WestRock is the leading provider of differentiated paper and packaging solutions. With operations around the world and expertise in every shopping category, WestRock provides customers across the globe with sustainable paper and packing solutions. 

With a mission to connect people to products, building customer trust is top of mind for WestRock; and with more than 50,000 employees and over 300 facilities across the globe, WestRock understands the importance of protecting their customer and employee data.

The search for a solution to automate 

As a small team handling privacy and marketing compliance efforts for the company, WestRock knew they needed a solution to help automate manual processes. “It’s a tale as old as time of word docs and excel sheets,” said Jennifer Smoot, Privacy Analyst at WestRock. “For the first few years we made the decision to stay manual in our processes, but we knew to take it to the next level we needed software.”

The WestRock team began their search for a solution to automate marketing and privacy compliance efforts, and OneTrust was the clear frontrunner. “It was clear from the beginning that OneTrust had what we were going to need in terms of tools, said Smoot, “and most importantly, the ability to scale with us as we continue to grow rapidly.” 

Filling the gaps with OneTrust PreferenceChoice

WestRock is using OneTrust Consent and Preference Management and Cookie Compliance and Website scanning for marketing compliance efforts. “With cookies and consent we are dealing with the same problem that most people are dealing with, which is that consent on its own isn’t good enough anymore,” said Smoot. “You need to make sure that it's not almost like an automated consent where they're just not really understanding what they're consenting to.” With OneTrust, WestRock is able to be transparent with cookie usage and customize and tailor their approach to collecting consent.

As a company that operates across the globe—from the United States to Europe to China and Brazil, it was important to the WestRock team that they have a tool that can take all of those different jurisdictions into consideration. “Having all of this in OneTrust is going to help us monumentally, it’s going to help with a big gap that we have been working to fill,” said Smoot.

Looking into the future

As WestRock’s team looks to the future, they are excited to dig deeper into implementing OneTrust Targeted Data Discovery to scan, retrieve and better understand the data they hold and see how it is used throughout the organization. They are looking forward to continuing to use OneTrust as they continue to scale and acquire over time.