BT Global Services Increases Win-Rates, Productivity, and Bottom Line Profitability by Automating Proposal Production

Current Status

BT Global Services, a division of BT plc, is divided into several business units, each of which generates hundreds of proposals and many other official documents each year. To ensure that the quality, branding, and accuracy of these documents is always consistent, the company is rolling out Sant ProposalMaster to all BT Global Services (BTGS) business units, while also increasing its use where already implemented. Several business units within BT have already experienced significant benefits:

• BTGS Desk-Based Account Management—relies on ProposalMaster to generate 250-300 proposals every week, yielding a productivity savings equivalent to four FTEs, an increase in win rate by five percent, and a £2m boost to BT's bottom line;
• BTGS Commercial, Legal & Regulatory—uses ProposalMaster to automatically generate master service agreements, non-disclosure agreements and other assorted commercial documentation for 34 jurisdictions in four languages.
• BT Retail—with more than 300 internal users already, 1000 external sales partners will also be given access to ProposalMaster to facilitate sales of 35 retail products;
• BT Open Zone—relies on ProposalMaster to reduce, by 50 percent, the time it takes to produce 25 proposals each month, and to increase win rates with personalized proposals;

Original Challenge

Before implementing Sant, the approach that each BT business unit took to generating sales proposals was fragmented. The enterprise did not have a shared repository of content, so proposals produced by each business unit, and across units, were inconsistent. Some met corporate standards and branding requirements, others did not. Also, with no automated proposal creation process, staff spent excessive amounts of time generating sales documents that did not provide the desired win rates.

At the same time, the preparation of standard but sometimes complex contract documentation was a time-consuming process. A significant portion of these documents is repetitive, but the need to tailor each one to meet personal, local language, and regulatory mandates was an extremely time-consuming task for BTGS' Commercial, Legal & Regulatory business unit.

"Our corporate motto, 'Get it Right the First Time,' was not being reflected in the way we generated sales proposals and legal documents across our business units," says Andy Fraser, Product Manager, BTGS Strategy Marketing and Propositions Group. "Documents did not consistently meet corporate requirements for quality and content, nor were they created with efficient, auditable, and repeatable processes. Especially for sales proposals, this meant that far too many iterations were required before a customer received all the information they needed to make the BT choice."

Solution

To resolve these problems, BT plc purchased an enterprise license for the entire Sant Suite, although the company is currently focused on ProposalMaster. "Generating new business is our primary concern," Fraser says, "and we feel that using ProposalMaster to increase the number of sales proposals we generate, as well as their effectiveness, is the best way to proceed initially. We are finding that this solution ensures that sales presentations are more complete, eliminating the need for staff to respond to secondary requests for information. This makes them more productive and shortens the time it takes to close sales."

To ensure the broadest possible utilization of ProposalMaster for creating sales proposals of all types across all BTGS business units, Fraser's group sought, and received, the support of upper level BT management. "Until I saw the demo, I did not believe Sant could generate a proposal in five minutes," says BT Senior Manager. "But I am now convinced that this is a really powerful capability to improve our sales effectiveness. The quality and consistency of the proposals enhances the BT brand, the productivity opportunity is significant, and the fact that we have higher conversion rates shows the reality of 'Get it Right the First Time' with our customers."

In addition to sales proposals, ProposalMaster is also being used by the BTGS Commercial, Legal & Regulatory business unit to streamline completion of legal documents. "With pre-approved boiler plate terms and conditions stored in the Sant repository, and a standardized format, the business unit is always sure that documents are complete and conform to corporate and legal requirements," Fraser says.

The Future with Sant

In the future, BTGS plans on increasing utilization of ProposalMaster while also rolling out RFPMaster, PresentationBuilder, and ProSearch across their global enterprise. "We view our Sant license as a long term investment," Fraser says. "The ultimate goal is to have every piece of customer-facing content that BTGS produces stored in the Sant repository and available for any use, in any document, for any BTGS business unit."

About BT Global Services

With a staff of 37,000 in 53 countries, BT Global Services provides a single point of contact for high-performance, networked IT services in 173 countries. Its resilient network, which grows by a new city every week, supports the global networking requirements of numerous industries, including those of 25 percent of the world's financial traders.