How CoBank Provides Process and System Help to More Than 1,500 Employees and Contractors

The Challenge

CoBank is a cooperative bank that provides loans, leases, export financing and other financial services to the U.S rural economy in agribusiness, rural power, water and telecommunications. The bank needed a contextual help tool to organize and share reliable sources of company and process knowledge for employees. Its previous training solution, which consisted of a combination of SharePoint wiki pages, training PowerPoints, and user-managed guidance introduced three challenges:

• Up-to-date resources were scattered and end users couldn’t find the relevant information they needed quickly. 
• Different departments were creating “tips and tricks” documents that weren’t consistent or accurate throughout the organization, causing version control challenges.
• Frequent changes in integrated platforms like Salesforce and nCino created challenges for employees to stay up-to-date.

When looking for a contextual help tool, CoBank needed something that was easy to implement without having to rely on developer resources to build and maintain, as well as a tool that would allow content developers to easily maintain and update information for the entire organization.

That’s when they discovered Spekit.

The Solution

Contextual learning to boost tool competency

With more than 1,100 employees across the United States, the CoBank team needed an easy way to provide end-user guidance within the systems themselves. With Spekit, content developers can embed ‘Speks’, or bite-sized pieces of information, directly in the tools that users accessed every day, such as Salesforce and nCino. This includes rich text, videos, and links to other resources to provide even more context and quickly enhance content. 

To complete a process, all end users have to do is hover over the Spekit icon in whichever tool they’re using and access the information they need. By providing tool process guidance contextually, content developers create a personalized, self-service learning environment that reinforces team training and reduces the time it takes to learn a new process. Plus, because end users don’t have to leave the flow of work and no longer have to hunt for external resources, they can perform their work in the system much more efficiently. 

Because the Spekit rollout was successful, the team was able to retire user guides in other systems and no longer relies on limited Salesforce help text as the only way to have contextual guidance, opening up capacity and reducing demand on developers. 

Single source of truth to reduce repetitive questions

Before Spekit, enablement content was scattered across SharePoint, PowerPoint, and system help text. With Spekit, the entire organization has access to the most up-to-date information, which they can access seamlessly through the Google Chrome extension or directly in tools like Salesforce and nCino.

The best part is, unlike very structured legacy methods of documents, maintaining Spekit is incredibly low risk because it can be corrected immediately. Content developers can update and push content to the entire organization in a matter of minutes. Plus, because the organization has a single source of truth for documentation, department managers and subject matter experts no longer have to create redundant training materials, giving time back to focus on more impactful projects that will move the business forward.

Easy-to-share notifications to reinforce adoption

Like most companies, CoBank frequently has important process and system changes as they navigate digital transformation. The team relies on Spekit’s Spotlight feature for internal urgent messaging. With Spotlights, leaders can instantly notify their teams with a pop-up alert. This allows management to get ahead of change and problem management. For example, if there is a known bug in the product, a team admin can create a Spek on how to navigate it while also creating a Spotlight to send the information instantly. 

The Results

After seeing the success of Spekit, the CoBank team more than doubled their licenses from 750 to 1,850 in less than nine months, enabling more users to access to the tool. Both admin and end-users have benefited from having Spekit. 

Leadership has peace-of-mind that the bank has access to the most up-to-date information no matter when and where they are working. They no longer have to rely on developer resources to create contextual help text, and they have a faster way to create and maintain help and training content without needing to use several apps or tools. The team especially loves that Spekit provides a positive and vibrant learning environment in the workplace, as its customizability allows management to appeal to different generations and learning preferences. They also found that Spekit has the potential to decrease ramp time, increase productivity of end-users and support teams, and improve data hygiene in Salesforce.

CoBank employees are more confident knowing training looks and feels the same across different systems and all resources are tied together. Additionally, service delivery time has decreased. Instead of having to navigate to other systems or peers to find end-user guidance, users can get up-to-date information within the tool they are already in while using Spekit.