After a series of M&As, healthtech company Merative personalizes outreach at scale with Showpad

THE CHALLENGE

A new company chapter opens with old-guard software

From AI-powered imaging applications used in hospitals to the software supporting life-changing clinical trials — Merative influences almost every corner of the healthcare ecosystem.

Born out of IBM Watson Health and relaunched as an independent company in 2022, Merative brought together five business units and a reputation for healthcare innovation all under one brand.

“We inherited everything — the people, the tools, the processes, and the PowerPoints,” says Kacie Parker, Director of Sales Enablement. “But for Merative to thrive independently, we had to rebuild from the inside out.”

That fresh start came with immediate challenges: how to unify teams, streamline sales content, and deliver a consistent onboarding experience to every seller — and buying experience for every customer — across five highly specialized business lines.

But Merative’s sales enablement and marketing teams were buried under years of disconnected tools and outdated collateral. Sellers still relied on materials from their time under IBM. Content lived in folders that lacked version control or visibility into usage.

“Some people had the same sales deck they’d been using since 2006,” Parker added. “And no one knew whether it was current.”

In an industry like healthcare, where compliance is non-negotiable — especially when engaging with hospitals, insurers, or public health agencies — the risks of outdated content were real. Without a governed and centralized platform, sellers often downloaded materials and stored them locally, leaving the marketing team unable to update or remove outdated documents circulating in the field. Additionally, there was no audit process, much less guidance on what content worked best at which stage of the deal or for what type of buyer.

“We needed a single source of truth,” said Lauren Engstrom, Tech Stack Administrator at Merative. “Something that gave sellers confidence — and gave us control.”

That transformation started with Showpad.

THE SOLUTION

A single, governed platform for seller education, buyer engagement and holistic performance

Instead of trying to force its inherited (and costly) sales tech stack to work together, Merative consolidated every workflow into Showpad. Content management, seller training and coaching, account-based marketing, and all the analytics that surround them are now housed in one ecosystem engineered to scale.

“Showpad gave us the chance to start over,” says Parker. “It wasn’t just switching platforms — it was rethinking how we enable, how we engage, and how we grow.”

Merative reps now have a single source of truth with always current content on Showpad. Content is categorized and accessible based on business unit and role, with automated governance to ensure it stays accurate and approved. Sellers no longer have to question what’s current.

“When you send a customer a document through Showpad, and later update it on the back end, it automatically updates everywhere you’ve sent it,” says Morgane Bernard, Sales Enablement Lead at Merative. “That initially blew people’s minds.”

Plus, because Showpad’s training and content capabilities live in the same tool, onboarding new Merative reps has become faster, smoother, and easier to track. “Now our reps can get on a customer-facing discovery call in their first 60 days using Showpad,” said Parker. “That used to take months.”

THE IMPACT

As time and costs go down, adoption and engagement rise

Without the worry of compliance and with the ease of onboarding, user engagement has fittingly soared. Logins have jumped from 300 per day on their previous enablement tools to more than 700 on Showpad.

With Showpad, Merative didn’t just solve the content and technology sprawl that invariably comes with M&A — it turned enablement into a competitive advantage.

By centralizing their content, the team eliminated software redundancy and compliance risk. They also slashed costs, saving approximately $200,000 per year by retiring legacy tools. But the biggest win? Sellers were finally supported to lead better, more strategic conversations with customers and prospects.

“The money we’re spending now is money well spent because sellers are actually using the platform,” says Parker.

The platform has also become essential for navigating complex buying processes like Requests for Proposals (RFPs), where accuracy, speed, and consistency are critical.

With Showpad, the enablement team can pull from a central, always-up-to-date library of pre-approved content — everything from compliance documents to product specs — and package it into a polished, on-brand presentation for sellers within a few hours. Instead of scrambling across multiple tools or waiting on internal approvals, reps now deliver tailored responses that address each prospect’s unique needs while staying within regulatory and brand guidelines. This streamlined workflow helps Merative respond to RFPs more effectively with a personalized approach and greater confidence, providing a competitive edge in high-value deals.

Showpad’s Pages feature unlocked new ways to engage prospects, especially for sellers who work in hard-to-reach territories. Pages are customizable, on-brand landing pages that group relevant content — like demo videos, case studies, and product specs — into one visually compelling experience tailored to specific personas, products, or pain points.

One Merative rep mailed postcards and notepads embedded with QR codes that linked directly to a personalized Page — a tactic that helped her connect with prospects in rural hospitals and imaging centers in places like Wisconsin, Idaho, and North Dakota. According to Bernard, these customers often aren’t on LinkedIn or ZoomInfo, so standard digital outreach simply wasn’t an option.

These Pages aren’t just a clever way of reaching “unreachable” people; they’re effective.

Average customer view time jumped from 15 seconds on general sales content to more than a minute on Showpad Pages, while page views climbed from an average of 13 views to more than 300. Sellers now start with a templated Page tailored by industry — food and beverage, pharma, and clinical research — pre-personalized by the enablement team, so reps can deliver targeted outreach at scale without compromising compliance. This efficiency gives them time to film video intros with company execs for each customer, making for a captivating welcome at the top of their custom Page.

Parker believes that with Showpad Pages sellers are able to tell Merative’s story better than ever.

“The theme is simplicity,” says Parker. “It feels easy to buy from us now — and receiving a white-glove experience is a differentiator in this space.”

WHAT’S NEXT

Scaling globally and laying the groundwork for future innovation

As Merative grows and introduces new healthcare software, data, and consulting services, Showpad remains central to their revenue team’s onboarding, content delivery, and customer engagement. Their revenue team is currently auditing and refining content by business unit, while planning deeper Salesforce integrations with Showpad.

They’re also exploring how to unlock more of Showpad’s AI-powered features, particularly to automate administrative workflows — such as updating and managing personalized Pages — so the team can reduce manual tasks and focus more on strategic initiatives.

“We want to get even smarter about what’s working,” says Engstrom. “Which sellers are using what content, how it lands with customers, and how we can keep optimizing.”

The goal? A fully connected, insight-driven sales experience that empowers every seller to lead with value, and every customer to feel like a priority.

“Showpad is now part of our culture,” says Parker. “If we lost it tomorrow, it would be a huge loss. It’s how we sell, how we train, and how we grow.”