Ganesh Shankar, CEO and co-founder of Responsive, is an experienced product manager with a background in the leadership of Fortune 500 Enterprises for product development and software implementation. During his work on product management, he observed inefficiency in the request for proposals (RFP) process – organizations use to solicit bids from suppliers, often requiring extensive and detailed responses. Traditionally, managing RFP involves multiple stakeholders and repetitive tasks, making the process time-consuming and complex.
Response speed was established in 2015 to simplify RFP management with more efficient software solutions. The company has introduced an automated approach to enhance collaboration, reduce manual efforts and increase efficiency. Over time, its technology has been expanding to support other complex information requests, including requests for information (RFI), due diligence questionnaire (DDQS), and security questionnaire.
Today, as responsive, the company provides solutions for strategic response management to help organizations accelerate growth, mitigate risks and optimize their recommendation and information request processes.
What prompted you to be responsive and how did you identify the market gap in response management software?
My co-founder and I were working on a software company we were working on at the time and faced our own struggles in the process of our own RFP response, founded Responsive in 2015. Although not at the heart of our job function, we have spent a lot of time making a proposal (RFP) for our sales team, although we are crucial in ensuring transactions. Frustrated by the lack of technology to make RFP processes more efficient, we decided to build a better solution. Fast forward nine years and we have grown to nearly 500 employees, serving over 2,000 customers, including 25 Fortune 100 companies and supporting nearly 400,000 users worldwide.
How did your product management background and previous roles affect responsive creation?
As a Product Manager, I constantly attract sales teams to the RFP response process, spending almost a third of my time supporting sales instead of focusing on my core product management responsibilities. Two of my co-founders have experienced similar issues in their technology and implementation roles. We recognize this as a ubiquitous problem, and there are no existing technological solutions, so we have leveraged nearly 50 years of merger experience to create responsiveness. We see an opportunity to fundamentally change how organizations share information, starting with managing and responding to complex proposal requests.
Since its establishment in 2015, the response has developed rapidly. How do you maintain a balance between being true to your original vision and adapting to changes in the market?
First, we are meticulous about finding and cultivating people who embody our passion – essentially overcoming our founding spirit throughout the organization. With our scale, it becomes crucial to hire managers and team members who can truly represent our core cultural values and commitments.
At the same time, we still focus on customer feedback on lasers. We document every input, regardless of its size, recognize that these insights create patterns that help us browse product development, market positioning, and any uncertainty in the industry. Our approach is not to act on each suggestion, but to have a comprehensive understanding of emerging trends from various sources.
We also push ourselves to think beyond the direct industry and be curious about the adjacent space. Whether in healthcare, technology, or other fields, we are constantly finding inspiration for innovation. This external perspective allows us to continuously raise the bar, inspire ideas from unexpected places, and keep our products dynamic and forward-looking.
What metrics or success metrics are most important to you when evaluating the impact of a platform on your customers?
Our main metric when evaluating the impact of responses is how we drive customer revenue. We focus on two key success metrics: best-in-class revenue generation and operational efficiency. In terms of efficiency, our goal is to significantly reduce RFP response time – for many, we reduce it by 40%. This efficiency allows our customers to seek more opportunities, ultimately accelerating their revenue generation potential.
How can responsive AI and machine learning provide a competitive advantage in the responsive management software market?
We leverage AI and machine learning to simplify response management in three key ways. First, our Generative AI creates a comprehensive draft proposal in minutes, saving time and effort. Second, our ASK solution provides immediate access to reviewed organizational knowledge, resulting in faster and more accurate response. Third, our profile center helps the Infosec team quickly find and manage secure content.
Managing over $600 billion in proposals through a responsive platform and processing 4 million Q&A pairs, our AI provides smart advice and insight into the responsive model. By automating complex tasks while controlling human control, we can help organizations increase revenue, reduce risks and respond more effectively.
What is the difference between responsive platforms and other solutions in the industry, especially in terms of AI capabilities and integration?
Since 2015, AI has been at the heart of responsiveness, powering a platform trusted by more than 2,000 global customers. Our solutions support a wide range of RFX use cases, enabling seamless collaboration between teams and stakeholders, workflow automation, content management, and project management.
With critical AI features such as Smart advice, AI assistants, grammar checking, language translation and built-in tips, high-quality RFP can be delivered quickly and accurately.
Responsive also offers unrivalled native integration with leading applications including CRM, cloud storage, productivity tools and sales support. Our Customer Value Program includes APMP certified consultants, responsive college programs, and a vibrant community of insights and best practices shared by over 1,500 clients.
Can you share insights on the development process behind responsive core features, such as AI recommendation engines and automatic RFP responses?
Responsive AI is built on accurate, latest content, which is crucial to the effectiveness of our AI recommendation engine and automatic RFP response. AI alone cannot resolve conflicting or incomplete data, so we prioritize tools such as hierarchical tags and powerful content management to help users organize and maintain their information. By combining generative AI with this reliable data, our platform enables teams to generate fast, high-quality responses while maintaining credibility. AI is an aid with human supervision that ensures accuracy and authenticity, while features such as Ask products enable seamless access to trusted knowledge to solve complex projects.
How do advances in cloud computing and digitalization affect how organizations manage RFP and strategic responses?
Advances in cloud computing have enabled greater efficiency, collaboration and scalability. A cloud-based platform allows teams to centralize content in real time, simplifying workflows and collaboration regardless of location. This ensures faster turnaround times and more accurate, consistent response.
Digitalization also enhances how organizations manage and access their data, making it easier to leverage AI-powered tools such as recommendation engines and auto-response. Through these advancements, companies can focus more on strategy and personalization, responding to RFPs with higher speed and accuracy while driving better results.
Responsive plays a major role in helping companies like Microsoft and Geodis simplify their RFP processes. Can you share a specific success story to highlight your platform impact?
Responsive manages and curates 20,000 proposal content through its proposal repository, powered by responsive AI, playing a key role in supporting Microsoft’s sales staff. The technology allowed Microsoft’s proposal team to contribute $10.4 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year. Additionally, by implementing responsiveness, Microsoft saved its sellers 93,000 hours (equivalent to over $17 million) and could be redirected to building stronger customer relationships.
As another example of the rapid impact of responsiveness, our client NetSmart significantly improves its response time and efficiency by implementing Responsive’s AI capabilities. They achieved faster response times, with proposal submissions increased by 67%, and user adoption increased by 540%. Key features such as AI assistants, requirements analysis and automatic response play a crucial role in these improvements. Integration with Salesforce and building a centralized content library further simplifies their process, resulting in a 43% reduction in RFP’s 93% rate and outdated content. Overall, NetSmart uses Responsive’s AI-powered platform to save a lot of time, improve content accuracy, and improve productivity in its proposal management operations.
Another responsive client, Jaggaer, achieved double-digit win rate and 15x ROI by using Responsive’s AI to improve decision-making and efficiency. User adoption twice, the platform simplifies collaboration and content management across multiple teams.
Where are you seeing in the response management industry in the next five years and how can you lead in this area?
Over the next five years, I’ve seen the response management industry change by AI agents, with the focus on keeping humans in a loop. While we expect to replace about 80 million jobs, we are seeing 180 million new jobs at the same time, which is positive for our industry.
Responsiveness is a unique positioning that can lead this transformation. We have processed over $600 billion in proposals and built a database of nearly 4 million Q&A. Our vast data set allows us to understand complex patterns and develop AI solutions that go beyond simple automation.
Our approach is to embrace the potential of AI and look for opportunities for positive outcomes, rather than worrying about disruptions. Companies with strong market intelligence, comprehensive data and proven usage will be leaders and are responsive at the forefront of the wave. The key is not only to implement AI, but also to be strategically done with rich contextual data to achieve meaningful insights and efficiency.
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