The rise and rise of RFP's isn't abating…..but technology can help level the playing field and ease the growing workload

Background

Working in Professional Services, business development (sales) is an ongoing and ever-present reality. Over the past 25years, the way in which we develop business has gone through significant change. The decline in hi-touch sales as the primary tool to build business is well documented as buyers continue to self-educate to the point that face to face is a near end of lifecycle activity (if at all). Perhaps more subtle, and of growing impact is the continued rise in the use of RFPs in procurement.  Over the span of my career, RFP, RFI etc. response efforts have gone from a sometimes activity to access "big jobs", to a now entrenched activity to get a chance for even the "small jobs"

This impacts "traditional" business development in two ways:

1. Whatever high touch relationship focused sales that did remain, lose value when the client is required to direct all procurement back into an RFP process (even for existing suppliers); and that

2. Delivering, even going above and beyond in existing clients to secure ongoing tenure provides ever diminishing certainty of continuity as companies move towards regular (often annual) go-to-market procurement to support increasing probity rules and drive to continually test for better value

If you're feeling this, you're not alone. In the report Winning Business in the Age of AI | Responsive it notes that "Last year, we found that nearly half of company revenue is tied to RFPs, bids, tenders, and proposals — and that 70% of companies reported an annual increase in revenue generated from these strategic responses". Regular conversation within my network indicates that the volume of even "small jobs" going via RFP is increasing. This has big impacts in creating further pressure on strained resources to invest more time in responses and/or in leading to difficult calls as to whether they can even afford to respond (impacting revenue). And, no, this pressure is not just being felt in smaller enterprises. Large organisations with bid-teams and response squads, are also impacted as costs and the pressure rises with the mounting response backlog.

With this trend clearly not slowing, business is faced with three choices:

1. Increase resource to provide capacity to keep up with the increased workload (with limited assurance on the return);

2. Increase the time (and resource) spent on the qualification process to ensure that you're investing your time effectively (which is always a good practice, but your increasingly "betting the house"); or

3. Finding a way to become more effective in your response process (in a cost-effective manner)

In relation to the last choice, for years, those with the budgets have tried to crack the "effective" nut by building tools to automate RFP generation. From building libraries of "response templates", automated workflows that build response documents, and more recently AI, these initiatives have provided mixed results, but even for the successes they come at the cost of landing yet another piece of internal "tech" to manage and upkeep (further resource and cost).

The solution

Before you go out and either sigh and accept the reality that RFP's are creating work and/or go seeking investment to build the next solution for your enterprise; the growing problem has now been jumped upon by an emerging number of tech companies looking to help out (doesn't it always). In the same way in which in the personal world, Jobseekers have been able to elevate their CV's through AI Tools and specific offerings such as EnhanceCV, companies such as Responsive (the author of the above paper) have done their homework and built tools targeted at helping supercharge the RFP process.

These tools vary in their specific features, but for me the features that provide the real uplift are:

1. The ability to ingest an RFP and then (intelligently) access your library of past responses (bespoke and curated) to support the qualification process; and

2. Utilizing your IP (library of past responses) to automate the process of building the content for the response

Does it work?

I recently sat through a demo of Responsive who performed a walkthrough of a "typical" RFP process and immediately saw technology that:

1. Lifted the burden of resourcing by providing a detailed, balanced and fair qualification of the provided RFP document in minutes that would have easily saved 16hours of pulling a team in for a go/no-go decision; and

2. Scaffolded the response (in a few minutes) including assigning tasks where more information was needed that was not immediately available or deemed as low quality.

What really impressed was the realistic approach built into the solution to ensure that people intelligence remains the focus. What I mean here, is that rather than the platform suggesting it could do the entire job, the process includes people in the loop to review, validate and most importantly to provide all important "flavour" to the response, which from my experience is the differentiator clients look for once they're happy that you're answered the responses. But this is where it gets interesting, because whilst you do get much of the heavy lifted, and close to a ready to go response, you land at a decision point as to how you recoup the time saving that is on the table. You can a) invest the time saved into responses that you wouldn't have time to address before, or b) Utilise that time to focus on polishing and refining, time you just did not have before. Either way, what you have is time and a choice on how to use it. Want to play a numbers game and throw more response over the line?.....go for it!!! Want to spend the time really pushing to land the perfect RFP?.....Give it a crack!!

Is it for my organisation?

There is of course a cost involved in these tools so doing your own diligence up front is of course recommended. In approaching this, I suggest being 100% open and realistic in understanding two things:

1. How much time (and therefore cost) are you spending on RFP's? (Perhaps time log they next one including all parts from the process, people involved and the disruption that it causes). How much would an investment bring this down? And/or

2. If you were to invest that time back into having more time to improve your responses, and/or respond to more RFP's how much more revenue could you realistically unlock?

To answer the "is it for me", firstly try to understand and confirm whether you are impacted and will continue to see the need for time on RFP's increase, be honest with whether you want to or need to plan for it, and then balance the investment against the possible upsides. In my experience, most business' don't track the ACTUAL time taken in RFP responses so may not realise the value in these tools, but for those that do, I'm pleased to say that there is some seriously cool tech out there to explore and that can help you swallow the RFP pill.

Final Note: Apart from some of my images, the text of my blogs is entirely the product of me, Matthew Verity. I believe in the power of People Intelligence over Artificial Intelligence when it comes to presenting my personal thoughts. So, if you've found mistakes, poorly worded sentences or something abnormal, I proudly own it and will continue to deliver my thoughts, in my voice, using my brain.