Vocento improves its internal communication thanks to Google Workspace

THE COMPANY

Vocento is the leading multimedia communications group in the general press market and the leader in Spain thanks to its extensive presence in practically all the provinces.

It runs such renowned publications as the daily newspapers ABC, el Correo, el Diario Vasco, el Norte de Castilla, and many more. However, it also operates in the digital and audio-visual markets. Grupo Vocento currently consists of more than 100 companies.

THE CHALLENGE

‘Google Workspace has allowed us to address a cultural transformation focused on improving communication and collaboration between the companies inside the group. The collaborative edition allows us to optimize our internal processes and have homogeneous, fast, and efficient document management. The support and professionalism of Intelligence Partner has been key during the migration process.‘ —Raquel Laina Responsable Oficina de Proyectos y Gestión del Cambio

The project arose as a plan to transform the extensive conglomerate of local businesses that belonged to the media group. It was a centralised initiative focused on digital transformation and collaborative work ethics.

The goal was to improve the collaboration among the group’s companies and not only within each individual business. Most challenges of this type are approached from the fields of document and communications management, which are the most significant aspects today.

THE SOLUTION

The transformation began when the project technology team began to use Google Workspace and it eventually extended to the other businesses in the group.

Intelligence Partner provided Grupo Vocento with guidance for its digital transformation project, highlighting Google Workspace as the solution to integrate various in-house systems and adapt them to the cloud.

The transformation project began with one of Grupo Vocento’s dailies, more specifically the Diario La Rioja. This newspaper became the group’s reference point to learn and replicate the method in the other dailies.

Two cases were detected in which Google Workspace facilitated communications between the editors and the photographers for the news forecast model.

In addition, we optimised the communications platform for the Television department by improving the communications system using real-time collaborative documents, which reduced communication time and ensured a single version of each document.

At the same time, the mail system was migrated to Gmail. During this process, several training and change management sessions were conducted to ensure the platform would be used efficiently by all the employees.

The implementation process consisted of:

• Planning the functional design and core IT strategy
• Use-case identification sessions
• Early Adopters
• Execution
• Training
• Commissioning

The digital transformation process for Diario La Rioja was completed successfully and the model was replicated by the company in the other Grupo Vocento dailies.

THE RESULTS

‘Google Workspace has opened our eyes to a new way of working. The collaboration between teams from different companies inside the group has substantially improved thanks to Google Meet and to the collaborative editing by the use of Google Drive. Also, we have gained in security regarding information management.’ —says Raquel.

Some examples of the benefits obtained by using Google Workspace are:

• A significant reduction in email traffic thanks to the use of Hangouts.
• Improved communications and lower travel costs thanks to Google Meet, which is being used for a wide range of purposes, such as training sessions, project coordination among groups in various places, personalised support, communications with third parties, and even recruiting activities.
• Process transformation. One of the main features that contributed to this was the possibility of sharing information in a cloud-based repository regarding documents that several people were working on at the same time and that could be accessed from anywhere.
• Cost-saving thanks to:
  • Fewer licenses, as there are fewer overall thanks to email groups.
  • Savings in storage by using Drive, which drastically reduced the need for local servers.

The level of satisfaction with Google Cloud is so high that there are already plans to make use of the Google Cloud Platform, particularly for automation developments, starting with Drive APIs in the document management department and continuing with the video inventory thanks to the Cloud Storage and Machine Learning features that make it possible to access the inventory using an intelligent search engine.