How Netskope Scaled Their RFP and Security Questionnaire Response Process with Loopio

Netskope’s RFP and Security Questionnaire response process before Loopio

Netskope’s main challenges were:

• Limited resources
• Difficulty enforcing ownership
• Difficulty tracking progress
• Inefficient and unscalable response process

Netskope was one of the first Cloud Access Security Broker providers – that industry only came to exist about five years ago. As the industry began to develop, Netskope started to experience tremendous growth. That meant an increase in RFPs and Security Questionnaires – they went from two RFPs to 17 within one year.

Their response process involved copying and pasting requirements into Google Docs and then sharing them with contributors. For RFPs, the entire Sales Engineering (SE) team as well as members of the Engineering, QA, and Executive teams had to become involved in responding. They often had to recreate answers, and a submission usually took between a week to a week and a half to complete.

The Security Questionnaire response process had its own challenges. For almost every RFP Netskope receives, they go through a Vendor Risk Assessment. Due to the technical nature of the questions asked in these Security Questionnaires, only a small group of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) could answer them. To help get the responses out the door on time, all these experts had to jump in and contribute.

Streamlining the RFP response process

With Loopio, Netskope is:

• Saving time
• Keeping their messaging consistent

Matthew Bianco, Senior Sales Engineer at Netskope, leverages content from the Loopio Library to complete up to 90% of each project and easily assigns out the remaining 10% to SMEs across the organization. He says, “Sometimes I can turn these around in half a day.”

“Loopio allows us to get more business,” says Matthew. Before RFPs were time-consuming and Netskope had to be selective in which opportunities they pursued. Now they respond to more RFPs, faster. In the first half of this year, they’ve already responded to more than 50 RFPs.

Netskope is also leveraging Loopio to deliver consistent and accurate responses to their customers.

Scaling the Security Questionnaire response process

With Loopio, Netskope has been able to more than double their response output. They went from responding to approximately three Security Questionnaires a month to eight, while also minimizing resources – most responses involve only two people.

After receiving a Security Questionnaire, the SE uploads it into a Loopio Project and answers as many questions as possible using Loopio’s intelligent workflow, Magic. The SE then assigns the remaining questions to Forrest McMahon, Netskope’s Director of Information Security, for completion.

Beyond RFPs and Security Questionnaires — Managing Content for POC Test Plans with Loopio

As a market leader in a fairly new industry, Netskope has made prospect education an integral part of their sales process, and Proof of Concept (POC) test plans are a great way to show the possibilities of Netskope’s solution.

Before Loopio, the content for test plans lived in several different places and “it was ‘every man for himself’ in trying to figure out how to put together a comprehensive test plan,” says Matthew.

To make the process easier and more scalable, Netskope decided to leverage Loopio’s library structure to store content that’s used to generate test plans. Each member of the SE team selected three best test cases that differentiated Netskope from their competition. They saved these test cases as Projects in Loopio.

Now Mario’s team can be more structured in how they help customers evaluate their solution and can get quicker technical closure within their accounts.