“We’ve seen an average decrease of six hours working on a project in Responsive. When we ran the numbers, this was a cost savings for the company of nearly $150,000 for 2024.”
Jain Willis
Content Developer of Strategic Solutions Team at O.C. Tanner
The gist
O.C. Tanner, a global leader in software and services that helps to improve workplace culture through meaningful employee experiences, was using RFP software that could not keep up with their growing volume of RFPs, RFIs, VSQs, and client follow-up queries. With Responsive, O.C. Tanner consolidated response content into a library that the Strategic Solutions Team uses as a single source of truth. Through enhanced efficiency and cross-functional collaboration — powered by Responsive — the Strategic Solutions Team not only keeps up with growing demand, but they have also increased productivity by 43% in 2024.
The rundown
O.C. Tanner’s response challenge
- As sales cycles have lengthened, RFx volume has grown 155% and complexity has increased. The Strategic Solutions Team’s former RFP software could not keep up and forced them to use inefficient manual processes.
- Proposal managers and subject matter experts (SMEs) were frustrated with inconsistent processes, repetitive content update requests, and the inability to find the right answer.
- Heavier workloads and deadline pressures combined to overwhelm the Strategic Solutions Team and hurt morale.
Impact and results
- $150,000 saved in hours spent searching for content for responses to RFPs, RFIs, and follow-up sales presentations.
- 43% growth in the number of proposals submitted in 2024.
- 65% increase in employee satisfaction in searching and finding the right answers for proposals, presentations, vendor security questionnaires (VSQs), and ad hoc client inquiries.
- 400% growth in average deal size being supported by the Responsive-powered Strategic Solutions Team.
Realizing it’s time to upgrade to Strategic Response Management
O.C. Tanner was using RFP response and proposal management software that forced writers who were already short on time to update content after completing a project. It involved too much downloading, uploading, emailing, and repetition for writers and the subject matter experts (SMEs) responsible for maintaining content accuracy. The software was so user-unfriendly that the Strategic Solutions Team preferred to start each RFP response by creating a generic proposal and then manually harvesting answers from the most recently submitted RFP proposals.
Meanwhile, escalating buyer demands were driven by budget constraints, security concerns, and intense competition. “It used to be that you just did an RFP and presentation and that was it. Now it’s RFI, RFP, security questionnaire, follow-up, follow-up, presentation, presentation…people are much more diligent than they used to be,” said Jain Willis, Content Developer of the Strategic Solutions Team. The ineffective RFP response and proposal management software and inefficient manual processes made it difficult to keep up.
O.C. Tanner’s challenges align with findings from the 2024 State of Strategic Response Management Report, which found that top concerns for bid and proposal professionals include more competition in deals (55%) and lengthening of sales cycles (46%). To overcome these challenges and support a Strategic Solutions Team dealing with a 155% increase in RFP requests, O.C. Tanner selected Responsive as their Strategic Response Management (SRM) Platform, which empowers organizations to efficiently dip into their organizational knowledge and surface the best answers for every external request.
"We had a big vision that knowledge and content, with proper management, could become a powerful company asset that we could continuously access in the flow of work. Responsive has provided the system and framework for us to execute this vision."
Blake Stillman
Director of the Strategic Solutions Team at O.C. Tanner
Simplifying responses for every team and SME
O.C. Tanner upgraded to SRM because external requests during the sales cycle involved more than just RFPs — and more than just the Strategic Solutions Team. Multiple teams across the enterprise rely on Responsive content to respond to RFPs, RFIs, VSQs, and ad hoc client inquiries. Willis and her Strategic Solutions Team own Responsive administration, but they collaborate regularly with InfoSec, product, legal, supply chain, and sales teams on response projects and content.
The Strategic Solutions Team used Responsive to respond to 43% more RFPs in 2024 than they did in 2023, while saving an average of six hours per project. In search efficiency alone, O.C. Tanner teams have saved $150,000 in time spent looking for response content.
Some of that time saved is spent creating sales presentations that take place after O.C. Tanner is shortlisted during the RFP round. Presentation content and templates are also stored on the Responsive Platform to meet the team’s demands for urgency and accuracy to keep client procurement teams engaged throughout lengthy sales cycles. Along with requesting these polished sales presentations, prospects often follow up with ad hoc questions, which require a fast response. “Most of the time, we already have the answers in the content library. Clients will send an email with five follow-up questions and we just pop in the information,” Jain said
The proposal writers, project managers, sales engineers, and content managers on Jain’s team frequently rely on Responsive LookUp to quickly access response content from anywhere, especially when they're working from email. InfoSec also favors LookUp when responding to VSQs. In fact, most teams that search for Responsive content do so through LookUp.
“LookUp is used very heavily. Users trust the direct access to the actual Q&A pairs. Some even just work from LookUp to respond without uploading the RFX or questionnaire into Responsive. We’ve had LookUp for three years and are very comfortable with it, so some users just prefer to work that way.”
Jain Willis
Content Developer of the Strategic Solutions Team at O.C. Tanner
O.C. Tanner users “trust” Responsive content because of Jain’s knowledge management best practices. Effective knowledge management ensures the integrity of the SRM content library by keeping organizational knowledge accurate, up-to-date, and readily accessible. It’s also crucial to the effectiveness of the Responsive AI machine learning and natural language processing running in the background.
Impacting revenue growth through larger deal size
The Strategic Solutions Team manages key metrics tied to O.C. Tanner's go-to-market strategy, including win rate, number of wins, and annual revenue growth. Since adopting Responsive in 2019, the team has doubled in size to handle a significant increase in external information requests. Additionally, the average size of the deals they work on has grown by up to 400%.
All of these metrics are available through the Responsive Dashboard and Custom Reporting, simplifying how Jain communicates with leadership. “If we were still using [former RFP software], we would not be able to handle the workload. Responsive has definitely sped us up so we can handle the increase in deals. We’ve never had to fight for Responsive because our leadership recognizes how effective it really is,” Jain said.
“I can't imagine our team functioning without Responsive. It's essential to our daily operations, helping us respond faster to RFPs and other requests, and maintain more strategic content. Every account manager we've worked with has been fantastic.”
Nicole Maddy
Manager of the Strategic Solutions Team at O.C. Tanner
Leading the competition while cutting costs
O.C. Tanner’s implementation of Responsive has equipped the Strategic Solutions Team to meet increasing demand and drive impactful results. By consolidating their knowledge base and leveraging Responsive’s intelligent search technology, the team has achieved remarkable gains in productivity, collaboration, and response quality. These advancements not only save time and resources — $150,000 in 2024 alone — but also enable the team to focus on winning larger, more strategic deals, propelling O.C. Tanner’s growth even in the face of longer sales cycles and heightened competition.
The Strategic Solutions Team’s efforts to build and maintain a single source of truth have elevated O.C. Tanner’s capabilities, enabling multiple teams to collaborate on complex, high-value deals with confidence and consistency. By aligning processes, enhancing knowledge management, and scaling operations, O.C. Tanner continues to leverage Responsive to achieve business growth and operational excellence.
Ready to help teams dominate more demanding sales cycles with real-time access to organizational knowledge like O.C. Tanner? Request a demo to gain the edge you need with AI-powered Strategic Response Management.
