In search of comprehensive communication
“A segmented organization.” In this way, the communication dynamics within Spring Step, one of the main footwear retailers in Colombia, can be defined. The central offices, the regional offices and the decentralized stores (which have a reach of more than 200 points of sale in Colombian territory), all were subject to incipient telephone communication and verbal instruction. The email provider provided the option to send and receive email, but lacked any collaboration tools.
With cPanel web hosting, you had access to an email platform. This provider represented limitations: beyond transferring information, the stores did not even have an Outlook license (limited for the executive staff), but only the free license as the hosting's native email, which, as Annuar Gómez, IT Director, refers from Spring Step, “it only served to send a pdf and print it.”
Consequently, all the backup of the emails was on the employees' PCs (who had Outlook), with the well-known risk that, for example, the information from an article catalog is in the power of the PCs. of a company employee.
From sending messages to sharing information
“I framed this proposal as a first step towards digital transformation,” highlights Annuar Gómez, who recalls that he found collaboration within the organization to be the initial step on the path towards its transformation and the adoption of the power of the cloud.
In that sense, through the advice of Xertica, Spring Step found G Suite. “When we began to show the examples of collaboration that the tool provided us, we were able to put it in the minds of the company's senior management. Promoting a culture of collaboration, and doing so through the Google Cloud, was a basic pillar to set up the rest of the transformation actions that we have been implementing,” Gómez emphasizes.
Drive and G Suite office automation marked a change in the mindset of Spring Step's human resources. Certainly, it was no longer a matter of “I'll send you this; Now the concept is, I'll share this with you: you no longer need to request a document, now you have the ability to remotely access the shared information.”
Promoting initiatives
Annua Gómez remembers. Two days after launching G Suite, a statement came from one of the regional offices from an administrative official who had enormous difficulties in creating employee cards. This is because the information from each store arrived in a heterogeneous way, in a context of high turnover and seasonal hiring. This official had to spend a large part of his time and resources organizing all that information.
It was this employee's initiative to use Forms. With the required information and the proper instructions specified in the surveys, people began to upload the information and the need for cards began to be calculated daily and in real time. “And this was the initiative of a store employee, who previously did not have access to even an email with minimal storage capacities,” recalls Gómez.
The adoption of G Suite has had enough acceptance to even encourage the existence of sponsors of the tool within the company. “It has been thanks to our own sponsors that reinforcements have been made for use but directly in the store. They sit down with the store manager, the cashier, one of the salespeople, or the stockist, and begin to show them what else to do: how to read their agenda, how to communicate with their zone manager through HO, and propose a meeting with Meet,” says Gómez.
What's coming
“Without communication and collaboration we cannot enter into other schemes.” With the adoption of G Suite, Spring Step has defined the path. The company produces large amounts of information and there is an appetite to analyze that data. In that sense, some actions were initiated with GCP, with the projection of, based on its own analytics, implementing a data warehouse, data lake, and information repository. Sentence Gómez: “Google Cloud has shown us the power of its technology development and Xertica has become the strategic partner that helps us define the actions, tools and strategies to follow on our path towards transformation. We will continue along that path.”
About the use and adoption of G Suite in Spring Step:
The adoption of G Suite began during the last week of August 2019. In that sense, out of a total of 333 users, the use of Drive stands out: 67,981 files shared in the last 3 months. In addition to this, Gmail and Drive have been the first tools to experience intensive use for this first stage, with 92% and 75% average adoption, respectively.
