key outcomes

Using Enablix as a content hub made RFP responses easier and faster

Directing sales reps to Enablix established a ‘source of truth’ for critical marketing assets

Immediate adoption and a rollout to the sales team within after just a week

problem

RFP Response management took forever using Google Drive

Populus.Ai, an AI-driven platform that helps cities manage transportation, was winning the majority of their business through Government-sponsored Requests For Proposals (RFP’s). The only problem? They didn’t have a process.

“We relied heavily on Google Drive . . . we were pulling up old proposals and would have several proposals up at any time to try and create content and answer RFP’s” said Lindsey Collins, Proposal and Content Manager at Populus.Ai. “In terms of best practices, we had none”.

“I realized over time that instead of an RFP solution, you really want a client-facing solution, because it’s flexible to so many different kinds of content . . . we tested out a wiki solution, but I didn’t think it was nearly as flexible in supporting other teams outside of specific needs”

The issues they were facing was common to organizations that routinely answer RFP’s: RFP’s can be seriously long – potentially hundreds of questions organized in different sections. Answering a single RFP can take weeks.

Fortunately, many RFP’s contain overlapping questions and requirements that can be repurposed from one to another, drastically cutting down RFP response time.

Unfortunately, organizing and understanding all of this information with no system, process, or tool is nearly impossible.

Populus had tried a few different solutions to this issue – purchasing a dedicated RFP response management tool as well as creating an internal wiki. But those didn’t quite cut it – Lindsey goes on to explain:

“I realized over time that instead of an RFP solution, you really want a client-facing solution, because it’s flexible to so many different kinds of content . . . we tested out a wiki solution, but I didn’t think it was nearly as flexible in supporting other teams outside of specific needs”

Not having a solution meant that each RFP response was taking a long time. Meanwhile, Populus was “wasting time trying to find reusable content [they] could pull from”. With RFP’s piling up and deadlines getting near, they found Enablix.

solution

Enablix as a shared access layer for RFP responses, Sales, CS, and more

After a few initial meetings, Lindsey and her team started a small pilot of Enablix – but knew right away they had found their solution. The team started small – they uploaded a handful of assets they knew their sales and RFP response teams used often, and things snowballed from there.

“I started uploading things i knew we would definitely find valuable to get a feel like what it’s like to use Enablix” reported Lindsey. “Once we started using it, it happened really fast . . . A week in, I held training and people really dug in – it was really exciting.”

That’s right – after only 1 week of prep by the content teams, the Populus team launched the Enablix platform to their customer facing team (as Lindsey puts it, “The whole team grew around Enablix”). They immediately began using the easy metadata-based search, but quickly found the content pages to be helpful as well:

“We loved the custom web pages – our sales team started using those pages the most”. As for Lindsey and the content team, she said that “after having [Enablix] as a content management solution, it almost clicks – like ‘this is not Google Drive’, and I couldn’t go back.”

With a solid launch, the team was sold. But the real question remained – would adoption remain high, or trail off?

Lindsey Collins

Proposal and Content Manager, Populus Group

“There’s not much not to like about Enablix from my perspective. Enablix is constantly enhancing an already high-functioning product. On top of that, our Customer Success Manager has been incredible, proactively providing insights and always responding quickly with helpful responses”

outcome

RFP Responses get “50% more efficient” and customer-facing content alignment

“What I know being in this industry for this long is that, sooner or later, [the content manager] becomes the expert whether you want to be or not . . . so everyone ends up coming to me and it can be very disruptive” says Lindsey. “[Enablix has] made me 50% more efficient . . . if someone comes to me with a question, I can ask ‘have you looked in Enablix?’ and it saves a ton of time”.

Enablix became the access layer that sits on top of Populus’ Google Drive storage system, and allows all of their customer-facing teams access to the “single source of truth” of content whenever they need it. Giving their teams access to content has made things wildly faster for Lindsey and her team, but also accelerated their sales’ team ability to pitch through the content page functionality. Lindsey goes on to describe their use of Enablix:

“Immediately, it makes me so much more efficient because I can point them towards the source of truth whenever they look for something – the search functionality is absolutely key . . . Google Drive does not offer [Enablix’s] search functionality, it doesn’t have the Metadata that Enablix has”. As for the content pages, Lindsey reports that “If we look at our insights, people use the custom web pages the most”.

By committing to a content enablement solution in Enablix, Populus was able to reply to RFP’s faster and easier as well as make more compelling sales pitches – all while utilizing the same storage in Google Drive they had always had. As for Lindsey, she certainly has no regrets:

“I’m honestly really happy I found Enablix. I’m definitely going to use it wherever I go.”

RFP Responses Made Easy

Populus streamlined their RFP response process and aligned their customer and prospect-facing teams with Enablix