Adecco
Adecco sees 35% efficiency gain across its bid and proposal management process
The Adecco Group is a Fortune 500 company, based in Zurich, Switzerland, with more than 33,000 FTE employees in 60 countries and territories around the world. The company's services include temporary staffing, permanent placement, career transition and talent development, as well as outsourcing and consulting. The company manages multi-million dollar contracts around the world.
Winning those contracts means first participating in competitive bids. The bid management process is complex, can take several weeks, and involves multiple stakeholders - from bid managers and sales directors, to finance, operations and legal counsel.
“With the rise of procurement over the last few years, we have seen a sharp increase in the complexity and granularity of bids,” said Mark Taylor, Head of Group Bids at Adecco Group UK & Ireland. “Clients are now better informed and know what they want from their supplier. Our sales process now extends across multiple stages - with each having a more intense focus on the measurable and quantifiable benefits of a service, namely savings and efficiency.”
Historically, coordinating the bid process happened through email. Not only did this make it difficult to maintain control of document versions, consolidate stakeholder feedback, and manage approvals, but with file sizes often exceeding 100MB it was often impossible to share bid documents with external third-party suppliers and clients.
A more efficient way to manage bids
Today, Adecco Group Uk & Ireland runs the entire bid process through Huddle. Using a secure Huddle Workspace, the bid manager can quickly build a virtual team of stakeholders, collate reference documents, share and edit files, and manage the entire review and approval process.
"The bid management process is complex and can take several weeks. Using Huddle makes us 35% more efficient in the time taken to respond to bids."
Not having to rely on local network drives and storage makes it simple for the bid team to connect stakeholders based in different geographical locations; an important factor for international bids that require subject matter expertise from across the globe.
Because Huddle is cloud-based, the team is always synchronized to the latest document version and tasks across their desktop and mobile devices. And, because every document stored in Huddle has its own comment stream, contributors can quickly review, or add their own, comments.
From a governance perspective, all team activity around the document is logged and stored in a time-stamped audit trail, including comments, approvals and document revisions.
“We have been using Huddle since 2014 and it is delivering excellent process and cost efficiencies throughout our organisation. First used in the Group Sales & Bids team to optimise bid production, Huddle has grown organically throughout Adecco. From the initial 50 licences in the UK and Ireland, we now have almost 275 globally, used by multiple back and front office functions,” said Taylor.
A knowledge base to expedite bids
Centralised information management is essential to the accuracy, consistency and speed at which bid teams can respond.
“We have created a bid library that is updated with collateral, graphics and processes from each bid,” explained Taylor. “It has become a hugely valuable repository of information for bid teams. Before Huddle, a bid manager might spend up to three hours searching for the right information. If we had a seven-day turnaround on a bid, we could spend two or three days simply searching for content, or rewriting something from scratch.
“Huddle’s search facility is so simple that there’s no more trawling around for information. We now have instant access to a fully catalogued, easily accessible, entire knowledge base. We calculate that using Huddle makes us 35% more efficient in the time taken to respond to bids.”
Service evolution
Huddle is not limited to the bid process. Once a bid has been won, Adecco can manage implementation through a dedicated Huddle Workspace. All relevant stakeholders, including the client and any third-party suppliers, are able to access implementation roadmaps, manage tasks, monitor project milestones, and set approvals.
"There’s no doubt that Huddle has helped us to improve the quality and efficiency of our end-to-end bid and sales process."
With everyone connected to a single source of truth, there’s no confusion or misinformation, and no more lengthy email chains to keep track of.
“There’s no doubt that Huddle has helped us to improve the quality and efficiency of our end-to-end bid and sales process. We needed to move to the best, and most appropriate collaboration platform. The Huddle sales team took a very consultative approach, ensuring we understood all the features and exactly what we were purchasing, and the customer success team continue to be very hands-on; continually looking for ways to innovate or improve the service. As our need for the platform grows, we work in tandem with our Huddle account managers to ensure the platform evolves to meet our requirements,” added Adecco Group Sales & Bid Director, Neil McLachlan.
