Scattered data and the ‘treasure hunt’ for answers
Before SiftHub, ActivTrak’s RFP and security questionnaire process was a manual “treasure hunt”, according to Jose.
Knowledge was siloed across Google Drive and Slack, forcing the team to rely on basic keyword searches through old documents. Without a unified source of truth, responses required additional verification from subject matter experts (SMEs). This created friction not only for presales and security teams, but also for sales execution.
"It was a lot of data spread across many different channels, making it time-consuming to work through and leading to longer turnaround times."
The impact extended across the deal cycle:
- Stalled sales cycles: Prospects frequently paused evaluations or delayed a Proof of Concept (POC) until security vetting was complete.
- Limited legacy tools: The team initially used RFPIO (now Responsive), but found its logic was limited to basic keyword search and lacked a system to ensure information was the "latest and greatest".
- Rigid vendor relationships: Their legacy RFP software provider required additional payment for AI features that exceeded ActivTrak’s budget. Furthermore, support lagged.
A ‘find and refine’ workflow driven by AI
ActivTrak traded its manual process for a ‘find and refine’ workflow using SiftHub. Implementation was frictionless; the SiftHub team handled the heavy lifting of importing the existing repository, setting up user profiles, and standing up the entire system in just a few days.
"I think it took us just a few days to get everything imported, everybody set up. The documentation was really strong, so it made it easier for our IT team to go in and put those pieces in place without a lot of back and forth."
Today, ActivTrak leverages several features of the SiftHub platform to accelerate its processes. Some call-outs are:
- AI Teammate: Sales Engineers use the AI Teammate for deeper reasoning, setting strict parameters, such as character counts, and having a collaborative back-and-forth with the AI to polish complex responses. “Just the ability to interact with the system, data, and logic has been incredibly useful. Now, if I get an email from a CISO that says, 'Hey, I've got a few questions,' it helps us get 95% of the way there.”
- Bid/No-Bid Analysis: SiftHub identifies feature mismatches in lengthy RFPs, lays out the rationale for declining a bid, and specifies where requirements are located in 50-page documents. "I think it's a really good timesaver. Particularly because it articulates the reasoning really well... explaining exactly why and mapping the mismatch."
- Slackbot for Onboarding: Beyond the SE team, ActivTrak project managers and solution architects use the Slackbot to instantly pull tutorial articles from their public help center to respond to customers. "If they get asked a question that they're unsure about, SiftHub’s bot for Slack identifies that article and helps them respond to the customer more quickly."
The impact: Scaling expertise without scaling headcount
The shift to SiftHub has fundamentally changed ActivTrak’s resource management. By making accurate data accessible, the company has successfully scaled its operations without expanding the team.
- 5x faster RFP response times: What once took two weeks is now completed in 3 to 4 days. For example, a ~300-question security questionnaire was almost completely filled out in just four hours of active work.
- Empowered junior staff: Associate Sales Engineers now complete 90% of questionnaires independently, allowing senior engineers to focus on high-value enterprise accounts and final “polishing”.
- 100% submission hit rate: ActivTrak has never been disqualified from a deal due to an RFP response since implementing SiftHub, a metric the team is "really proud of".
"We would have to add a headcount if we didn't have something like SiftHub. Legacy systems just take too long. SiftHub provides a find and refine type of workflow that is much faster and much more efficient."
Would ActivTrak recommend SiftHub?
"100%. I think the value for the dollar is especially strong...I'm really impressed with how it's able to pull from so many sources, bring that data together, and then formulate a really solid response that addresses the question directly."
