How Office Depot Improved Content Governance by 72%

Office Depot helps businesses redefine how they work in order to be more efficient, productive, and satisfied in the workplace. With over 30 years of experience in nearly every industry, Office Depot equips businesses for success, from innovative technology to ergonomic furniture – and everything in between. With such a versatile client base comes an extensive amount of content, something Office Depot struggled to manage within its previous system. The team needed a way to not only organize new and existing content, but maintain its efficacy in providing sellers and customers with the right information. Through Highspot, Office Depot significantly enhanced its governance standards and unlocked efficiency.

Content Confusion From a Lack of Governance

As a leading B2B solutions provider serving small, medium, and enterprise-level companies, Office Depot has a broad content library to help its sellers drive conversations with a variety of customers. But with a lack of organization and governance in its previous solution, the team struggled to find the information they needed. “There was an overwhelming amount of content in the platform,” said Rey Espinosa, senior product consultant at Office Depot. “We had hundreds of people that were allowed to publish content, and it quickly became a content repository, not a content management tool.” 

Another pain point was the search functionality within this existing tool, which made locating materials and sifting through content exceedingly difficult. “Our sales teams were challenged with trying to find the content,” explained Espinosa. “And when they did find it, a lot of it was out of date, irrelevant, and unusable to share with our customers. Content that was five or six years old would be the first up on a search list.”

It was also difficult for the team to discern whether something was customer-facing or internal. “We had a rep unknowingly send something to a customer with the term ‘prospecting’ in the title,” shared Cassandra Eschenbach, director of sales enablement at Office Depot. “Thinking about how fast people are moving, you have to make things as foolproof as possible – and we needed a way to eliminate that room for error.” The team required a more advanced tool that could help them effectively equip their sales teams for success.

Improving Asset Quality Through Added Insight

With Highspot, Office Depot was able to implement a multi-faceted tool to meet the gamut of the team’s needs. One particular benefit was the ability to establish robust governance standards, backed by actionable insights, to keep all materials up-to-date and highly relevant. “One thing I love about Highspot is the reports,” noted Eschenbach, who manages five different teams at Office Depot. “They are so impactful to give insight and drive action. Time is not something I have a ton of so I utilize the Governance Scorecard very regularly to stay on top of things.” She relies specifically on Unused Content and Spot Policies, which tell her when something is out of date or needs to be addressed. “They are quick and easy ways to make sure everything in the Spot is current and relevant,” said Eschenbach. “If I had to do that on my own, it probably wouldn’t happen.”

Switching to Highspot also provided Office Depot the opportunity to revisit its enablement materials and develop a more strategic approach to equipping the team for success. “We really took a hard look at the content we had and made a conscious decision to be very intentional about what we brought into Highspot,” shared Espinosa. “We made sure we only added the most recent and relevant content and excluded the rest, which allowed us to start from a really great point.” 

Plus, the team could better monitor the health of its enablement programs, content, and the system as a whole. “Spot Policies and Policy Violations are a fantastic way to keep tabs on things without having to physically keep your eyes on everything,” explained Eschenbach. “It’s very practical to make sure the right things have the right governance and control without it being overwhelming.” With these policies in place, the Office Depot team has improved content governance by 72% and enhanced content findability by 86%.

Integration Enables Efficiency

Implementing a robust platform like Highspot changed the way the Office Depot team equipped teams with the materials they need to be successful – from content to training – helping them achieve significant results.

This positive perception was due in large part to Highspot’s diverse functionality. “Highspot has some great integration tools and capabilities into the other software tools in our tech stack which really helped to promote and drive the adoption of the platform,” detailed Espinosa. “We’re able to provide our teams with access to the content from Highspot through Outlook, our Salesforce CRM, and some of our other sales tools, which makes it easy to access and easy to use from whichever tool reps happen to be using in their workflow. They didn’t have to change their processes drastically.” Due to the ease of use, Office Depot has seen 80% recurring usage rate of the unified platform. 

Sellers are particularly spending less time on administrative tasks, like searching for content or training materials. This means they can spend more time on the activities that matter: engaging with buyers. “They’re utilizing pitch templates within Highspot and simply personalizing them before sending to customers,” said Espinosa.