Elmo Software is the fastest growing HR technology solution in Australia and New Zealand, offering a single, cloud-based platform for organizations to easily manage their HR and payroll processes.

For many of ELMO’s mid-market and enterprise-sized customers, a request for tender is often the first step in the sales cycle. As more organizations are looking to cloud-based technology to streamline processes, ELMO noticed a steady increase in the number of tenders received.

ELMO knew that the more tenders they responded to, the more revenue they could generate. They also knew that the right technology could help them respond to an increasing number of tenders, at the same high quality they were used.

So they kicked off the search for bid automation software.

ELMO Software’s bid management team was spending too much time on manual processes

Jay Kumar, the Senior Bid Manager at ELMO Software, explained that before RFPIO, “the response process was not nearly as efficient as it is now.”

“The most time-consuming part of this process would be following up with the stakeholders to remind them to respond to questions. This was especially frustrating because I already had so many other things on my plate,” Jay remembers. “And I know the stakeholders had their own priorities they needed to take care of. We all felt like we were spending more time than necessary.”

Because each tender required so much time and effort—and they were responding to so many tenders—the bid management team would often work nights and weekends to get everything done on time.

They knew it wasn’t sustainable to keep working overtime to complete responses. They had to make a change. They started to look for a solution that could help them organize their content, simplify cross-team collaboration, and automate their process. Ultimately, ELMO decided on RFPIO.

By automating the response process, ELMO Software can respond to more tenders than ever before

Sameer Longi, the Consulting Solution Manager at ELMO Software, says that despite having a small team, RFPIO has enabled ELMO to submit more tenders per month than ever before—without the need for extra headcount or working overtime.

Not only is ELMO’s bid management team able to respond to more tenders, key stakeholders are also spending significantly less time responding to questions.

As the bid manager, Jay would often ask different stakeholders for help on questions. However, because answers were all stored in old tenders, rather than a central repository, it wasn’t easy to track down answers. As a result, he often inadvertently asked stakeholders questions they had already answered.

This has all changed since implementing RFPIO. Now, previous question-answer pairs are nicely stored in Jay’s Content Library. Any time he needs an answer, a quick keyword search is all he needs to find what he’s looking for. Any answer he can’t find in the Content Library, he assigns to key stakeholders using RFPIO’s robust suite of project management tools. Each new answer he collects is automatically stored to the Content Library—ready for the next time he needs it.

RFPIO is a place for the entire team to find answers

The ELMO Software team isn’t just using RFPIO as a tool to respond to bid requests. The team can also use RFPIO as a place to find answers.

Solution consultants will often take advantage of the rich Content Library in RFPIO to prepare for their demos. Oftentimes, their prospects will send over a few questions they would like to see answered—and the solution engineers can easily find the answers they need with a quick keyword search in RFPIO.

Over the next six months, ELMO Software will be using RFPIO in more areas of the organization, so more people can quickly find information and resources. Sameer explains, “We’ll often be contacted by people from different parts of the business for additional information. If we can close the loop by giving them direct access to the platform, we can make our process even more efficient.”

“RFPIO makes it really easy to give everyone on our team access to the platform, since we can issue as many user licenses as we’d like at no extra cost”, Sameer added.

Sameer Longi
Consulting Solution Manager at ELMO Software