Forum Virium Helsinki builds a thriving workplace with Google Workspace and Gemini

Snapshot: Forum Virium Helsinki is on a mission to create a thriving, positive workplace by empowering teams with the right tools to do their jobs. Learn how the nonprofit organization:

• Optimized costs by embracing unified collaboration tools with Google Workspace and Gemini

• Improved meeting accessibility with live captions in Google Meet

• Enhanced data security for millions of documents with AI classification in Google Drive

• Reduced document summarization from hours to seconds with Gemini

  ---

  The mission and the challenge

  How do you create the most functional smart city in the world?

  In Finland, it starts with Forum Virium Helsinki. As the City of Helsinki’s nonprofit innovation company, we build urban futures with organizations, universities, public sector, and Helsinki residents. This means embracing data, new technologies, and digitization to spur smart city development and create an atmosphere of continuous learning.

  However, our ability to turn Helsinki into the most functional smart city in the world hinges on how we work internally as a team. In my role as chief information officer, I aim to empower our teams with modern, intuitive tools that result in happy employees. I like to think that Forum Virium Helsinki is a workplace where you can start on day one equipped with excellent tools and support, and leave on your last day with an experience worth remembering.

  Google Workspace makes this possible.

The switch to Google Workspace and Gemini for Google Workspace

In 2010, I was tasked with revamping IT services at Forum Virium Helsinki, and I chose cloud-native solutions across the board. Google Workspace was a natural choice for our communication and collaboration needs, as it was reliable, easy to use, and familiar to many of our employees. However, the driving factor was the platform’s cost effectiveness. Rather than paying for many disparate licenses to cobble together the capabilities we needed, Workspace offers a whole suite of applications under one license.

The solutions in Workspace far exceed any competitor tools we’ve tried. While our previous tools often slowed us down, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides enable us to collaboratively edit documents in real time, which helps keep project momentum going. Our staff also travel a lot to collaborate on projects with European cities, and we previously didn’t have a way for them to participate in meetings remotely. With Google Meet, they can easily attend from anywhere on any device, without the need for desktop applications.

Since our experience with Workspace has been so positive, it was a logical next step to experiment with Google Workspace with Gemini. It’s included in our Workspace license, making it a cost-effective option that integrates seamlessly with the rest of the tools we use every day.

We started with a pilot group of 10 users, working with the Google Finland team to run workshops on how to incorporate the tool into daily tasks. We have now activated Gemini licenses for all of our employees and we use the tool across Workspace applications. For example, we often have to read 100-page project application documents, which can take at least two hours. With Gemini in Google Docs, we can get a detailed summary in seconds, saving our team valuable time.

Gemini in Google Meet, meanwhile, has made it easier to follow along in meetings by generative live captions. We’ve also been experimenting with NotebookLM, an AI research assistant built with Gemini 2.0 that makes complex content more consumable. For example, we use the podcast feature to turn industry whitepapers into a more relaxed audio format that’s quicker to digest.

Overall, the integration between Gemini and the rest of Workspace has helped us seamlessly bring generative AI into our workflows. Next on our AI journey, we’re exploring AI classification in Google Drive to label documents based on security level. We’re still training the system, but with more than half a million documents in our shared drives, this feature will give us a more comprehensive overview of our data and stronger data security.

Looking ahead

We’ve been using Workspace for more than a decade and over that time, I’ve had the opportunity to compare our IT services with similar organizations. The scale always tips in favor of Workspace for its cost effectiveness, ease of use, and integration. For those reasons, I believe that Workspace is the best solution on the market for communication and collaboration.

In our experience, Workspace introduces new ways of working, increases productivity, and supports scalable, cost-effective collaboration. It has helped us create an empowered workplace where everyone has the tools they need to thrive. No matter what, I’m confident that switching to Workspace will bring a positive impact to any organization with plenty of opportunities to get more out of the technology.