Carlson Wagonlit Travel Replaces Legacy Proposal Application with Sant Solutions

Current Status

The Global Proposal Development group at Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), a global leader specialized in business travel management, was established mid-2007 to ensure that their proposals reflected the company's market-leading position. To get started, the group implemented a program to update and standardize all content used in their responses to RFPs, and to consolidate their seven content databases into a single repository. They also decided to replace their legacy proposal application with Sant RFPMaster and ProSearch.

RFPMaster is currently used by the company's global proposal response team to develop multi-faceted RFP responses. "The challenge of managing global bids in the travel management sector is that our bid teams have to collate information from many countries and regions in a short time scale," says Julie Martin, CWT's Director, Global Proposal Development. RFPMaster has been key to boosting productivity for development of intricate proposals in the EMEA region by more than 50 percent.

ProSearch is being used by national and regional sales teams to quickly create less complex proposals. Moving forward, CWT also plans to introduce this solution to mid-market sales and bid teams.

Together, RFPMaster and ProSearch enable tighter control over brand messaging, graphics and templates, and most importantly, the positioning of the CWT offering and articulation of their value proposition.

Original Challenge

Before implementing the Sant solutions, CWT's proposal development teams did not benefit from a centralized content repository. Having grown both organically and by acquisition, the company found itself with seven different regional and country-specific content databases that were difficult to synchronize with the latest corporate branding messages, new product information, and updated content.

In addition, the legacy RFP response application CWT had been relying on only supported simple keyword searches, not the flexible and robust database searching capabilities required. As a result, finding the right content for any given proposal was time-consuming at best, and impossible in the worst-case scenario.

But the most critical challenge CWT faced was proposals that did not meet expectations from a quality perspective.

Solution

With a corporate mandate to improve quality, consistency and increase win rate, the Global Proposal Development group at CWT launched a program aimed at consolidating, updating, and standardizing the format of all content used in all proposals. The group initially expected to install the latest version of their legacy proposal development application, thinking it would enable them to reach their goals with the least impact on operational productivity.

But, after gaining an understanding of the broad functionality available with Sant RFPMaster and ProSearch--and seeing how fast hosted versions of these solutions could be implemented--they soon decided to abandon their legacy system. With the Sant solutions, CWT realized they could maintain their previously established performance objectives without compromising on their tight timetables.

"Sant's professionalism, and the robust capabilities of their solutions, convinced us that these solutions were more suited to our business objectives," Martin says. "Then, when we saw that their hosted solution would allow us to adhere to our pre-existing project timelines, we were convinced this was the right solution for us."

Within the first week after implementing Sant, all seven of CWT's content databases had been fully migrated to a single Sant repository, and after a few weeks, RFPMaster was being used to prepare responses to RFPs. "We had intended to run Sant in parallel with our legacy solution to give staff members time to adjust," Martin says. "But they were so anxious to move to Sant, and it was so much easier to use, that we dropped those plans and cut straight over to the new solution."

The results have been impressive. After just four months, productivity of the EMEA proposal team, who create some of CWT's biggest proposals, have seen their productivity increase by more than 50 percent, as production rates jumped from 1.1 to 1.8 proposals per FTE.

"Sant helps us to ensure that all content is standardized and meets corporate approval before being released to any prospect, which will, in the long term, have a positive effect on profitability," Martin says. Nick Hatherall, CWT's Manager Global Proposal Development, EMEA, adds, "Using Sant has enabled us to create a high quality first draft, allowing us to focus on the strategic input in our proposals, which is critical in a services industry. We have noted a 100 percent improvement in selection through to second round. When combined with process development and an extensive bid training program, we noted a significant increase in win rates in the EMEA region."

In addition to facilitating access to content, and streamlining creation of powerful, personalized proposals with the right messaging and presentation, RFPMaster also facilitates development of updated content. "The benefit of the Sant solution during our re-write project is that as we drip-feed new content onto the system, the bid teams can have access to the most recently published content," Martin says. "With its project management capabilities, the solution is also helping us streamline our database re-write process, ensuring the process is auditable, and that errors are not made as we replace our older databases with new content."

The new content in the Sant repository is already being leveraged by 45 local and regional sales professionals who rely on ProSearch to quickly retrieve the exact information they need to create proposals and other sales documents. "With its Google-esque search functionality, ProSearch lets sales staff instantly access the content they need, with the messaging and format that meets corporate requirements," Martin says. "They can then copy and paste this content into Word documents to create powerful sales documents, always sure that all content is current."

The Future with Sant

Once CWT's Global Proposal Development group completes its re-write of all content, it plans on rolling out access to the new database globally with particular focus on EMEA, which will enable the company to manage content in other languages. As this new content is used with increasing frequency, the group will monitor the success of the content in reaching sales objectives using the administrative capabilities of the Sant solutions.

"For the first time, we will be able to monitor the quality of content, determining which content works best in the various types of proposals and bids we prepare. Armed with this information, we can then tweak content, and continually monitor its effectiveness," says Martin.

As the Sant solutions are rolled out to more and more users, CWT also plans on taking advantage of the collaboration capabilities of the solutions to streamline proposal development. "Global collaboration is key when creating proposals that accurately reflect the travel requirements of companies in geographically dispersed countries and regions," Martin says. "Because the Sant solutions enable this type of collaboration, we will be able to respond faster to RFPs that require this level of support."

About Carlson Wagonlit Travel

Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) is a global leader specializing in business travel management. Present in more than 150 countries, CWT serves companies of all sizes, as well as government institutions and non-governmental organizations. By leveraging both the expertise of its people and leading-edge technology, CWT helps clients derive the greatest value from their travel program in terms of savings, service, security and sustainability. The company is also committed to providing best-in-class service and assistance to travelers. CWT services and solutions comprise four lines of business: Traveler & Transaction Services, Program Optimization, Safety & Security, and Meetings & Events. CWT had more than 21,000 employees worldwide on March 31, 2009. In 2008, sales volume for wholly owned operations and joint ventures totaled US$27.8 billion. For more information, please visit www.carlsonwagonlit.com.