How Guidewire Saved 30% of Reps' Time

Fragmented Systems and Processes Impeded Employee Efficiency

Innovation is central to Guidewire’s mission – it’s what has driven the company to build a robust suite of products and services to meet the needs of a diverse set of customers. The Guidewire sales team thus plays a crucial role in setting customers up for success with the right solution. A high-performing sales team needs access to the right content, proper training and coaching around how to use it, and visibility into performance to maximise effectiveness. However, the existing systems in place and processes for managing those systems proved to be significant hindrances. “There was just a lot of content spread through a lot of disparate systems,” said Laurie Solens, director of enablement at Guidewire.

Not only were resources difficult to find, they were difficult to update. “The main issue with our previous sales portal was that the content needed to be loaded by somebody besides the content owner,” explained Bea McGinn, senior programme manager of field enablement at Guidewire. “We had a ticketing system that could delay this process by up to two to three days.” As a result, the team’s efficiency was heavily impacted. “An internal survey revealed our sellers spent about 30% of their time searching for content and compiling that content from different sources,” shared Solens. “That’s a lot of hours when you look at their work week – and time that could be better spent selling and communicating with prospects and customers.” Guidewire needed to not only simplify its systems, but better enable the team as a whole with streamlined processes.

Empowering Teams Through a Unified Platform

After implementing Highspot, Guidewire provided its teams with more control over content and the training they needed to effectively implement it, as well as a way to measure success – something the previous process limited. In fact, content findability has improved by 90% since implementing Highspot. “The Sales Plays that are in our Highspot platform are updated, edited, and created by content owners,” explained McGinn. “My job is to help them initially, and I’m there to support them, but they’re off and running.”

The integrated nature of the platform also helped streamline other processes such as building, delivering, and driving participation in required training programmes. “We ask our sellers to do pre-work every year prior to our sales kickoff in August,” said Solens. “We are now able to do so through Highspot with Training and Coaching, which helps us drive accountability.”

With this new process in place, Solens was able to leverage the pre-work programme for Guidewire’s most recent sales kickoff to introduce a large initiative the team was driving to boost Pitch adoption and reinforce that initiative throughout the kickoff event itself. “I was asked to do a session on Highspot and I really wanted to emphasise the pitching capabilities,” described Solens. “I presented that during the pre-work session and at the end, I let our sellers know that if they are still emailing attachments to their prospects and customers, that was the equivalent of faxing, which is a legacy, outdated version of communication.” Today, Guidewire considers Pitch to be one of its greatest levers to drive sales performance through Highspot.

Administrators benefited from the transition, as well. “I’ve been an administrator for multiple systems at Guidewire, and this system is very easy to use and assists administrators in Analytics,” shared McGinn. “Running reports and digging through data used to take a long time previously. Now in Highspot, that data is very easy for administrators to access and make changes in the platform very quickly.”

Building a Winning Sales Strategy With Real-Time Insights

Empowering employees through added content accessibility, standardised training, and performance insights not only improved efficiency for Guidewire, but increased rep engagement in enablement programmes by 46%. “We have training, we are available to help support our sellers, and they understand the value that Highspot provides for them,” described Solens. This increased engagement has even helped the team build a winning sales strategy for the company. “With Pitch analytics, I was able to look at all of our won deals through our fiscal year to see if a Pitch was sent,” said Solens. “It turns out about two-thirds of won deals were Highspot Pitches.”

From the administrators on the backend to the sales team on the frontline, Guidewire has found a solution that meets a variety of needs.