FM Logistic provides its international customers with complete logistics solutions that cover everything from warehousing and handling, to transport and distribution, co-packing and co-manufacturing, and supply chain optimization. Operating in 14 countries including France, Russia, Poland, India, Vietnam, Brazil, and China, FM Logistic supports its clients by offering specialized services across a number of markets including consumer goods, retail, cosmetics, and health.

“We are in the process of transforming all our tools and integrating new solutions to be able to work faster and more efficiently. Two main IT priorities are mobility and openness, in terms of working from anywhere and being able to interact with other information systems.”

– Communication Manager, FM Logistic

As a business that has existed since 1967 and in 2018 achieved a turnover of €1.178 billion with 9.5% annual growth, FM Logistic is always looking to help secure the company’s position within an evolving sector. To better serve its customers, FM Logistic decided to launch an innovation project in 2017 to transform the internal digital tools of the company and replace its intranet, email, and productivity software. The company looked for an integrated solution that would enable more collaborative ways of working and bring its international operations closer together. The company found that implementing G Suite and LumApps social intranet was the perfect combination.

“We are in the process of transforming all our tools and integrating new solutions to be able to work faster and more efficiently,” says the Communication Manager at FM Logistic. “Two main IT priorities are mobility and openness, in terms of working from anywhere and being able to interact with other information systems.”

A global transformation

For large international companies with global operations, implementing a single integrated solution to enable collaboration across regions while respecting regional variations can be a real challenge.

“We have 26,000 employees spread across a broad geography, with a variation in cultures and technological maturity. There was an aspiration to work in collaboration, but the necessary tools were not in place,” says FM Logistic’s Communication Manager. FM Logistic looked for a solution to enable new, more collaborative work practices, which were flexible in terms of usage and that, most importantly, would work as part of an integrated solution.

To do that, FM Logistic worked with Google Partner Devoteam G Cloud to implement G Suite alongside the LumApps intranet portal. It took six months to complete the migration of 7,000 accounts, with employees accessing the Business or Basic G Suite edition according to their needs. “Before, with our physical infrastructure we found ourselves buying additional hard drives as we ran out of storage,” says the Technical Project Manager at FM Logistic. “That’s no longer a problem, and we can tailor access depending on whether or not employees need unlimited storage .”

“It’s a real advantage to be able to access your account from any device and work from anywhere. Hangouts Meet has been really transformational in that respect: it has reduced the need for travel significantly, even in the few months we’ve been using it so far.”

– Communication Manager, FM Logistic

“We followed Google’s G Suite migration advice and had early adopter ambassadors in every country. By the time we got around to the final country, very little input was needed as they were ready to go!” says the Technical Project Manager. “Many of them were already familiar with the product, so it was very intuitive. Our feedback surveys gave a satisfaction rating of almost 4.5 out of 5 in relation to the transition. We also had significant executive support, with two members of the executive committee on the steering board. That really helped the project to move quickly.”

As a result, employees were quick to understand the benefits of the new system. “It’s a real advantage to be able to access your account from any device and work from anywhere. That was clear from the start,” says the Communication Manager. “Hangouts Meet has been really transformational in that respect: it has reduced the need for travel significantly, even in the few months we’ve been using it so far.”

LumApps: a fully-integrated enterprise hub

One of FM Logistic’s main reasons for choosing G Suite was the seamless integration with LumApps’ intranet portal. LumApps adds value to G Suite, thereby boosting and sustaining employee adoption. FM Logistic chose LumApps to create a hub for its enterprise, where everything is centralized from internal communications to business apps.

“We didn’t want a patchwork of solutions, we needed a platform that worked as an integral whole,” says the Technical Project Manager. “With LumApps, employees access the intranet using their Google authentication and can access all their G Suite tools through the intranet. Moreover, LumApps is Google native, so the integration is seamless and we know that it will evolve to accommodate any changes that might take place.”

“The main advantages we see are communication and knowledge sharing,” says the Communication Manager. “With LumApps, all 26,000 of our employees are now able to access the portal in their own language and access local news.”

For the next step, FM Logistic is considering integrating social communities so that employees can express themselves and be more engaged in the corporate culture.

Supporting digital maturity

Thanks to Drive, employees can now work from wherever they are, and are able to work more efficiently and more collaboratively. “From an administrative point of view, users can benefit from automatic updates, so there is less pressure on the IT department,” says the Technical Project Manager. “And we’re seeing many innovative uses of the tools to work in more efficient ways: many services have gone paperless with Forms, so less time is wasted; commercial agents are using Drive to work together on tenders simultaneously; and with Sheets, tasks are automatically sent from the team manager’s file to employee’s Calendar.”

“G Suite and LumApps are the first step of our digital transformation, in terms of collaboration and moving into the cloud. We have real confidence in our partners LumApps and Google, and we’re investing in those relationships for the long-term benefit of the company.”

– Communication Manager, FM Logistic

Now, FM Logistic wants to further support its employees in exploring all the tools G Suite has to offer. “We are embarking on a second phase to give our employees the skills they need for advanced uses of Docs, Sheets, and Forms,” says the Communication Manager. “It’s a learning curve, but it’s key to our goal of transforming our everyday processes.”

“G Suite and LumApps are the first step of our digital transformation, in terms of collaboration and moving into the cloud. We have real confidence in our partners LumApps and Google, and we’re investing in those relationships for the long-term benefit of the company.”

For many nations, gross domestic product is the primary measure of a society’s success. The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan gauges achievement by a different standard: gross national happiness (GNH).

The Royal Government of Bhutan’s GNH index measures a “holistic and sustainable approach to development,” prioritizing factors such as community, education, mental health, cultural heritage, and ecology. It’s a model that was endorsed by the U.N. General Assembly in 2011. Focus on GNH has enabled Bhutan to become a carbon-negative nation; nurture habitats for Bengal tigers, clouded leopards, and red pandas; and provide free healthcare to all of its 735,553 citizens.

One of the pillars of GNH in Bhutan, ranked South Asia’s least-corrupt country, is good governance. Yet as one of Asia’s least-developed nations, Bhutan needed to draw every last bit of value from public funds, while maximizing the potential of its civil servants. Turning to G Suite, it discovered powerful tools enabling communication, accountability, and cost-savings that have been vital to the mission of promoting a well-balanced society.

“G Suite collaboration tools are providing a framework that allows us to foster citizens’ happiness,” says Lobzang Jamtsho, Head of Application Division, Ministry of Information & Communication. “It’s the three C’s: collaboration, coordination, and communication. This has improved significantly with G Suite adoption.”

Freeing up resources for positive change

“When we started using Sites, we found a powerful yet simple tool that’s really a one-stop shop for sharing. You don’t have to know the development side; you just drag, drop, and build.”

—Kuenga Zam, Dy. Chief ICT Officer, Royal Civil Service Commission

From wildlife conservation, to keeping hospitals well-supplied, to the development of human resources, ensuring a correct balance between well-being and development demanded smooth coordination in the civil service. Meanwhile, everything from the cost of printing meeting agendas to investing in email servers and staff to maintain them drained resources from vital tasks such as sourcing medication.

G Suite marked a fundamental shift in the way the Royal Government of Bhutan pursued its mission, as tools such as Docs, Sheets, and Sites came together to provide a unified platform where team contributions could be seamlessly integrated in the cloud. It sparked a surge of cooperative vigor.

“In writing, for example, we collaborate in terms of drafting a proposal. And we collaborate with other parties,” says Lobzang. “It’s really helped us in terms of analyzing the decision-making process and promoting accountability, ownership, and transparency.”

G Suite is used today by 9,500 civil servants across all 67 government agencies. The benefits have been dramatic. In a survey of more than 800 civil servants, roughly 78% of respondents reported G Suite boosted productivity by more than 50%. About 80% said collaboration with colleagues increased more than 50%. And 85% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “my organization is more innovative.”

“G Suite has empowered both education and hospitals. We have our entire education system on the platform, all teachers and students. And processes have improved in hospitals, translating directly into an increase of happiness among citizens.”

—Lobzang Jamtsho, Head of Application Division, Ministry of Information & Communication

The Royal Civil Service Commission of the Royal Government of Bhutan organizes scholarships for civil servants to pursue long-term studies as a part of human resource development. It’s vital to the nation’s pursuit of sustainable development while preserving a unique cultural heritage.

G Suite inspired the Royal Civil Service Commission to build its own internal platform using Sites to manage scholarships, streamline processes, and boost overall HR Development Management.

“When we started using Sites, we found a powerful yet simple tool that’s really a one-stop shop for sharing,” says Kuenga Zam, Dy. Chief ICT Officer, Royal Civil Service Commission. “You don’t have to know the development side; you just drag, drop, and build. And since it’s an internal site, it helps us share from one division to another what scholarships are available for renewal.”

Human connectivity for enhancing quality of life

For the Royal Government of Bhutan, G Suite is a tool that doesn’t just facilitate better communication, it enables the whole of government to work better together. “G Suite has empowered both education and hospitals. We have our entire education system on the platform, all teachers and students,” says Lobzang. “And processes have improved in hospitals, translating directly into an increase in happiness among citizens.”

“When services are delivered better, people are happier,” adds Kuenga. “So it aligns in that way with GNH.”

Motivating team members to build a better future

Today, the Royal Government of Bhutan is writing the next chapter of its journey with G Suite, motivating civil servants to tap the platform’s creative possibilities through training programs that demonstrate why you don’t need to be an IT expert to be a digital innovator.

“We did a demo at a conference to show how we are using Sites. Our users then went forward and took that idea and built their own site,” says Kuenga. “After we show the possibilities, they have the motivation to go forward and explore.”

The next step for the Royal Government of Bhutan is to begin experimenting with Apps Script to create applications for automating workflow processes: “There’s so much potential that we haven’t explored,” says Kuenga.

Editor’s note: Today’s blog post is from Mayank Singh, Chief Digital Officer and VP Marketing and IT at pizza delivery group Domino’s Indonesia. He explains how Google Maps Platform is enabling their business to optimize their operations and supporting the franchise’s ambitious expansion strategy in one of the world’s most exciting emerging markets.

When I was developing India’s first hyper local on-demand food delivery digital commerce platform for Domino’s Pizza India, I never imagined life would take me to a country with such a different culture to my own.

But in 2018, when Domino’s Indonesia invited me to drive its expansion strategy as Senior General Manager to lead Digital, IT and Marketing functions, I jumped at the chance to try my hand in another gigantic emerging nation that brims with entrepreneurial hunger and innovative energy.

Indonesia is a massive archipelago of more than 17,500 islands and 270 million people, one of the world’s most promising developing markets. Here, the opportunities for a global brand, such as Domino’s, are almost boundless. At the same time, we’re extremely cautious. We want to make sure that any new store we open has the correct demographic profile to be profitable.

This is one of the key areas in which Google Maps Platform enables us to satisfy the hunger of a vibrant, fast-moving society. The Google Maps Platform APIs empower us with much more than the ability to maintain Domino’s 30-minute delivery pledge. They play an instrumental role in our value chain before a store even begins selling pizzas, providing vital insights in our hunt for new shop locations.

Mapping the dizzying pace of change in one of Asia’s fastest growing economies

Under the Domino’s Indonesia model, every outlet has a defined territory and can only take orders from that zone. Instead of customers picking a store, we assign them one based on their location. That’s why selecting zones that have the highest profit potential (due to factors such as population, income, education, and business activity) is essential to our success.

The first step is casting a net around the test location that covers anywhere within a nine-minute drive to any point in the proposed zone. This is enabled by the Google Maps Platform APIs, including Distance Matrix API.

Things become really interesting and complicated when considering Indonesia’s dizzying pace of change. Social, economic, and infrastructure transformation in Indonesia literally unfolds before your eyes, meaning the map in any area can change overnight.

A place that had little to no development yesterday might be tomorrow’s next desirable suburb—populated by families drawn to new schools, but also increased traffic congestion caused by community growth. By overlaying our data, such as population, average income, and age range onto Google Maps, our team can better visualize the revenue potential in that zone compared to neighboring stores. Since the definition of a profitable zone is in constant flux, we need our local insights to be ahead of the game.

Charting Indonesia’s transformation with speed and accuracy is crucial in our mission to carve out delivery zones that serve communities that need our service most while maximizing our revenues.

Retrofitting Indonesian delivery zones to optimize Domino’s success

Expansion is just one side of the story. Just as important, we must keep an eye on existing outlets to make sure that traffic conditions, road configurations, prominent sites, public infrastructure, and more, hit the sweet spot for timely delivery and revenue optimization.

A successful delivery area, for example, might fall victim to its own popularity, causing congestion that prevents timely delivery to once viable addresses. In such cases, the specified drive time in the delivery matrix shrinks. We accordingly must downsize the service zone, while adding micro-zones to satisfy demand. Google Maps Platform features such as Traffic Layer in Maps JavaScript API enable the real-time traffic intelligence that helps us make precision calls in the evolving mission of zone optimization.

Conversely, we might want to expand a store territory thanks to a new highway or roadworks that improve traffic circulation. Here, too, Google Maps Platform is the fastest in mapping such shifts in the urban landscape. We’re even planning to experiment with a new feature whereby delivery zones change in size over the course of a day, based on factors such as peak traffic and roadworks. This new project will be enabled by Google Maps Platform real-time road intelligence.

Enabling Indonesia’s pandemic support with contactless delivery and support for frontline healthcare

Google Maps Platform also helps us respond quickly to societal changes. When the pandemic hit Indonesia, for example, our team was all hands on deck developing ways to deliver pizzas in the safest possible way. We overhauled our order system to make contactless delivery and contactless takeaway the default method of connecting customers to their pizzas. This was done to reassure customers how safe it is to order with Domino’s. Customers can locate us using the map UI, view the ordering options and have a contactless takeaway experience.

Google Maps Platform products such as Places API, which provides rich places details and location information as well as the Static Street View API which provides a more accurate visual of the location, now enable our drivers to pinpoint a drop spot, such as ‘the porch with the red roof’ with precision accuracy.

Our team is also proud of how we supported healthcare workers at the frontline of the pandemic. Google Maps Platform was an invaluable solution in enabling us to deliver pizzas to these vital frontline workers. It gave all of us at Domino’s Pizza Indonesia great satisfaction to see smiles on the faces of heroes working hard to keep people safe and well in this immense nation.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

Today, we’re announcing Firmina, an open subsea cable being built by Google that will run from the East Coast of the United States to Las Toninas, Argentina, with additional landings in Praia Grande, Brazil, and Punta del Este, Uruguay. Firmina will be the longest cable in the world capable of running entirely from a single power source at one end of the cable if its other power source(s) become temporarily unavailable—a resilience boost at a time when reliable connectivity is more important than ever. 

As people and businesses have come to depend on digital services for many aspects of their lives, Firmina will improve access to Google services for users in South America. With 12 fiber pairs, the cable will carry traffic quickly and securely between North and South America, giving users fast, low-latency access to Google products such as Search, Gmail and YouTube, as well as Google Cloud services.

Single-end power source capability is important for reliability, a key priority for Google’s network. With submarine cables, data travels as pulses of light inside the cable’s optical fibers. That light signal is amplified every 100 km with a high-voltage electrical current supplied at landing stations in each country. While shorter cable systems can enjoy the higher availability of power feeding from a single end, longer cables with large fiber-pair counts make this harder to do. Firmina breaks this barrier—connecting North to South America, the cable will be the longest ever to feature single-end power feeding capability. Achieving this record-breaking, highly-resilient design is accomplished by supplying the cable with a voltage 20% higher than with previous systems.

Celebrating the world’s visionaries

We sought to honor a luminary who worked to advance human understanding and social justice. The cable is named after Maria Firmina dos Reis (1825 – 1917), a Brazilian abolitionist and author whose 1859 novel, Úrsula, depicted life for Afro-Brazilians under slavery. A mixed-race woman and intellectual, Firmina is considered Brazil’s first novelist. With this cable, we’re thrilled to draw attention to her pioneering work and spirit. You can learn more about Firmina in this Google Doodle.

Including Firmina, we now have investments in 16 subsea cables, such as Dunant, Equiano and Grace Hopper, and consortium cables like Echo, JGA, INDIGO, and Havfrue. We’re continuing our work of building out a robust global network and infrastructure, which includes Google data centers and Google Cloud regions around the world. 

Learn more about our infrastructure.

Editor’s note: Today’s post is by Roger Lim, IT Manager of Collaboration Infrastructure Development, and Jim Arcure, Director of Infrastructure Development, both with Colgate-Palmolive, the multinational consumer products company. Colgate-Palmolive is in the midst of a multiyear project to create a collaborative, flexible work culture, leveraging Google Workspace and Chrome Enterprise.

Colgate-Palmolive Company is a caring, innovative growth company reimagining a healthier future for all people, their pets, and our planet. Focused on Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care, and Pet Nutrition, and reaching more than 200 countries and territories, Colgate teams are developing and selling product offerings essential to society through brands such as Colgate, Palmolive, elmex, meridol, Tom’s of Maine, hello, Sorriso, Speed Stick, Softsoap, Irish Spring, Protex, Sanex, Filorga, eltaMD, PCA Skin, Ajax, Axion, Fabuloso, Soupline and Suavitel, as well as Hill’s Science Diet and Hill’s Prescription Diet.  

Colgate-Palmolive has been accelerating growth and delivering meaningful innovation and attracting new and diverse talent in areas such as ecommerce, innovation and digital. That speed and agility comes in large part from the Chrome Enterprise tools that allow the business to move faster and stay competitive.

Changing out software and hardware for 30,000 employees in 70+ countries is a massive project. Early on, we chose Chrome Enterprise as our partner. We had to move away from our dependency on legacy platforms, software, and devices if our business was going to thrive. We knew cloud-based tools like Chrome and Google Workspace would do what on-premises solutions can’t—ease the IT workload while keeping employees happy and productive.

Why we’re escaping legacy apps and embracing the cloud

We don’t want Colgate-Palmolive’s size and geographical breadth to get in the way of people working together and maintaining its strength in global teamwork. That’s why we’re replacing bulky, hard-to-maintain, on-premises applications and software with cloud versions that everyone can securely access in a web browser.

As an IT team, we thought about how much work time we spent installing, updating, and troubleshooting software (up to 30 percent of work hours during big upgrades!). As we were looking at ways to work together better, we had our eyes on the cloud revolution—and, specifically, Chrome Enterprise and Google Workspace.

First step, switch to a new browser

Back in 2016, the IT team was working to move everyone to Google Workspace and away from legacy productivity applications. Once you start Google Workspace adoption, it’s time to take a closer look at browser options.

We chose Chrome Browser for several reasons. It updates automatically, so we could cross lengthy upgrade tasks off our list. An even bigger benefit is that Chrome Browser’s management tools, data protection, and malware detection are all built in. We anticipate a lot of synergy here by leveraging these features and having our users go all Chrome.

Chrome Browser also gave us tools to manage and grant access to apps across our multi-platform device fleet. We call Chrome Browser Cloud Management our “golden nugget” because every browser gets enrolled automatically in browser management.

It’s now much easier to push out new extensions and apps (and allowlist or blocklist them) compared to the time-consuming process of using our existing desktop policy management settings. The ability to easily manage extensions is a huge benefit since it enabled IT to provide new and safe functionality to our end users.

Next, share new ways of working together 

Our IT team wants workers to see the benefits of Google Workspace and Chrome Browser on their own, but sometimes we have to guide them toward the finish line. At the beginning of the project, we developed “Going Google” tools to notify users to consider Google Workspace when opening legacy applications that are no longer needed.

As Chrome Enterprise and Google Workplace became our primary productivity tools, it was also important to ensure our users did not fall back on old habits. Our “Going Google” tools gave our IT organization the ability to not only notify, but turn off specific legacy apps per user. Though IT could easily restore access to these legacy apps on a temporary basis, we have seen a significant dropoff in these types of requests over the past few months. Our goal is to give Colgate people a gentle and consistent reminder that we will be a Google Workspace-only company. By taking these active and decisive steps, we ensure that our users and teams are migrating to Google Workspace today.

To that end, we’ve provided lots of support. We use over 1,000 Colgate “Google Guides” around the world who run on-site classes and webinars on Google Workspace, and are available for one-on-one help, as well as roughly 700 “Google Gurus” who are savvy early-adopters and can lend a hand to colleagues with questions about Google Workspace. Our training classes and webinars are playing to packed houses, and we’re scheduling sessions that focus on specific skills, like a class about using Google Sheets attended by 250 people via Google Meet.

Finally, start rolling out new devices

If we can get everyone at Colgate-Palmolive working in Google Workspace and Chrome Browser, then offering Chromebooks is another natural fit: Chromebooks and the Chrome OS are built for the cloud world we want to work in. We’re pilot testing about 200 Chromebooks for employees, mostly in our customer development department. The Chromebooks are in high demand in challenging locations because they’re easier to deploy for new hires. When employees eventually get back to their offices, we are eager to expand Grab-and-Go racks for people that need a temporary loaner. These Grab-and-Go racks in our New York City and Piscataway, N.J. offices will provide another way for people to test drive Chromebooks. 

Two hundred-odd years after Colgate-Palmolive started doing business, we’re excited about the modern focus of our workplace tools. The Google tools that allow us to collaborate also allow the company to succeed well into our third century.