Heidrick & Struggles — Cloud Content Platform Compresses Executive Search Cycle by Up to Six Weeks
Heidrick & Struggles International, a Mid-Market Professional & Advisory Services company, achieved measurable value creation through Cycle Time Reduction. - **Cycle time reduction**: Search cycle times improved by up to six weeks compared to the pre-platform process, per Box's published customer case study.
| Company | Heidrick & Struggles International |
| Industry | Professional & Advisory Services |
| Company Size | Mid-Market |
| Primary Lever | Cycle Time Reduction |
| Key Result | - **Cycle time reduction**: Search cycle times improved by up to six weeks compared to the pre-platform process, per Box's published customer case study |
Heidrick & Struggles is one of the world's leading retained executive search firms, placing C-suite and board-level executives for global corporations. At its scale — handling a minimum of 5,000 searches and 30,000 candidates annually — the firm's traditional search process relied on disparate content repositories: candidate profiles, assessment materials, client briefings, and search progress documents were stored in a combination of local drives, email, and legacy file systems. Sharing materials across 40+ global offices required manual file transfers, and client-facing status updates were delivered via email or phone calls on a periodic basis. The inefficiency created two specific problems: internal search teams lost hours per week locating and sharing content, and clients lacked real-time visibility into search progress — a source of dissatisfaction that increased communication overhead for senior partners and risked the perception of slow delivery.
Heidrick & Struggles deployed Box Cloud Content Management as its unified platform for all search-related content, then built a proprietary client-facing digital portal on top of the Box infrastructure. The implementation involved:
The platform was rolled out globally and ultimately handled up to 40,000 candidates per year across all Heidrick & Struggles engagements.
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Box's cloud content management infrastructure eliminated the need for Heidrick & Struggles to build proprietary file storage and access control systems, allowing them to focus development resources on the client-facing portal differentiation. The firm's global office network meant the returns to content accessibility were multiplicative — every office benefited from being able to access any other office's candidate research instantly. Executive search's structured process (initial candidate identification, shortlist, assessment, presentation) mapped naturally to the portal's workflow tracking design.