Selling software to businesses is a time-consuming process. Even after you’ve been convinced that the customer is right for your organization, you should ensure that your software meets all your security requirements.
Chas Ballew realized how slowly and boring the vendor’s security and compliance review process was when he was running Aptible, the hosting platform for a healthcare company he co-founded in 2013.
Filling out a detailed survey revealed that software vendors took weeks and often delayed the original sales and contract renewal. In 2021, Ballew was able to find Conveyor, a startup dedicated to automating long customer security approval processes.
Shortly after Conveyor’s launch, Openai introduced ChatGpt, and the company seized the opportunity to power its products with AI. While many companies are cautious about adopting AI software, Conveyor’s customers have embraced the idea of delegating otherwise monotonous tasks.
“It’s very redundant and repetitive,” Ballew said of the security review. “(Customers) are very pleased with AI filling out their compliance forms because they don’t feel it will create a lot of value.”
According to Ballew, Conveyor was the first AI vendor to be fully deployed in Zendesk, Atlassian and Qualtrics production environments. The startup’s customer base also includes Workday, Netflix, Zapier and more than 400 other companies, Conveyor says.
Conveyor claims that AI agents can fill out more than 90% of customer security questions completely, autonomously and accurately, saving customers a lot of time and accelerate the sales process.
Based on the successful security review, startups are currently implementing AI-powered automation for Proposal Requests (RFP), a component necessary for any sales process. Conveyor’s expansion to RFP automation is expected to attract a wave of new customers outside the technology sector, significantly increasing the appeal of startups to investors.
This new product helped Conveyor attract more funds. With participation from Oregon Venture Fund and Selvin Venture, this is a $20 million Series B led by Signalfire.
In many ways, the work performed by Conveyor is the perfect use case for AI. This is because most people are afraid to do it. Still, full AI automation of the process requires extensive guardrails.
“We keep everything very safe and very isolated by each customer, which is very important,” Ballew says. “Companies want to ensure that sensitive data is used only to process information and is not exposed or mixed with other people’s data.”
Conveyors don’t just address this lesser-known issue in the sales team. Other startups that develop RFPS software and security questions include Loopio, Responsive, and Rohirrim.