Showpad

Our company has really taken advantage of the Shared Spaces functionality. We use that to make client-specific Shared Spaces, and it's a great way to share new content or resources tailored to each client. I also really appreciate the level of support we've received from Showpad when we've had issues! I accidentally broke the connection between Showpad and our Google Drive folders, which caused them to 'resync' and we lost all of our tags. It would have been a huge amount of work for us to manually re-add the tags. I know it wasn't an easy fix on the Showpad team's end (they had to have a ton of meetings with us and it took some time) but they were able to restore our connection and all of the tags. I also like the ability to integrate our design elements into our Showpad homepage and the folders we use to organize our resources and elements! It makes our Showpad instance feel more on brand.

I liked that it provided a single source of truth for sales information & processes. Our team had a strong champion that was responsible for organizing and updating the content within showpad which definetly contributed to team adoption, however, it was still very weak across the broader team.

Before I make a sales call I will create a folder and put everything I need about a particular topic in that folder for that sales call. While I am discussing a topic or a product or a project I will pull up the folder and show what I prepared. But if the conversation goes into a different direction I still can scroll through Showpad and find supporting material to show. I also like seeing who opened my emails and if they downloaded the material that I sent them. Showpad gives that type of transparency. For example I may send a submittal package via Showpad to an architect to get added to the addendum on a project. This process is time sensitive. If the architect does not approve the material and add my products to the addendum before a certain time then my products will not be considered. So when I send the architect the submittal I will look at the shared emails to see if the Shopad email that I sent in was opened by the architect. If it was opened and documents reviewed and downloaded then I know it is worth while to follow up on this project because more than likely the architect added me to the addendum. If the deadline has come and gone but the architect never opened up the Showpad email then I forget about the project because I know I was not added to the addendum and I don't want to waste my time. I also know that I am wasting my time with that particular architect. I also really like the feature of uploading my own photos and documents.

I wish that Showpad integrated more comprehensively with Marketo. It would be great to get visibility into influence from content in Shared Spaces since Showpad should technically have the emails of all Shared Spaces users. The transition from the web app to the admin interface can be confusing or clunky, and I don't find the admin interface as intuitive as I'd like. The tagging process can be tedious, but I think Showpad is working on using AI to do some asset tagging. The connection between our Google Drive and Showpad has been tricky in the past. I mentioned I broke it once, which may be on me, but when I would try to add new folders, sometimes the update wouldn't go through, or Showpad wouldn't even tell me if it did go through. Making that process easier and more intuitive would be a big help!

Adoption was low across the team due to a lack of perceived value and platform organization. It was often easier to find documents on our website via a open search, compared to opening up Showpad and digging for something that might be outdated. Part of that was on our team for lack of enablement and advocacy throughout the GTM org, but the clunky nature of the tool ultimately led to a switch in vendors.

My company has to make sure the data us current and updated. If we have changes and don't update the Showpad folder then it loses it value.