Episode 9: Interview with William Wade, Global VP at Sitecore

Inspiring Legal

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[00:00 - 00:09]: Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal.
[00:10 - 00:16]: Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:19]: If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it.
[00:19 - 00:30]: For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community.
[00:31 - 00:38]: Welcome back to this episode of Inspiring Legal, where I have the pleasure of welcoming William.
[00:39 - 00:41]: William, we are delighted to have you.
[00:41 - 00:48]: For the listeners out there, who is William and what is your background?
[00:49 - 00:53]: Thanks, Stine. I really appreciate it. It's great to be on.
[00:54 - 01:01]: My background, in a nutshell, maybe can be told by my accent or lack of an accent.
[01:02 - 01:08]: But I'm originally from the US, but I've been in Denmark for 10 plus years now.
[01:08 - 01:19]: I've also lived in a number of places and have been quite mobile in my personal life and career, but have made a home now here in Denmark.
[01:20 - 01:29]: Fantastic. So for the listeners out there, William Wade has been working for Sitecore for 11 years.
[01:29 - 01:38]: Recently, you launched what is called Sitecore's Legal Hub 0.1. I will be asking you so many questions,
[01:39 - 01:43]: because I think this is something that people will really truly find inspiring,
[01:44 - 01:49]: because you've set the goal to becoming the most innovative legal department, as I understand it.
[01:50 - 01:56]: In the industry. We'll start being the most innovative legal department in the industry,
[01:56 - 01:59]: and then we'll see where we can go from there.
[02:00 - 02:07]: That is ambitious, but it also means that you've been thinking a lot about, I guess, how to innovate, how to work.
[02:08 - 02:16]: But maybe to take a step back for the ones that don't know Sitecore, what is the company, what industry,
[02:17 - 02:20]: and maybe also just how big is your legal team?
[02:20 - 02:30]: Sure. Well, the legal team is, we are 23 people in all, including all various types of legal professionals,
[02:31 - 02:37]: not just attorneys that make up our team. So we're 23 in all, spread out globally.
[02:38 - 02:43]: Take back to 10 years ago or so, when I started, I was the second.
[02:43 - 02:51]: So we've grown since then. I would say we haven't grown enough to support all the needs of the business,
[02:52 - 03:00]: but that's what most in-house teams would also say, especially in the tech world. It's tough to keep up.
[03:01 - 03:08]: In terms of Sitecore, yes, so Sitecore started out as an early CMS provider.
[03:08 - 03:12]: So that's content management systems, just a way to manage content on your website.
[03:13 - 03:21]: The simplest example was in the early days, even dating back to the early 2000s,
[03:22 - 03:29]: if you wanted to make an edit on a website for similar content, you might have to go on every individual page and make that edit.
[03:30 - 03:35]: So it's crazy how much things have advanced since then.
[03:35 - 03:42]: But Sitecore started out, founder-led company by Michael Seifert.
[03:43 - 03:53]: And it was really about how can we build websites and make the process of managing content easier.
[03:54 - 04:03]: And they were a big player on the scene and also got started in the Bay Area through family connections
[04:03 - 04:12]: and other early investors so that when they were starting in Denmark, they were also starting almost in parallel in the US.
[04:13 - 04:16]: And that shaped a lot of the early success of the company.
[04:17 - 04:22]: It didn't have to make that jump from Europe to the US, that we were established there.
[04:23 - 04:29]: And in fact, a lot of US customers would most likely identify Sitecore as a US company
[04:29 - 04:33]: and not necessarily even understand its origins.
[04:34 - 04:35]: That's a big part of the success.
[04:36 - 04:41]: In terms of the product, CMS, that's old hat now.
[04:42 - 04:51]: To describe our product suite and the industry we're in, you call it the digital experience world,
[04:51 - 04:58]: which can mean different things, but it is a lot about how you engage with the website,
[04:59 - 05:06]: how personalizing content, of course, with consent, GDPR consent, of course.
[05:07 - 05:10]: All of that is privacy by design built into it.
[05:11 - 05:17]: But it is about being able to send the right content to your customer,
[05:17 - 05:20]: whether you're a B2B or B2C customer.
[05:21 - 05:23]: Sitecore's customers can send the right content at the right time.
[05:24 - 05:27]: So what have been the challenges?
[05:28 - 05:32]: I know a lot of the listeners and a lot of people in the community are sitting right now
[05:33 - 05:36]: and really focusing on especially improving sales.
[05:37 - 05:42]: We have the community report that we built together with the community.
[05:42 - 05:47]: And that shows that more than any other department,
[05:48 - 05:53]: sales and commercial are requiring the most resources from in-house legal teams.
[05:54 - 06:02]: I think on average, 71% of all community members said that sales were the most demanding team to support.
[06:03 - 06:08]: And they were also just taking arms and legs, more or less, from the legal teams.
[06:08 - 06:15]: What have been the challenges to build the legal hub?
[06:16 - 06:21]: Well, it's definitely true with sales and Sitecore is no different.
[06:22 - 06:25]: And our field legal team is the largest.
[06:26 - 06:33]: When we think of those 23 legal professionals, a huge chunk is set within the field.
[06:33 - 06:42]: And a lot of the things that I do as well is focused on supporting our field legal team, which supports everything.
[06:43 - 06:44]: Field is the sales?
[06:45 - 06:46]: Field is the sales, yes.
[06:47 - 06:53]: So anything commercially driven and any revenue generating contract and related.
[06:54 - 06:58]: Of course, it all can be interrelated, but that's what I mean.
[06:58 - 07:02]: Sales is also just a good word to use.
[07:03 - 07:06]: So it's the same here that we use that.
[07:07 - 07:20]: And the challenges, in large part, I really feel is how can we present information in a way that will support the sales process.
[07:20 - 07:36]: And will be advantageous and a value add to our sales team, both to save resources of asking, having to answer, excuse me, the same question again and again.
[07:36 - 07:51]: How can we focus our resources, obviously, towards the customer so they will have less questions because we have been so transparent and have really tried to give them the full picture of what we're doing.
[07:52 - 08:01]: Which make the sales person's life easier, decrease deal cycles, the length of time it takes to close a deal by doing that.
[08:01 - 08:17]: But also give our own sales team that ammunition to take into those discussions when a customer, you know, legal departments from our customers, you know, they want to show their value as well.
[08:18 - 08:27]: You run into these situations where you can see that they may not have issue with your contract, but they are trying to show you the value to their organization.
[08:27 - 08:34]: And we're cognizant of that. But how can we still make that process easier?
[08:35 - 08:41]: And I think it goes back to engaging the customer and being transparent.
[08:42 - 08:48]: That's transparent, transparent, transparent is what we want to offer.
[08:48 - 08:56]: So explain our agreement set up, understand we'll have some disagreements, but explain why we have set up language the way we have.
[08:57 - 09:10]: And also, you know, a big conversation point that came up in the middle of this is that are w...