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Okay, so you have this mega RFP to respond to.  Co-Founders, Dave Hulsen and Steve Ludlow: RFP Issuer + RFP Responder If you win it, it can make your agency’s year – and its next year too. It’s due in three days. All the subject matter experts (or SMEs) are working on their parts. The problem? The creative director is in a hotel room getting ready for a client presentation 100 miles away. The CEO is with your Planning Director 35,000 feet above Kansas bound for Seattle. Your media company partner is thirty miles away.  RFP365 Knowledge Base, the heart and soul of the system (click to enlarge) Everyone is working on a different version of the “working document,” making changes on other changes that no longer exist. They’re all pulling from different versions of the same legacy documents stored on different local hard drives. And you’re stuck in the home office trying earnestly to coordinate everything. Sound familiar? But, alas, there is a solution to this common agency RFP crisis. “RFP 365 is an online tool that fosters collaboration among content-owners as an agency goes through the process of responding to an RFP,” Dave Hulsen, co-founder of RFP 365 told us. “It allows the RFP coordinator at the agency to upload all the questions and for all subject matter experts to work on the most recent version of each response.” But, there’s even more to it than that.  RFP365 automatically searches previous RFP responses as you build your document (click to enlarge) “RFP 365 allows you to store approved responses to similar questions that the agency has written in response to previous RFPs,” Hulsen continued. “For each question on the new RFP, the system automatically searches your approved legacy documents and displays those that contain keywords that may be relevant to your question.” The genesis for RFP365 began with a casual conversation between co-founders, Hulsen and Stuart Ludlow. “I had been working for a company that issued RFPs and Stuart worked for a marcom agency that responded to RFPs. We started comparing the problems on both ends of the process and came to the conclusion that there must be a better way.”  On RFP365, the entire team can view the progress and approval status on each question (click to enlarge). The key to RFP365 is its central repository of content. “Our search engine automatically allows writers to see relevant responses to past similar questions as the writer is working – approved responses that have been uploaded into the knowledge base,” Hulsen explained. “With a click, the writer can drop it in and edit as needed, re-using the relevant content and making it better and more appropriate for the current RFP.” If you’ve ever been the “coordinator” for your agency’s response to an RFP, you would probably agree that it’s a hapless task. “It’s always a struggle trying to get the subject matter experts to complete their parts. With RFP365, the coordinator can take a ‘first cut’ at the responses with our search engine and then distribute the working document to all SMEs so that their task becomes much easier – one of editing, rather than creating from scratch.” Without doubt, RFP365 is a time-saving device for agencies of all sizes. “Just shaving off a few hours per response has an inherent benefit to it,” Hulsen said. “It will allow you to respond to more RFPs more quickly, be more targeted in your responses, spend less time searching and more time customizing.” Now isn’t that the way it should be? |
