FireHydrant, a Series B tech company, has experienced explosive growth over the past few years and has seen success helping companies of all sizes from SMB to Enterprise customers. Because their platform integrates with sensitive systems such as engineering and communication tech stacks, FireHydrant is put through a security review by almost every type of company.
This involves having to share security documentation with customers and/or completing tedious security questionnaires for customers before a deal can close.
A manual, challenging process
When customers requested security documentation (information security policies, a copy of their SOC 2 Type II report and more), the Sales team had to make sure there was an NDA in place before they would manually send over copies of requested documents via email. The back and forth of the NDA alone – including redlines and signatures – could take days.
Not only was the document sending process incredibly manual, the security questionnaire completion took even longer in most instances. For many questionnaires, Ylan Muller - FireHydrant’s IT Manager who oversaw the process - even had to route questions to senior executives, resulting in hours of manual work that took away from critical business and security-related activities.
Delays led to frustration
These delays in the sales cycle frustrated Ylan and her team as the company grew. In order to proactively address this challenge and avoid hindering growth, FireHydrant decided to invest in a security questionnaire response software.
The software they purchased came with a service where Ylan’s team sent security questionnaires to the provider to complete, but despite implementing this outsourced approach, Ylan mentioned that, “The process of delivering completed security questionnaires back to customers still took several days, and in some cases, weeks, which continued to delay the sales process.”
The main challenges with the software they originally purchased were:
So… the search was on for a new security review automation software.
To address their pains, FireHydrant was looking for these main features:
FireHydrant came to Conveyor with a few competitors already in mind that provided both a hosted trust portal and a questionnaire completion service and the team was eager to try a proof of concept to compare the solutions they were evaluating.
During the week-long proof of concept (or POC), Conveyor’s customer success team helped set up FireHydrant’s knowledge base in the Conveyor platform - which would be used to power the questionnaire answering service and the Slack integration for communication between FireHydrant and Conveyor teams.
FireHydrant sent over two questionnaires to be completed during this time and Ylan was impressed with the quality of the responses as well as being able to understand the status of the questionnaire through Slack.
Ahead of the pack
Ultimately, they chose Conveyor for its enterprise-friendly features like SSO and role-based access and a Docusign integration for NDA signatures.
Additionally, they felt that they had found a true partner with Conveyor with the responsiveness on enablement and ongoing support from customer success.
Because FireHydrant engaged in a proof of concept, onboarding was nearly effortless. The team was able to start sharing their portal within a week of the completion of the POC.
Using the trust portal, FireHydrant was able to speed up the questionnaire turnaround time by 11 days which delighted the sales team.
There were several aspects of the product that were particularly impactful to the FireHydrant team and have become a critical part of their new workflows:
Just like before, FireHydrant wanted to pass any questionnaires they did still receive to Conveyor to complete on their behalf.
Unlike before, FireHydrant now receives completed questionnaires back within 72 business hours, has a clear view into the status of in-flight questionnaires and spends just minutes on review, instead of the hours it used to take.
With the precise and accurate answers Ylan has come to rely on from Conveyor, she was able to become the sole reviewer and eliminate the need for her senior executives to be involved in the process entirely.
Of course, no KB is ever done - on the rare occasions where other parties are involved, their knowledge is captured seamlessly into the Conveyor and can be approved and used in future questionnaires.
Ylan can now reliably tell her Sales team that a customer questionnaire will be turned around within a few days instead of weeks. Additionally, with Conveyor’s close partnership, sales leaders can stay apprised on the status of in-flight questionnaires within Slack or the Conveyor portal, providing the visibility they need into deal progression.
Ylan can now reliably tell her Sales team that a customer questionnaire will be turned around within a few days instead of weeks.
“If Conveyor went away today, it would be an uphill battle to get back to where we are today with our security review process. It would be such a shame to go back to the old way of doing things. I don’t even want to think about having to find another company to partner with us like Conveyor has,” says Ylan.
Before Conveyor, FireHydrant was spending one to two weeks getting security questionnaires back to their customers. After using Conveyor, they have cut that down to an average of three days.
The Sales team is now able to effortlessly share documents through Conveyor's trust portal, complete with a simple click-through NDA. This impressive feature has impressed the team who is currently relishing in the faster turnaround times for security reviews.
When asked what Ylan values the most about the Conveyor partnership, she mentioned four things:
“Run, don’t walk, to your nearest Conveyor sign up link,” says Ylan, “It was very easy to trial the platform. Working with the Conveyor team on the proof of concept gave me the confidence that the platform would fit well into our workflow and that we’d see tremendous value immediately.”
“If Conveyor went away today, it would be an uphill battle to get back to where we are today with our security review process.
It would be such a shame to go back to the old way of doing things. I don’t even want to think about having to find another company to partner with us like Conveyor has!"