Guidewire propels innovation, collaboration, and productivity by moving to Google Workspace

As an industry-leading property and casualty insurance cloud platform, Guidewire is committed to continuous innovation and evolution. With core systems leveraging digital, AI, data and analytics, Guidewire defines cloud platform excellence for P&C insurers. More than 540 insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.   

Like many companies at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Guidewire became a remote workplace. With 3,400 global employees, the company quickly realized the collaboration and communication landscape was fundamentally changing and there was an opportunity to further reimagine the work experience.

Global hiring during and after the pandemic also influenced workforce demographics. Guidewire saw how embracing hybrid work could unlock productivity and tap into greater potential among its people. As employees came back to the office, Guidewire saw an additional way to connect employees across all the places they worked with Google Workspace, the productivity solution that was built for secure work-from-anywhere. Adopting Workspace not only allowed Guidewire employees to better collaborate across regions and time zones, it created “a new way of working.”

From fully remote to hybrid workforce

To support its team’s transition from remote to hybrid, Guidewire wanted to simplify and standardize its collaboration tools. As a cloud-first organization, it already understood the power of adopting a cloud-based collaboration platform. “Our goal was to find something that made it easy to collaborate with features such as real-time and offline document editing, third-party integrations, and secure document sharing,” says Chet Mandair, Chief Information Officer at Guidewire. “The solution needed to drive productivity and teamwork while offering seamless, frictionless support for our hybrid and remote teams.”

Built in the cloud and for the cloud, Workspace provided the integrated solutions Guidewire needed to further reduce redundant technologies and empower its talent to operate at the speed of business. Core to collaboration and getting things done at Guidewire is Gmail, Google Drive, Sheets,  Calendar, and Meet.

“We are an innovative company that always looks at how to best enable our employees to serve our customers and each other,” says Trisha Gwin, Vice President of Business Technology Strategy and Operations at Guidewire. “Workspace helps us accelerate collaboration, which leads to innovation internally and externally.”

Leading through change

Switching from its previous systems to Workspace required not only the technical leadership of Soumitra Ghosh, Vice President of Business Technology Infrastructure at Guidewire, but thoughtful change management, with Gwin leading the internal transformation process alongside SADA, a cloud solutions implementation partner. Building up to the go-live, Guidewire engaged all functions by mobilizing department champions, creating a global ambassador program, and incorporating employee feedback to support its teams across countries.

Since some employees had worked with Workspace in the past while others were starting from scratch, Guidewire offered multiple training options and learning paths based on previous experience with the tools. Through self-paced and live sessions, team members could learn how to access Workspace apps from mobile devices, how the different tools interact, and tips and tricks to get the most out of the platform. Leaders and assistants received high-touch support and all employees and contractors accessed extensive office hours.

Rolling the solution out in waves, Guidewire started by onboarding the IT and security teams in January 2023. They then brought Workspace to the rest of the organization in March and reduced legacy tools by July. The team tracked monthly adoption metrics after go-live to understand how employees were engaging with the platform and shared department dashboards with leaders. Ongoing ambassador engagement, peer knowledge sharing via a dedicated learning channel, and offering teams “process transformation labs” were also key to turning skeptics into promoters.

“The more waves you have, the more chance for people to get left behind, so we had to find the right balance for the rollout,” says Soumitra Ghosh. “We had a more compressed timeline than a traditional migration, but it worked because of our team’s creative approach to solving challenges. SADA’s committed team also partnered with us extensively to provide dedicated support to our employees.”

Guidewire’s agile problem-solving included the creation of a custom auto migration tool from OneNote to Docs. With OneNote, users had to save notes to their desktops, which was inherently incompatible with the collaborative nature of Workspace. Since a direct integration did not exist, Guidewire built a workaround to move all of its OneNote data to Docs, fundamentally changing the way the team works together by replacing its previous tool with real-time solutions.

“The way we prepared for this transition was like nothing our CEO and extended leadership team had seen in their prior years of experience,” Mandair says. “It was a non-event that allowed us to move forward and focus on other things.”

Collaboration transformed

Transitioning to Workspace has resulted in accelerated communication and collaboration across Guidewire’s global network. By consolidating disparate tools into a single, unified platform, the company has also been able to eliminate redundant licensing fees in some cases. Integrated security features in Workspace also allows Guidewire to easily manage access to documents, reducing document proliferation outside its enterprise. By empowering an asynchronous approach to work, Workspace has enabled Guidewire to limit unnecessary meetings, driving productivity between teams and regions.

“We are now focused on the next set of levers to maximize our most precious resource: our people’s time and energy,” Gwin says. “With all we can do asynchronously, we have reevaluated meeting effectiveness and efficiency, and we are being more intentional about the value meetings yield.”

“The innovation investments that Google Workspace makes means that you don’t just get the product that you buy today,” Ghosh says. “With the ongoing Workspace innovations , we can continue to be our best for our employees and customers.”