Formstack Documents vs. Responsive

[Formstack Documents (formerly WebMerge) is] well suited for a mid-size organization that has multiple data inputs and needs to provide structure and professional document generation. As helpful as it is, the cost would prevent smaller businesses from realizing the cost savings that a larger one will.

Incentivized

Responsive is well suited for bid response teams and organizations that often respond to RFPs, but also for organizations looking to have access to information from their large library of documents, presentations, and images using AI and a chat bot that serves their internal organization to respond to clients faster and more accurately

Incentivized

• It consumes PDF applications and prefills them from a database or form. If your file is not in PDF form it can work from applications such as Microsoft Word.
• It has logic that enables you to bundle applications based on criteria. For example you could bundle state specific applications with a new business applications if a state criteria is met.
• It has several integrations partners in the fields of E Signature and Forms.

Incentivized

• Manages structure responses well
• Manages permissions from the various users that access the solution
• Allows for a global deployment with built in language capabilities
• Allows for 100% visibility into the RFx process for all stakeholders
• Allows for ease of answering via ML that has been built in

Incentivized

• If you don't know anything about these types of programs, it can be hard to learn it at first. There is a bit of a learning curve, especially when you get into the designer. It looks like MS Word, but not as expansive.
• Lingo. There have been times I've delved into the more complicated pieces and the lingo used wasn't easy to understand. This hasn't occurred much.
• I would like it to keep up with current upgrades for MS Office, but I also realize they can't be trying to match other companies while trying to maintain the innovation of their own.

Incentivized

• Analysis Tools: although what is provided is quite good, there is definitely room for improvement. For instance it would be nice if it were easier/quicker for each evaluator to record their notes/comments when scoring, and to be able to search through those notes/comments later. Also, it would be really helpful to be able to annotate/mark-up the actual responses (highlight, underline, circle, call-out notes, etc.), with such mark-up tracked by evaluator, and with the option to hide/show mark-up.
• Results Analysis, Reporting, and Presentation: in my opinion, this is the only area of weakness in RFP360. There are very limited options, after scoring/evaluation of responses is completed, for generating reports, graphs, charts, etc. to be used in evaluating results and presenting to the end client. I've always had to export the scores and use Excel to create the necessary visuals for final analysis and presentation.
• Complex Questions: RFP360's ability to handle complex RFP questions (e.g. involving tables, charts, multi-part answers, graphics, etc.) is limited, and existing capabilities in this area are fairly cumbersome to navigate and use.

Incentivized

Ease of use, nice functionality that saves time

We'd be sunk without Responsive. The sales motion would slow way down in several places, and that's just unacceptable. AND I love the product. It helps me do my job efficiently. The Responsive team is GREAT. Support is getting better. The Product and Customer Experience Team is so knowledgeable and willing to help with new features and troubleshoot what's going on. It's an all-around great experience. Not to mention starting over - I can't even get my head around that.

Incentivized

Very easy to navigate and use. Very intuitive user interface

Incentivized

Support was always readily available and happy to assist whenever I had a question or needed help. Great experience every time.

Incentivized

If I cannot solve a problem, then I reach out to Support and they are ON IT. They always solve the problem and get back to me immediately with an answer. Our customer support person who is assigned to us (we have had several) are responsive and helpful. We have asked them to sit in on meetings and help socialize the tool.

Incentivized

We were able to complete an RFP during our free trial. We were already leaning toward RFPIO but that pushed us over the edge.

Formstack Documents [(formerly WebMerge)] has better overall integration with third-party integrators at a very competitive cost. That allowed us to have a broader range of choices than something like SharePoint at a better cost point than something like DocuSign. It was simple to implement, flexible, and gave us what we needed without a lot of extra fuss.

Incentivized

I didn't select a tool, so I'm not sure what else is available in the market beyond Loopio, which we used previously. It's been at least 2 years since I last used Loopio, so it might be inaccurate at this point, but Responsive's AI seems much better at providing a specific answer to your question and is less general.

Incentivized

• Formstack was an absolute necessity for us and during our busy season, it saves our client team approx. 15 hours a week. This is MASSIVE and allows us to take on more clients.
• Formstack wasn't crazy intensive to set up timewise, but it took a team member a day to set up and a few days of testing. Once it was set, we have no reason to look back unless we want to add something on.

Incentivized

• Increased revenue - with our ability to respond to more proposals, we have seen amazing return on investment.
• Compliance oversight - the system allows our national complaince team to review answers and ensure that responses are inalignment.
• Content and brand management - RFPIO allows our marketing and design team to better manage our visual and written brand.
• Faster timeline - we have been able to take a process that used to take months into a much shorter process.

Incentivized