Diligent Swaps Thousands of Agency Costs for Opal AI

When John Habib's seven-person content team at Diligent started using AI tools two years ago, they were chasing a simple goal: do more with less. Fast forward to today, and they're not just keeping up — they're launching podcasts, building 100 custom AI instructions, and saving tens of thousands in agency costs.

At Opticon New York, we sat down with John, Director of Content Strategy at Diligent, to talk about how his team went from content chaos (think: SharePoint files, Slack threads, and endless email chains) to a streamlined, AI-powered operation. As a leading governance, risk, and compliance software provider, Diligent serves multiple business lines across global markets, which means John's small but mighty team needed to get creative, fast.

Enter Optimizely CMP and Opal. What started as a project management solution four years ago has evolved into the nerve center for Diligent's entire content operation. Now with Opal embedded directly in their workflow, the team is automating everything from content briefs to sales enablement emails — freeing up strategic capacity and proving that AI can enable humans to unlock more of their potential.

Meeting Diligent's AI-Forward Content Team

• John Habib leads a team of content creators, strategists, editors, and copywriters at Diligent, the leading governance, risk, and compliance software provider
• Diligent has been using Optimizely CMP for four years — originally brought in as a project management tool specifically designed for content workflows, now expanded across the entire marketing organization
• The team is expanding into experimentation for A/B testing and using Opal across all aspects of the Optimizely One platform

From Content Chaos to Centralized Control

• Before CMP, Diligent's marketing content was scattered everywhere — SharePoint files, Slack threads, slide decks, and email chains — making it impossible to track reviews or production status
• The team was using a general-purpose project management tool that couldn't handle content-specific workflows or keep up with what the team needed
• CMP centralized everything and became the heartbeat of their content strategy, transforming how they managed content operations

Small But Mighty Team, Supercharged by Opal

• Diligent is a global company serving multiple business lines, products, and personas across every industry — creating massive content demands for a seven-person team
• The team started using external AI tools over two years ago to augment content creation, but Opal brought AI capabilities directly into the nerve center of their content organization within CMP
• Instead of creating briefs and first drafts outside Optimizely and moving them in, the team now does everything with Opal right in the platform — brainstorming, messaging options, headlines, and intros — reducing reliance on agencies and freelancers
• Opal doesn't just generate content — it explains its rationale, offering headline alternatives and testing recommendations that help the team make smarter decisions

Building Content like 'Lego Bricks' — 100 Custom Instructions

• Diligent serves multiple audiences across different product lines and regions, requiring constant content adaptation for different personas and use cases
• The team has built almost 100 sets of individual instructions in Opal — one for each region, audience, and product functionality — creating what they call Lego bricks for content building
• This modular approach lets them tell Opal which instructions to follow or ignore, moving closer to one-to-one personalization day by day
• Looking ahead to 2026, the team envisions a fully automated end-to-end flow where agents run the entire process — from planning and creating content in CMP, to pushing it to their CMS, testing it, and iterating based on feedback

Human in the Loop — Strategic Work Over Production Work

• As a governance company, Diligent always keeps humans in the loop — nothing AI-produced goes out without human review — "nothing goes out the door without human eyes on it"
• The team balances human intuition with data insights, testing alternatives when the data reveals unexpected findings that might resonate better with audiences
• By using Opal to create content briefs and first drafts quickly, the team speeds up day-to-day production work and frees themselves up for more strategic tasks

Tasks That Took Days Are Now Done in Minutes

• One team member freed up so much time with Opal handling content briefs that she planned, produced, and launched an entire podcast series — something that wouldn't have been possible when she was spending hours each week writing briefs for writers
• Every week, the team used to spend almost a full day manually pulling together published content with social post copy and sales enablement emails for commercial teams — a rotating task that ate up significant capacity
• Now they're building Opal agents that pull everything together in minutes and automatically write sales emails, customer success emails, and social posts — handing commercial teams a complete package without the manual work
• This unlocks what's "under the iceberg" — the strategic projects and ideas the team knows they want to do but haven't had the capacity to pursue

Results: Tens of Thousands Saved, 65% Time Back

• Diligent has already saved tens of thousands in agency costs by reducing reliance on outside parties for task-by-task content creation
• The team has reclaimed 65% of their time, enabling strategic projects like launching a podcast series
• Using Opal to define high-performing webpages and write copy, they relaunched their entire suite of product pages — already seeing increased engagement rates and decreased bounce rates in early results
• John's advice for other leaders: Start by defining your use cases, then experiment to discover unexpected applications. Map your current processes to identify friction points where AI can help

Rapid Fire and Reflection — Learn AI or Get Left Behind

• John takes on the quickfire round with Anthony, sharing all of his favourite day-to-day tools, as well as being a creative who chooses data over intuition
• Podcast recommendation: "This is Strategic Marketing" by Pamela Muldoon — a five-minute podcast with great ideas about incorporating AI into content marketing
• Career advice: Learn everything you can about AI — it's transforming work across every field, not just marketing. John was initially resistant as a writer, but quickly learned he had to embrace it
• Hiring is changing: Marketers won't be hired for what they used to do three years ago — they'll be hired because they can use AI. Skills are evolving, but humans are still essential

AI Doesn't Have to Kill Content

Diligent's journey with Optimizely shows what's possible when you combine the right tools with the right mindset. What started as a content chaos problem — scattered files, general-purpose tools, and a small team drowning in demands — became an AI-powered operation that's not just keeping up, but getting ahead.

With CMP as their foundation and Opal embedded in their workflow, John's team transformed how they work. They've saved tens of thousands in agency costs, reclaimed 65% of their time, and unlocked strategic capacity that was always there but never accessible. One team member launched a podcast. Another automated a full-day weekly task down to minutes. And with nearly 100 custom instructions built into Opal, they're building content like Lego bricks — modular, adaptable, and moving closer to one-to-one personalization every day.

The results speak for themselves: increased engagement, decreased bounce rates, and a team that's future-proofing their skills while staying human-in-the-loop. Because at the end of the day, AI isn't replacing marketers — it's giving them back the time to do the strategic work they were hired for in the first place.

As John puts it: AI isn't a magic bullet, but it does make things easier, faster, and opens up creative ways of working. And for a small but mighty team serving a global company? That's everything.