This month, we spoke with Steve Sebolt, a solutions consultant at Initium SoftWorks, about how to decide whether you have a fair shot at winning an RFP and tactics to improve your chances of winning the opportunity.
How did you find the prospect?
We subscribe to notifications about RFPs that are sent out by local and state agencies and posted on their websites. Our team looks for larger projects. We evaluate the opportunity and concentrate on those RFPs. We also look at the number of users and opt for projects that include 100 or more of them.
Who were the decision-makers?
Because the customer is a government agency, the decision was made by a committee. Their strategic sourcing team reviewed the cost of software and services and chose the top three vendors to present their solutions.
In the first stage we demoed DocuWare to their purchasing committee and the project manager. Our DocuWare Regional Sales Director was an extraordinary resource when we were fine-tuning the demos.
When we won the bid, there was a negotiation phase. We emphasized the value we could bring to their agency, so they weren’t making a decision on price alone. Once the pricing and the scope of work was agreed upon, the agency board met to determine if they would release the funds for the project.
Pain points/business issues?
This agency was interested in digitizing occupational health and medical records and implementing automated workflows. Employees were using paper forms to request testing, appointments with a specialist and other medical services. Using manual processes for form submission, approval or rejection, and notifying employees of the decision was time consuming and inefficient. Processing the resulting paperwork created more labor-intensive tasks. The agency also wanted a document management solution that could integrate easily with their medical records system to eliminate duplicate data entry.
What closed the deal?
When we decide to respond to an RFP, we stay in our wheelhouse. That way when the prospect requests references, we are able to show we’ve done projects with the same size and scope at other organizations.
We won the deal due to our strong experience working with medical records, the DocuWare Cloud pricing model and the fact that the software is cloud based.
In addition, federal security compliance requires SOC2 certification which DocuWare has. Some vendors dropped out early because they couldn’t meet this requirement. DocuWare’s preconfigured HR solution included every process they needed to automate, and that was a significant plus too.
Can you expand the use of DocuWare to other departments?
The agency has about 70,000 employees. Initially, 350 of them are working in DocuWare. Eventually, there will be 7,000 DocuWare users throughout the agency. As the project expands, DocuWare will become an enterprise-wide platform.
Their HR department also needs a great deal of backfile scanning. The agency’s IT and strategic sourcing departments are deciding when they’ll start this initiative.
How do you advise other DocuWare Partners who want to increase their chances of being successful when responding to an RFP?
Evaluate the in-house and outside resources, and the technical expertise that is available to you. Use this information to establish criteria for determining which RFPs you’ll pursue. When your company is in the running, be proactive and make sure you fully understand the prospect’s business issues. Be patient and try to have multiple RFPs in the pipeline at one time.
