Europastry and its leap into the 4.0 environment with G Suite
'We have exceeded our initial expectations by establishing new channels of communication and collaboration among employees in various countries and from different cultures.' —Xavier Santacana, CIO at Europastry.
THE COMPANY
Europastry was founded in 1987 by Pere Galles, a visionary entrepreneur who was in the right place at the right time to establish a family business dedicated to refrigeration technology to meet the needs of end-users and of professionals of the restaurant and catering business. How? By offering innovative solutions and products of the highest quality.
Their key values include a pioneering spirit, effort, constancy and perseverance. Thanks to these qualities, Europastry is one of the leading businesses in the frozen bread and pastry sector in Europe.
Despite having branched out into new markets (it operates in 50 countries and has factories in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and United States), the business has preserved its essence and goals for 30 years: meet the highest and most demanding expectations of customers through ongoing investments in research and development.
THE CHALLENGE
After several take over operations involving domestic and international businesses, Europastry’s IT department found it was using a number of collaboration and communication technologies. Consequently, they decided to standardise the technology being used for emails and collaboration to improve how their workers communicated with each other.
Europastry needed to implement the same technology in all group companies quickly and with the minimum impact on corporate processes. This technology had to enhance communications and collaboration among the group’s employees and, furthermore, the implementation and adaptation period had to be a short as possible. ‘Our challenge was to transform an obsolete collaboration environment into a 4.0 system that would improve productivity.‘—says Xavier.
THE SOLUTION
Europastry chose Google G Suite and began the migration and the change management project considering the needs of the various profiles of its employees. Intelligence Partner provided assistance during this process.
After the process, several training and change management sessions were conducted to ensure the platform would be used efficiently by all the employees. Video conference systems were also installed in the meeting rooms to improve communications between offices in Spain and abroad. ‘The solution had to be robust, safe, integrated and user-friendly to reduce any resistance to change within the organisation.‘ —explains Xavier.
THE RESULTS
After several years using the G Suite platform, the level of use of the system by Europastry employees is very high and, therefore, they are implementing this solution in group companies in South America and the United States.
Some of the benefits experienced thanks to G Suite are:
- Lower maintenance costs thanks to technology standardization.
- Improved collaboration among group employees.
- Reduced travel costs thanks to the use of video conferencing.
- A drastic reduction in the number of emails send and in their size thanks to the collaborative use of Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, etc.
- Cost savings on information storage by using Drive.
Recently, Europastry acquired a leading Portuguese company in this sector, increasing its international presence in line with the group’s values on quality, innovation, efficiency and international development; thus, continuing with its collaborative processes.
‘Real–time collaboration and video conferencing have contributed to transforming the workflow and have led to cost reductions’
