How Google Chat helps Trimble unify a global workforce

Discover how Trimble:

• Uses Google Chat to keep 12,000 employees across 40 countries connected and productive

• Supports more than 200,000 conversations every day

• Fully unifies its communication and collaboration tools with Google Workspace

At Trimble, we believe in an integrated world of work, from the advanced connectivity technologies we create to the way we collaborate as a team. In our mission to help the world work better, we are digitizing some of the most important industries on earth, enabling people to build, construct, grow, and move the things we need to live our lives and build future communities.

Because we have nearly 12,000 employees across 40 countries, it’s essential that our  collaboration and communication tools unify our people to achieve our shared goals. In 2017, we migrated our entire workforce to Google Workspace, a decision that led to the most successful change management program in company history. Whenever we acquire a new company or bring new people on board, Workspace is the first stop for training and onboarding, and it continues to be a global hub for connecting and collaborating with colleagues.

While many of the tools and features within Workspace have grown and evolved over the years, none have transformed as much as Google Chat. What used to be a simple messaging tool now powers the majority of Trimble’s communication across teams, business units, and countries. 

Here’s how we use Chat to keep everyone in the know, boost employee engagement, and help everyone in the Trimble family stay connected worldwide.

Unlocking faster communication

We previously relied on email for the bulk of our communications. Even small requests such as, “Hey, are you free for a call?” would go through email, which bogged down people’s inboxes. We tried other messaging platforms for real-time communication across Trimble, but as Workspace fanatics, we always kept an eye on Google Chat. When the Workspace team asked if we wanted early access to the new Chat in 2019, making the switch was an easy decision.

Now, everyone at Trimble uses Chat daily for asynchronous and real-time conversations — whether they need to ask their manager a quick question, grant someone access to documents, easily find priority conversations, or bring a colleague into a group chat. They can also pivot the discussion to Google Meet directly in the Chat interface, enabling quick, seamless communication without disrupting workflows.

Boosting employee engagement and onboarding

While people connecting one to one is still the backbone of Chat at Trimble, where it really shines is with the use of spaces and groups. Each team has its own space to share everything from project documents and trackers to personal stuff such as memes and weekend plans. More of our business units are also creating sector-specific spaces. For example, our transportation division recently made a space with more than 1,800 users to share relevant and time-sensitive information and communications, including immediate action requests, meeting reminders, and recommendations for videos or podcasts to check out.

Spaces have also helped make onboarding faster for new employees. We frequently bring new businesses into the Trimble family and ideally we’d be on-site to facilitate getting new employees up to speed. When that’s not possible, we can use Chat to create a central space for the new folks to find support, training materials, and answers to any questions. We include people from our support desk, Workspace representatives, and ourselves so new joiners can contact the right person whenever needed.

To keep Chat top of mind for all employees, we also:

• Recommend all new employees install and pin the Google Drive app to get notifications, comments, and access requests

• Provide a tech support chatbot to automate issue resolution

• Encourage teams to adopt and integrate the specific apps they need to get more work done in Chat

Migrating content and bringing people together 

At Trimble, we conduct multiple acquisitions every year—almost two thousand new users last year alone—and we need to bring data over for those acquisitions. On go-live day, the order of importance for our newly migrated users is Chat, Gmail, and Google Calendar. Even our primary go-live support channel is over a dedicated support Chat space. So, it’s important to have tools to migrate that content quickly and smoothly.

We often work with partners for larger migrations. However, we recently used the data migration service from Google to bring content over from another platform. The data migration service is a secure, easy-to-use solution, and our team used it to accurately bring our message data over from Microsoft Teams, all through the admin console.

Our use of Chat only continues to grow. In 2023, we had over 72 million conversations across Trimble, which equates to about 200,000 a day. Approximately 11,000 people use it at least once a month, an adoption rate of more than 90%. By making it easier to pull resources together, Chat reduces barriers to getting work done, allowing us to make actionable decisions in the moment, while improving collaboration across all our teams. The Chat we embrace today is a powerful tool that’s ingrained into our workflows and empowers everyone in the Trimble ecosystem to be the best we can be.