Ombud is easy to pick up and use from day one. We were able to increase productivity, quality and efficiency in no time. It changes the way we take our new team members through the on-boarding process, reducing the time spent on training on how to get to the right answer. After short listing three solutions, Ombud blew the competition out of the water with its machine learning features (automated suggestions), importing document service, and the exporting to excel was pure magic. Also very valuable is the customer success team and our regular business reviews where Ombud takes the time to help us maximise the use of the solution as well as present opportunities we did not know about. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Because it's so flexible, it can be daunting if you haven't got a vision or plan of what you want to achieve - like looking at a blank sheet of paper. I personally do not have any dislikes, but there's always room for improvements like any tool. We have multiple languages to manage and would like to see some integration/linking here, and more options in the formatting features like a proper emdash or euros symbol. I would also like to see more visual tracking for navigating where the writer/user is on the workspace. But these are tiny things and we have workarounds, the efficiency gains outweigh any of these niggles. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Using Ombud, anyone on our go-to-market team is able to respond to questions from prospects and customers faster and with less effort. And because the content in Ombud is curated, the responses are of a higher overall quality. When we receive an RFP or an infosec questionnaire or even a list of ad hoc questions, the first thing you're likely to see in Slack is, "I added it to Ombud." That should give you an idea of how deeply ingrained Ombud is in our daily work, and this is a testament to how easy Ombud is to use and also to their exceptional customer support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Each question (in Ombud terminology, an entry) has a status:unanswered, in progress, needs review, or complete. This is helpful for seeing how far along you are in responding to an RFP, etc. However, it isn't possible to enforce a workflow, e.g., only the sales manager can mark an entry as complete. Sometimes this results in our having to scan back over a document to ensure that the right pairs of eyes have reviewed each entry. I would classify this as an inconvenience, rather than a dislike, and my understanding is that this feature gap will be closed soon. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Easy collaboration on RFP documents, great answer suggestions/search (provided your data is good!), consistency & recency management for answers, great reuse % and data quality metrics presented by our CSM in our Ombud quarterly business reviews. Top-notch Support & Success. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Two minor items:
1) The interface can be a little clunky at times, particularly with multiple people working on big RFPs. I agree with another reviewer's statement that it's difficult to visualize answers in the finished product while collaboratively editing.
2) Export sometimes runs into issues with complex source documents. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ombud's ability to help find relevant answers from other RFP's and documents to quickly fill out RFPs, RFIs, Security Questionnaires, or even simple email questions from customers really helps our productivity and accuracy of information. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Many individuals on my team struggle with the interface for entering answers. It is difficult to visualize the format of the answer once it is output into the final document. For instance, the environment is able to add content rich datatypes, but the format in ombud does not always carryover in to the final document, whether it is in word, excel, etc... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Easy to use, makes historical content available to search and reuse in new RFP/I's as well as a KB that can be used to quickly search for answers by all registered users.
I have been using Ombud for almost 6 years and it is a game changer! After extensive evaluation and reviewing their competition it was clear that Ombud is best of breed and all other offerings are about 3-4 years behind them. Response times to RFP's have dropped by almost 40% thanks to the reusability of previous responses and promotion of content to a validated response in a Reference Workspace. I also think its worth mention that the various integrations and configurations (SSO, SFDC etc) are largely self service so there is no going back and forth with their help desk to get things setup and meet your corp standard. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Would like to see more AI rolled in to help with their search algorithm. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ombud takes the two biggest challenges in RFP responses- content access/management and collaboration, and seamlessly brings them together in one platform. Not only does it make the proposal team's life easier, it also gives time back to sales, pre-sales, and all other collaborators. As someone who manages proposals, it is an easy sell to get other contributors to use Ombud and it has paid dividends in our response time, effectiveness, and win rate. Since implementing Ombud, we have received many compliments from prospects and customers, not just on the thoroughness of our proposal responses but our ability to respond to one off queries quickly and with polished content. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There is nothing major that stands out, just minor product requests which Ombud is always very responsive with. The one thing that could be improved is the comment collaboration functionality. One of the best things about Ombud is how intuitive it is for most users which means that our adoption rate is high but the comment functionality isn't intuitive and sometimes leads to comments going unnoticed. Our proposal team is highly aware and sensitive to this issue and has workarounds in place to avoid major problems but it is worth noting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ombud offers a friendly spot to work and to have documents organized Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are specific customizations we should do once the final document is exported (not possible to do it in Ombud) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ability to maintain our reference content in a system that is used by nearly every member of our sales organization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Granular searching can be a challenge at times; however, this will be changing drastically with Ombud's future updates to its search capabilities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Even casual users find the interface intuitive, making the proposal development process efficient and almost pleasant. In addition, the customer service is excellent. Both the product and the service are indispensable for us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
System-wide dashboards leave a lot to be desired, though the library offers some decent query functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ombud provides a very easy to use interface that makes it simple to manage for any business user. The level of permissions fit the model of our proposal team. Additionally their customer service and support is absolutely top notch! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Wish there was an automatic translation capability based on our organization being a global org. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.