Officine Sostenibili: Google Workspace and continuous training for a true efficency

From physical servers to digital transformation: Officine Sostenibili's move to Google Workspace

Officine Sostenibili has a dual nature: it deals with the design of urban hygiene services, but also with communication, with a team that works on creating awareness campaigns for citizens on environmental issues such as energy, food, mobility, and recycling.

The need to adopt Google Workspace arose from the necessity to replace physical servers with a digital archive. It was a natural, yet initially unstrategic, choice since the team didn't know about all the available features.

There was a lack of dedicated training on the work tools and the ability to fully leverage the potential of Google ecosystem.

The first step was to provide targeted training on the tools already in use, clarifying little-known but high-impact functions. A concrete example?

• setting up aliases in Gmail, to unify multiple email accounts into a single inbox organized with labels and filters, simplifying email management
• real-time sharing and co-editing of Slides, Sheets, and Docs, which is especially strategic for managing complex projects that require the involvement of multiple vertical teams
• the optimisation of corporate communications between users within Spaces has allowed conversations to be moved from private channels, such as WhatsApp, to a more structured platform, in line with GDPR
• Searching is now simplified thanks to Drive, a pervasive and efficient search engine where you can find what you need, even if the user doesn't remember the file name or its path in the archive.
• the intranet with Sites is strategic for sharing company content and communications dedicated to all teams. Folders and access are customized for each employee, ensuring proper confidentiality.

Change management and involvement of ownership and team leaders for digital maturity 

A crucial aspect that emerged during the process was resistance to change, for which a targeted approach was effective.

"The engagement of ownership and team leaders is fundamental", confirms Antonio Garofano, Marketing, Communication & CSR Specialist Officine Sostenibili, "along with dedicated training to demonstrate with practical examples how adopting Google Workspace improves efficiency and internal workflows.

When training is lacking, involving users is even more complex, also because the potential of some tools isn't even known. We need to practically demonstrate how process optimization is possible thanks to Google tools".

Artificial intelligence accelerates productivity 

"The integration of Gemini artificial intelligence into Google applications such as Gmail, Drive, Sheets, and Slides, has brought immediate benefits for users at Officine Sostenibili. In fact, we wanted to activate Google Workspace Standard right away.

Understanding how to write a prompt and what the use cases are is transformative. The automatic transcription of meetings in Meet is used daily to save time and energy. Before, colleagues had to take care of it; now, everything is more fluid. Of course, you always have to check it, but it's a completely different story."

NotebookLM and Google Vids for complex project processing 

The use of Google Vids and NotebookLM also supports the production of visual content and the processing of new projects.

“In NotebookLM, we upload internal and external sources with different extensions and in a few seconds, we get a ready draft that we can continue to optimize, drastically reducing working hours".

The support and guidance from power2Cloud were fundamental in encouraging greater awareness within the Officine Sostenibili team. The results are significant:

• increased security and standardisation in file management.;
• facilitated collaboration and remote teamwork;
• efficient production of texts and various resources;
• simplified and optimised file sharing.