fundamental shift that makes the work more fulfilling and impactful."
Vicki Bokhari
Proposal Manager of Global GTM Operations at Tenable
In addition to Agent Studio, Responsive comes with built-in AI agents to accomplish high-value tasks such as creating first drafts or writing executive summaries. When an RFP arrives, Tenable runs it through Analysis Agent to receive an instant breakdown of key themes and flagged legal terms. This analysis provides a strategic roadmap to guide the drafting process. The proposal team uses the insights to build responses that exceed requirements in the areas that matter most to clients.
By combining the creative power of Agent Studio with the structured insights of the Analysis Agent, Tenable maintains an accurate and up-to-date knowledge base to produce reliable AI outputs. When proposal managers and SMEs trust the content AI generates, they can shift their focus to shaping win themes and tailoring solutions. That focus helps sustain a 70% win-rate threshold — far exceeding the 30% industry average — while pursuing more opportunities, ultimately driving greater revenue.
Responsive AI’s impact across Tenable’s team
While Tenable initially cut its response time in half in the early years of using the platform, Responsive’s generative AI capabilities doubled efficiency again. The team now generates a first draft in hours and a refined draft in just two to three days, a significant reduction from their long-standing five-day standard.
Responsive AI has also elevated the role of Tenable’s proposal team within the organization. They now spend less time searching for answers and more time shaping strategy, storytelling, and aligning proposals with customer needs.
"With Agent Studio, we created an agent that is more than a one-time cleanup tool — it’s a continuous governance engine."
Vicki Bokhari
Proposal Manager of Global GTM Operations at Tenable
The impact extends into product development, as well. By analyzing RFP data, Tenable can identify recurring customer requests (e.g., demand for specific certifications) and feed that business intelligence into product and compliance roadmaps, directly improving the company’s go-to-market motion and fueling measurable business outcomes.
Accelerating sales through self-service on a global scale
Responsive’s impact is also felt by a sales organization spread across time zones. Centralized knowledge on the platform has transformed the way Tenable works. International sellers no longer wait for U.S.-based colleagues to come online; instead, they can find answers in the library anytime using Responsive LookUp, even during live sales calls.
LookUp gives sellers direct access to Tenable’s Content Library from Microsoft, Google, Slack, and other applications they use most frequently. This self-service component empowers teams worldwide to move quickly and advance deals without the need to chase down answers from the proposal team or SMEs.
"Responsive is the singular company-wide knowledge hub for proposals, questionnaires, and live sales support."
Vicki Bokhari
Proposal Manager of Global GTM Operations at Tenable
With Responsive as the company’s single source of truth, Tenable has eliminated guesswork and improved alignment across its entire revenue engine. Whether responding to a complex RFP or addressing a customer question on the spot, every seller can trust that their answers are accurate, consistent, and strategically aligned.
A blueprint for AI-driven response excellence
Responsive has become the foundation of Tenable’s efficiency. It powers the centralized knowledge base, fuels AI-generated responses, and enables self-service access for 900+ global sellers. From RFPs and DDQs to security questionnaires and real-time client conversations, every answer starts with Responsive, improving consistency, accuracy, and speed across the organization.
With Responsive AI assisting RFP analysis, content governance, and first drafts, Tenable’s proposal team can zero in on strategy and client-specific storytelling. Responsive AI draws from Tenable’s approved Content Library. It drafts responses in the same voice Tenable uses in all of the content that makes up its knowledge base. This is central to Tenable’s guiding principles for keeping AI accurate, efficient, and invisible:
- Prioritize content health: A clean, tagged, and structured library is the foundation for trustworthy AI.
- Focus on augmentation: Use Responsive AI to automate repetitive tasks so experts can focus on strategy and client engagement.
- Elevate human expertise: With Responsive AI producing first drafts, proposal managers and SMEs concentrate on persuasive, client-ready narratives.
Responsive makes that balance possible by combining centralized knowledge, intelligent automation, and human expertise into a fine-tuned revenue engine that helps Tenable move faster and win more.
