The gist

Stibo Systems is a leader in master data management. The multinational company, headquartered in Denmark, receives more than 150 lengthy RFPs, RFIs, RFQs, security questionnaires, and other information requests every year. Compliance is mandatory and consistency is a competitive necessity.

When their former proposal software provider failed to repair a long-standing production issue, Stibo Systems upgraded to Responsive, the leader in Strategic Response Management (SRM). The Responsive Platform has been transformative for Stibo Systems’ strategic response teams, saving dozens of hours for the Global Bid Desk team by automating workflows, instantly surfacing relevant content, and simplifying content contribution processes for subject matter experts (SMEs).

Today, Responsive is championed at Stibo Systems by the Sr. VP of Presales, CISO, and Chief Legal Officer, among others.

The rundown

Stibo Systems’ response challenge

• Revenue was at risk due to out-of-date information in responses and proposals.
• Former proposal software had an unfixable production issue that disrupted the Global Bid Desk’s workflow.
• Users did not trust the former proposal software because content was difficult to find and update, collaboration occurred outside the tool, and it never performed as promised.
• Lack of a Salesforce integration made it difficult to implement repeatable response processes and resulted in time wasted on unqualified opportunities.

Impact and results

• Global Bid Desk team members save 20-60 hours per project, driven by in-app collaboration features, efficient content moderation and Responsive AI recommendation capabilities of Response Projects.
• Global Bid Desk teams and SMEs have more time to spend customizing proposals.
• Responsive’s Salesforce integration adds visibility to the project intake process and the availability of Global Bid Desk resources. Subsequently, more time is spent on deals Stibo Systems is most likely to win.
• Responsive Professional Services expedited onboarding and transitioned Stibo Systems from their former proposal software provider so quickly that the Global Bid Desk team did not have to resort to manual processes.
• 200+ users search, review, and update content collections of English, French, and German Q&A pairs and documents.

Giving Stibo Systems the time to win more deals

Beth Bissell, Global Bid Management – Team Lead at Stibo Systems, knows that the more time her Global Bid Desk team gets to spend customizing a proposal, the greater their chance to win the RFP. Before Responsive, Bissell tried proposal software that cost more time than it saved — so much so that few people wanted to use it. When she discovered Responsive, she found a solution that delivers time savings while providing an intuitive and engaging user experience.

Global Bid Desk team members in the US, UK and Germany rely on intelligent project management features to identify the right SMEs, assign tasks, monitor project progress, and manage content across multiple languages. Responsive AI-powered auto-response, which rapidly auto-populates responses from approved Q&A pairs, and AI-driven recommendations of the most relevant response content significantly accelerate turnaround times for RFPs, RFIs, RFQs, and security questionnaires.

While Responsive AI helps save time, the Salesforce integration has allowed the Global Bid Desk to do more with that time.

Prior to integrating Salesforce and Responsive, the sales team would want to pursue any RFP without qualifying whether or not it was actually winnable. The Global Bid Desk also lacked any visibility into the RFP pipeline and constantly worked reactively to try to keep up.

Since the integration, the Global Bid Desk and sales teams have had a tighter collaborative relationship. The sales team first qualifies the RFP as a winnable opportunity in Salesforce, which then triggers the Global Bid Desk to start work. Adjusting focus to high-value proposals, as well as customization and prioritization of deals, has resulted in higher win rates overall.

With the Responsive Platform, Stibo Systems can embrace Strategic Response Management and establish scalable business processes that drive growth. Instead of a scrambling, reactive team that’s battling to keep up with unmanageable demands, the Global Bid Desk is now a strategic business partner valued for its collaborative approach and bottom-line contribution.  “This really has enhanced our process and provides the guidelines and guardrails to protect our limited, valuable resources,” Beth said.

See how Stibo Systems turns time savings into more wins

Beth Bissell, Global Bid Management Team Lead at Stibo Systems: Stibo Systems is a multi-domain master data management company. We help companies take disparate systems and help them talk to each other and help create a golden record of product, customer, and other types of domain data.

Why has your organization invested in Strategic Response Management?

Beth Bissell: Strategic Response Management means giving people the time that they need to focus on what they do best, and giving me the time that I need to do what I do best, which is the Strategic Response Management: coordinating the projects with all of the various parts of the organization and bringing it together and creating a quality product that helps win more deals.

How does your bid management team support the response process for teams across your organization?

Beth Bissell: By helping them save anywhere from 20-60 hours per project, we give them that time they need to customize and curate a winning proposal versus them having to fill out 150-700 questions on their own, where there’s risk of misinformation, not a targeted response, subject matter experts having to answer the same questions over and over and over again, somebody copy and pasting from something that was sent out two years ago that’s no longer accurate. There’s a lot of risk when you do things like that.

When you use something like Responsive and the services of a bid management team, like my team, you reduce risk and you save multiple teams multiple hours per project, and you increase your win rate. 

With time savings that impactful, how is your team viewed by others?

Beth Bissell: Well, my team is amazing! They make magic happen every single day. They go above and beyond every single day. They really should have capes.

How does the Responsive Platform help accelerate your team’s mission?

Beth Bissell: We have a lot of support from the C-level and from many other leadership levels throughout the entire organization that are very supportive of this solution because it really is user friendly, and it makes something that can be very cumbersome as easy as it possibly can be. When people first use it, it takes at most a quick 5-minute tutorial to just jump right in and start using it.