Gaining a new customer, partner, or investor is a sign of trust.
A single cyberattack – something that happens with increasing frequency – can destroy that trust and damage an organization’s overall reputation in a flash. Other types of attacks, such as ransomware, might fly under the radar for privately held organizations, but they can easily cost a company millions.
It’s no wonder that more and more business relationships are preceded by security questionnaires to assess risk and ensure compliance. Not surprisingly, these questionnaires are highly technical and require not just subject matter expertise, but also documented proof of compliance.
These questionnaires are often lengthy and time-consuming to complete, requiring the input of many internal experts and SMEs. But with automation and the latest AI technology, a process that might’ve taken hours to complete can be reduced to minutes.
The trouble with a manual questionnaire response
While security questionnaires are more straightforward than most RFXs — their questions tend to be “yes” or “no” rather than narrative — they are highly technical and often require quick turnaround times. Manual responses are exceedingly time-consuming and pull vital risk management and InfoSec personnel away from their jobs.
RFP software might offer writing assistance, but automated AI-powered Strategic Response Management (SRM) software accesses the most up-to-date security information to automatically answer most questionnaires and provide supporting documentation, in minutes. Subject matter experts (SMEs) will only have to verify and add any final information.
Several obstacles derail security questionnaire responses, including:
- Length — Security questionnaires might be more narrow in scope than most RFXs, but they can contain hundreds, or even thousands, of questions.
- Timelines — Security questionnaires often include tight deadlines, which can be difficult to impossible to meet without automation.
- Lack of expertise — Because security questionnaires are sometimes part of a sales cycle, they might fall under the purview of sales, proposal, or bid teams. However, that is typically not their area of expertise.
- SME collaboration — Your organization’s risk management SMEs are all busy keeping your organization secure. If they approach security questionnaires with reluctance, it may be because they feel higher priorities are on their agendas.
- Limited access to a single source of truth — It’s common for organizations to have siloed knowledge management systems. A well-curated single source of truth will contain the latest Q&A pairs, certificates, and documents.
- Outdated data — It’s imperative that a security questionnaire response includes the most up-to-date data. Automated SRM platforms simplify the normally rigorous content auditing process.
- Disjointed workflow — When tasks are scattered across different systems and communication channels, ensuring timely and accurate responses becomes challenging. An SRM platform includes workflow management that seamlessly integrates with existing tools.
Why automation is crucial for a competitive advantage
Remaining competitive in today’s business environment requires the ability to rapidly and accurately respond to prospect and customer concerns, regardless of organizational challenges.
Failure to respond due to lack of resources or sending incorrect responses could result in losing the business, damaging your organization’s reputation, or even litigation.
Automation enables on-time, accurate, and high-quality responses without burdening resources. It also:
- Accelerates sales cycles — When a security questionnaire is part of a sales cycle, complete and accurate responses can help accelerate the decision-making process.
- Improves cross-team collaboration — Finding the right team members for a project can be frustrating for all parties. AI can locate team members with the proper knowledge and the capacity to help.
- Eliminates repetitive, manual tasks — AI-powered SRM platforms will generate up to 80% of a response on the first pass by pulling from existing content, streamlining the review process.
- Enhances employee experiences — Low-reward repetitive tasks can affect employee morale. Empowering employees to focus on high-reward activities makes them feel valued, and valued employees are more productive.
- Enables accurate responses — A single source of truth (strengthened by AI-enabled knowledge management within SRM platforms) helps ensure accurate responses with far less human oversight.
Security questionnaires you can automate
Manually handling security questionnaires can be a headache — it’s time-consuming, prone to mistakes, and inefficient. Here’s a look at some typical tasks involved in managing security questionnaires and how using automated processes powered by AI can make everything run much more smoothly:
- Response generation — AI-automated SRM platforms can generate up to 80% of a response in just minutes.
- Distribution — Automatically distribute questionnaires to all relevant stakeholders, regardless of geographical location.
- Reminders and follow-ups — Send automated reminder notes to stakeholders behind schedule.
- Response collection — Collect and consolidate responses into a centralized database. AI helps streamline knowledge management through auto-tagging, automated moderation cycles, compliance checks, and more.
- Scoring and analysis — AI algorithms in automated SRM platforms evaluate responses, assign scores to questionnaire submissions, pinpoint potential risks or gaps, and create reports highlighting areas needing attention.
- Data validation — Automatically ensure that responses meet predefined criteria or compliance requirements.
- Reporting and documentation — AI can summarize questionnaire results and key findings to inform future responses.
- System integration — Integrations with security, communication, customer relationship management (CRM), and other tools reduce frustration, manual efforts, and potential errors.
- Audit trail and compliance tracking — Automatically maintain an audit trail of questionnaire activities to track internal and external compliance.
Four tips for faster security questionnaires
An Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) and Responsive report noted some significant challenges proposal teams face. 77% say their work volume, including for security questionnaires, is increasing.
Nearly half cite tight deadlines, difficulty getting input from SMEs, overwhelming volumes of siloed and scattered information, and difficulty identifying the proper requirements and/or contributors.
According to the Association for Intelligent Information Management, up to 70% of content that sits on company servers is redundant, outdated, or trivial (ROT). Not only does ROT increase business risk, but it also wastes employee time and unnecessarily adds to an organization’s data storage budget.
Keeping up with tight deadlines and mitigating risk requires enabling people to respond accurately and with speed and agility. That means having the right information when they need it and workflow management that adds purpose, efficiency, and context to a security questionnaire process.
Centralize answer content in an accessible knowledge base
A recent UK survey found that employees waste an average of 360 hours a year searching for information they need to do their jobs, which equates to about 21.5% of their salaries. An easily accessible and frequently audited single source of truth is the logical solution, but getting there is a challenge when there are few resources and time-strapped employees.
Content isn’t just cross-functionally siloed. In many organizations, documents, templates, customer information, and company knowledge exist in separate databases. Companies also struggle with disjointed collaboration and communication, making it difficult to find the right person who can help.
An AI-powered Strategic Response Management (SRM) platform centralizes company knowledge and creates a single source of truth for all content, accessible to anyone who needs it. This speeds up your security questionnaire response process as AI will automatically pre-fill questions with matching answers stored in your database.
Facilitate collaboration with integrated workflow tools
Another recent survey found that 64% of employees claim that poor collaboration is costing them at least three hours a week in productivity. 20% say it’s costing them up to six hours a week. 41% have changed jobs or are considering it due to poor collaboration.
A study by the Institute for Collaborative Working found that better collaboration has several positive business outcomes, including increased customer satisfaction, improved product quality and development, and increased sales.
While collaboration is the hub around which workflow is built, poor processes can result in delays, gaps in steps, inconsistencies, duplicated work, and frustration.
An AI-driven SRM platform has critical functionality that automates workflow management and simplifies collaboration. In Responsive, for instance, proposal managers can tag contributors who can then work directly in the productivity apps and tools they love (e.g., Slack, Teams) – making the process of SME contribution seamless.
Maintain accuracy with regular audits
Even a centralized content library is only as good as the quality of its content. Is it marketing-approved? Is it up-to-date? Is it accurate?
Marketing-approved content provides brand consistency. Current and accurate content protects all business interests, including profitability, revenue generation, risk exposure, and more.
The APMP/Responsive report found that leading organizations, or those with response win rates of 60% or more, have well-defined processes for managing and updating content. 63% say that AI-led SRM will simplify content management by automatically flagging and helping update ROT content.
AI and automation can streamline content governance – even with limited resources – with content automation, deduplication, regular reviews and updates, easy-to-follow audit trails, and data analytics.
Leverage purpose-built response software
Organizations reluctant to adopt purpose-built AI-powered SRM software are increasingly being left behind. Even those with reliable and repeatable processes for content management, collaboration, and workflow management may soon find it difficult to scale without additional resources.
AI-powered SRM software is scalable and will impact security questionnaire processes by automating or simplifying content management to ensure current and accurate business information. It helps organizations draft and optimize personalized responses and checks for accuracy. It also helps manage workflow by setting up project timelines, tasks, and review cycles with minimal user input.
Questionnaire automation software: how it works
Questionnaire automation software is a holistic and comprehensive platform rather than a single-purpose point solution. It is powered by AI to optimize every stage of the pursuit lifecycle, from import to delivery.
The ability to easily add users, extensive integrations, and multiple APIs provide scalability without increasing headcount. Advanced content management tools ensure compliance and risk mitigation, while project management tools bring people together to keep your projects on track.
What is security questionnaire automation software?
Security questionnaire automation is just one application for robust AI-powered SRM software, which also helps with RFx, due diligence, and any other sort of vendor questionnaire. In addition, customer-facing teams can generate lightning-fast responses to ad-hoc questions.
While most response software offers generative AI writing assistance, security questionnaire automation software offers that plus:
- Import technology to rapidly import and export almost any document type, including lengthy Excel spreadsheets
- The ability to complete up to 80% of a security questionnaire with a few keystrokes
- Workflow automation that enables collaboration without leaving the application and keeps processes running smoothly
- Integrations with the most popular business applications, including CRMs, sales enablement, and communication tools
- A content library dashboard that provides up-to-the-minute detailed analytics, including content utilization, activity trends, review schedules, and more
- Metadata management that tracks content data such as usage frequency, last update, creation date, and projects used, which can be used to assess content health and as search filters
- The ability to easily customize and refine answers
- Technology to enhance security questionnaire responses with images and rich text and your branded template
- Tools like Responsive Profile Center that enable you to build, host, and easily share pre-filled questionnaires and documents securely and instantly
Streamline the questionnaire process with intelligent automation
Vendor security questionnaires are becoming more frequent, repetitive, time-consuming, and complex. Whether you’re dealing with SIG, VSAQ, CAIQ, or NIST 800-171, having a reliable knowledge base – and the right AI – is vital to providing accurate answers every time.
That’s where Responsive’s automated security questionnaire software comes in. It helps provide confidence, scalability, efficiency, and accountability in every response.
If you’re interested in learning more about adopting AI-powered software to streamline your security questionnaire response process, let us know. We’d be happy to answer any questions you might have, plus we’ll give you a customized demo.
