The challenge: say goodbye to spam
Being a high-reach microfinance institution, Caja Piura reaches hundreds of thousands of clients through 151 agencies and service points nationwide. Certainly, the magnitude of this operation requires solid, efficient communication tools that never fail. However, this need was not being covered by the email provider that the institution had in the past. In this regard, Gustavo Goicochea, CTO of Caja Piura, remembers: “We had a need regarding the use of mail. Although we had a mail server in our data center, it did not have adequate security standards and was constantly subject to audit observations.”
Likewise, Goicochea says that, from the city of Piura, his team wanted to make a replica of said mail server in Lima; However, this required the use of greater bandwidth. Cherry on top: “Frequently, our emails were classified as spam in other institutions, which forced us to call other companies to unblock us. We had to buy anti-spam equipment; encrypt some emails that could be considered spam.”
An additional limitation of the previous email: it was only used during office hours and from the headquarters corresponding to each employee of the institution (from the computer in the office). This represented a great disadvantage for the sales force (who spend an important part of their work routine outside the office).
Thus, in January 2017, the G Suite implementation project began, originally planned for five months.
Coastal child: quickly putting the benefits of Drive and G Suite Office Automation to the test
Xertica planned a change management strategy based on dividing employees into early adopters and two other groups with less proximity to digital tools. For the first group, the adoption was very natural: the staff already used Gmail as their personal email.
In the middle of the migration plan, a weather event occurs that tests all the benefits of working in the cloud and using remote communication tools: on March 27, 2017, the El Niño Costero phenomenon emerges vehemently. The Piura region, where the institution's main offices are located, was among the most affected in northern Peru. High temperatures, floods and flows disabled the use of Caja Piura's physical offices. In short, the Piura River floods the city and the data center is affected.
From Lima, the situation in Piura was viewed with concern. However, how was the company able to continue operating despite these circumstances? Communication with agencies and other external entities (Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and AFP, Central Reserve Bank of Peru, etc.) was maintained through the use of email, Hangouts and Meet. “We were able to do a home office and keep the documents and files intact thanks to the support of Google Drive,” says Goicochea. In short, Caja Piura was able to recover in a few hours and the service to its customers was not affected.
Impact: greater job satisfaction, greater savings
An advantage of G Suite tools is their use anywhere from any device. Today, for the sales force this is essential. In this sense, it has been possible to develop a daily summary report that reaches all advisors in the mornings on the progress of their monthly indicators in Sheets so that, when consulting this information with their mobile devices, they can begin their visits. In addition to this, through G Suite Office Automation, you can see project progress in Sheets, legal documents in Docs, as well as surveys/evaluations in Forms.
Regarding Xertica's participation in the change management process, Gustavo Goicochea highlights: "Xertica's advice on the adoption of G Suite has helped us with a digital transformation since these initiatives can now be achieved not with papers, but with information." that flows through G Suite in real time, anytime, anywhere. This is on par with our organizational culture based on solidarity and teamwork.”
Of the 3,765 Caja Piura collaborators, 97% use G Suite email and 64% use its collaborative tools. This level of adoption has generated the following results:
- 14% increase in job satisfaction.
- 20% savings on expenses for internal training trips.
- 90% reduction in support for email clients, free Office automation apps and on-premise email servers.
- Independence from IT for simple or area-specific automations.
For the future, Caja Piura plans to continue focusing on the development and integration of its own systems with G Suite APIs for Sites, App Maker, Apps Scripts, Fire Base and Dialogflow (chatbot).
