In the early 2010s, HID — which provides products and services to securely access physical and digital places — was expanding globally. As a result, its sales team was scattered across six continents and using a number of clunky and unintuitive tools, explains Sales Enablement Program Manager Alistair Driscoll. 

“We needed a repository to allow salespeople to find, share, and present content quickly across different platforms, online and offline,” Alistair says. 

The company chose Showpad. Eight years later, not only has HID centralized its salesforce using this one platform, but it’s also shortened its sales cycle, improved its communications with clients, and added interactive elements to its presentations.

Alistair, who’s responsible for implementing the company’s new technology for the Physical Access Control Solutions (PACS), Business Area, has been the main Showpad administrator for the past seven years. He highlights that one of the platform’s best features is the consolidation of all client materials — including PDFs, slides, videos, and HTML5 files — keeping the sales team organized.

“They don’t have to go around searching on the platform while they’re with the customer,” says Alistair. “Sellers are forewarned and forearmed, and then they’re ready to present the content that they want to discuss with the customer.”

Showpad creates a streamlined destination for sellers to go to daily, which is likely why it has such a high adoption rate among the salespeople at HID: 70%.

When the sales team shares any type of content, Alistair always recommends that they do so using the unique share link that Showpad provides. Because version control allows you to update the content on the back end, the link remains the same for the customer while automatically providing the most up-to-date document. “That way, the customer receives the latest and greatest version of the material. It doesn’t matter if the link was sent six months ago.” 

Because file size isn’t an issue as opposed to sending by email, HID sellers can also add as much as they want in a link, whether explainer videos, pitch decks, or relevant case studies. Without the platform, adding this volume of email attachments could be disastrous, Alistair says. “Inevitably, that message will get pushed to their junk folder,” he adds. “Whereas with Showpad, it ends up in their inbox.” 

By sending materials through Showpad, HID’s teams have also gained access to customer data that would be impossible to retrieve via email. For example, sellers learn whether their buyers opened the Showpad link, what they downloaded, who they reshared it with, and when. All of this information is essential for the sales team to further hone their strategy and client communications.

Showpad isn’t just an internal tool, Alistair stresses. It’s also one that’s ideal for public-facing events, like a recent security industry trade show he attended in London. At the HID booth, they displayed new technologies with Showpad’s Mapper experience, which let them visually organize their products and services.

“One of the visitors came to the stand, walked up to the screen, and started interacting with the Mapper,” he says. “Then, he turned to his colleague and said, ‘I didn’t realize there were that many solutions we had at our disposal within this particular product.’” 

Communicating that information visually — and in such an interactive way — allowed the visitor to expand his understanding of what HID offered. And because of how easily Showpad facilitates sharing materials, Alistair was able to share the relevant content with that visitor on the spot. 

Through Showpad, HID has improved relations inside and out of the company. “It’s breaking barriers down to allow us to work not just in our silos, but with and across other business areas as well.”