Saying that global solution Alight has grown quickly is an understatement. The cloud-based provider serves 4,300 clients across 100 countries worldwideâincluding 70% of the Fortune 100.
Today, Alight is the leading provider of integrated digital human capital and business solutions. But just less than five years ago, their proposal team was just forming after separating from Aon in 2017. Ever since its inception, the global organization has been at a running pace to win its marketâwith RFPs as an important part of its growth.
In this blog, youâll learn how Alightâs proposal team, led by Valerie Mammales, contributed to the agile growth of their global organization. Plus, real examples of how they successfully implemented RFP process best practices.
Here are the three key strategies behind Alight’s winning proposal process:
- Create a Tiered System that Prioritizes High-Value RFPs
- Maintain Content Through A Centralized Source of Truth
- Prove Your RFP Team Value to the C-Suite
#1 RFP Process Best Practice: Create a Tiered System to Prioritize High-Value Proposals
Alightâs global proposals leader, Valerie Mammales, has been in the proposal space for more than 20 years, advancing from a writer to a global RFP team leader. Today, she manages a team that submits hundreds of RFPs annually across the globe. (All while undergoing multiple acquisitions.)
Over the years, Valerie has developed models for winning RFPs and global best practices, all while directing an efficient and engaged team. To prioritize her teamâs work, sheâs created a tiered model for delivery, which requires each RFP to be qualified before resources from her team are assigned.
This process ensures Val’s team strategically focuses on RFPs that are a good fit for the company, likely to win, and won’t burn resources on requests they canât deliver. Essentially, sales reps need to meet several qualifications before the RFP team jumps into the proposal process. (Below is an example of how this works.)
Alight’s RFP Process StepsđĄ (Evaluation Criteria)
- A sales rep triggers the opportunity in Salesforce and completes a âSales Resource Request Formâ.
- As part of this form, the rep builds a strategic plan, which the RFP team uses to help qualify the opportunity.
- The model automatically scores each RFP based on several factors to determine resource alignment. (Factors include: the status of relationship and project scope against a pool of similar clients to validate the evaluation criteria.)
âThe score immediately tells me if an RFP is a good fit or not,â says Valerie. âIf the score is above a certain number, we typically see that we move to the next round and will present our capabilities. If itâs below that number, the support we provide is based on our overall capacity.â
âOur support model has greatly improved our efficiencies so we can meet our sales needs promptly and also help them to self-serve. The more value we deliver to stakeholders and clients, the more we drive Alightâs growth.”
Valarie Mammales, Global Proposal Development Leader
Alight
Once the RFP aligned with Valâs model, a proposal manager is assigned. The tiering system determines the level of support that her team will provide based on resources, deal size, and the likelihood of winning.
Prioritizing RFPs based on the ability to win (and aligning to the company’s key objectives) has enabled Alightâs proposal team to influence a significant amount of income for the business.
#2 RFP Process Best Practice: Maintain Content Through A Centralized Source of Truth
Between 2018 and 2021, Alight underwent nine acquisitions. With each acquisition, more proposal professionals were integrated into Valâs global proposal team.
Rapid growth like thisâparticularly through M&Asâcreates a lot of change for any proposal team. You may need to update hundreds of RFP answers (sometimes thousands) after one M&A to ensure your team is using accurate and up-to-date content in business proposals. However, Alightâs proposal team used this growth trajectory to their advantage.
In anticipation of Alight going public in July 2021, Valerie saw an opportunity to update content across their global proposals. She rallied business stakeholders around a shared deadline for making updates to all RFP answers in one unified system.
Alight’s Single Source of Truth đ (Content Library)
Valâs team focused on centralizing content systems through people and technology to meet their company growth goals.
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- Centralizing content through technology. đťÂ Although Alightâs proposal team was expanding quickly, their tools hadnât kept pace with the companyâs rapid growth. For the past 10 years, they used an RFP software that the team found challenging, with answers that soon became dated. After looking into several RFP response platforms, Alight chose Loopio, for its easy-to-use content library that streamlines complex RFPs.
- Centralizing content through people. đ¨âđ¨âđ§âđŚÂ Alight focused on building a âcenter of excellenceâ (COE) for their RFPs. Based out of Granada, Spain, the COE includes best practices from proposal managers, content managers, and sales operations leaders across the global proposals team. Together, they worked diligently on consolidating and optimizing RFP answers from Alightâs nine acquisitions into Loopio’s RFP response software.
After organizing and optimizing thousands of RFP answers across several combined companiesâVal could encourage the whole company to use Loopio as their source of truth for all proposal content.
#3 RFP Process Best Practice: Show Your RFP Team’s Value to the C-Suite
Valerie believes every proposal leader should know how their work influences the business and the financial impact they make.
That’s why she’s part of a womenâs leadership development program at Alight. Through this program, sheâs learning how to be an advocate for herself, creating her leadership story, and getting comfortable discussing financials. âWomen typically stray from discussing the financial impact of their work,â explains Valerie.
“Knowing the impact your work has on growth and the business is a big part of holding a seat at the table. Leadership needs visibility into the work that is being done and value that is being added.”
Valarie Mammales, Global Proposal Development Leader
Alight
Plus, speaking about your business value also positions your team as a strategic partner, not just an order-taker. At Alight, leadership recognizes Valerieâs proposal team as an essential part of the sales processes, thanks to the work she has done to proactively keep pace with the changing business.
âBeing a strategic advisor differentiates our team,â explains Valerie. âIn the last four years, Alight has transformed dramatically. Weâve incorporated legacy organizations with mergers and acquisitions and went public in 2021. Throughout all this transformation, the proposal team has remained a continuous advisor around RFPs and proposal development for the company.â
Best practices from Valerie’s team enable Alight to consistently deliver a high volume of winning RFP responses. Throughout Alightâs transformation over the past five years, the proposal team has kept pace with the company’s rapid growthâand showcased their long-term value for the business.
