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Leading with curiosity: How Natura used Google Workspace for a new collaboration approach

October 2, 2024
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Renata Marques

CIO, Natura

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“The future of work will be defined by people automating monotonous, operational tasks, so they can focus on analyzing information. With Google Workspace and Gemini, we’re watching this change happen in real time.” — Renata Marques, CIO, Natura

Snapshot: Brazil-based personal care and cosmetics group, Natura, which operates in 14 Latin American countries, owns some of the most recognized beauty brands globally, including Avon and Natura itself. To bring all brands together with one collaborative, communicative solution, Natura adopted Google Workspace. See how Natura:

  • Migrated 900 TB of data and 20,000+ accounts from the previous solution in just six months

  • Achieved an 80%+ employee satisfaction rate with the new collaboration suite through well-planned change management programs

  • Eliminated 17+ hours of manual work per week with AppSheet to give its finance team more time to focus on high-value analysis and planning

  • Reduced internal information search time from 30 minutes down to five with an internal knowledge base in Google Sites

    Mission and the challenge

    How do you hack the future?

    From its inception, Natura in Latin America has focused on the future. Our company has long recognized the importance of protecting the Amazon rainforest, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.  We have made a commitment to sustainable sourcing and environmental responsibility, and have chosen the Brazilian Amazon as a key platform for innovation.  We believe that it is possible to create high-performance cosmetic products while also preserving the rainforest.

    Our mission blends a commitment to nature, beauty, and technology to create timeless products and processes. Unfortunately, our legacy collaboration tools weren’t helping us reach our ambitious digitization goals, including centralizing and democratizing access to data to make teams more efficient. As Natura grew and acquired other companies, we found that our growing teams were slowly becoming siloed. 

    When I joined the company, there was very little opportunity for employees to collaborate with and support each other around the world. Teams were stuck in dated, manual processes, and relying on cumbersome tools to get things done. I spoke to other senior leaders about their vision for Natura, and realized we all dreamed of more efficiency, keener analysis, and easier collaboration. We wanted to be a data-driven company and give everyone access to the data they needed to innovate and help Natura grow. 

    But we couldn’t simply ask people to change how they worked or give everyone access to everything all at once. To change the culture we had to change the artifacts that were being used for more than 20 years, so we changed the tools they were using to support a new work culture.

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Natura's CIO, Renata Marques, chose Google Workspace to drive change
by fostering a new work culture based in curiosity and collaboration.

The switch to Google Workspace and AppSheet

I’d used Google Workspace at my previous company, and during our exploration for new technologies at Natura, I suggested we test it as our own collaboration solution. Since Natura was already using Google Cloud data solutions, we knew that Google shared our technology vision. With all that in mind, we saw a trusted organization that offered the solutions we were looking for, so we decided to migrate. 

The migration was no small task. We had 20,000 accounts in 14 countries in Latin America and over 900 TB of data to move from legacy solutions. Making such a huge move involved working closely with both Google Workspace and Gentrop, a Google Workspace partner that helped us complete the complex transition in just six months. 

The next step was transforming the organizational culture. At Natura, we encourage curiosity and collaboration, so we sought out our earliest power users to support internal training sessions and onboard other team members. Within the first six months after our migration, 80% of employees who participated in the training and development programs reported satisfaction with Workspace.

As we’ve scaled, our security team continues to review our governance and compliance. We’ve found that we have more visibility into — and control over — how data is being shared, so we can keep our infrastructure and intellectual property safe. It gives me peace of mind knowing we can trust a collaboration solution that is dedicated to constantly updating its security and is secure by design.  Because of that trust, we can continue to reinforce our security standards through enforcing contextual access to apps and data with granular zero trust controls and ongoing trainings. 

Additionally, Google Workspace invited more than 100 members of our Latin America finance team (who were initially quite concerned about the migration) to its offices for a full-day training. Shortly afterward, a member of that team used AppSheet to build an automated workflow for their monthly financial close processes. This work was complex and had become even more complicated as we acquired new organizations. With the new app, the team eliminated more than 17 hours of menial work per week and can now focus on strategic work like forecasting instead of rote record keeping

We’ve since consolidated all Google Workspace-related training materials, as well as other valuable company information, into a knowledge base built with Google Sites. Everything from organizational charts to training content and office blueprints can be easily searched and linked to Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and more. This streamlined workflow has not only accelerated our training but reduced the time it takes to find documents from 30 minutes down to five.

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Natura worked closely with Google Workspace on full-day, on-site team trainings
to educate new users and accelerate adoption.

Looking ahead

We’re continuing to push the boundaries of what Workspace, and especially Gemini for Google Workspace, can do for us. Rather than deploying Gemini for everyone all at once, we’ve been beta testing it with our power users. We’ll offer them a few days to experiment with a new feature, then get their feedback on how it’s helping them work more efficiently. We’ll use their input to make a business case for a larger rollout. 

I’m also a beta tester, and I’ve seen a massive improvement in my ability to simply start a new project. With Gemini, I have support when I’m staring at a blank Doc or empty cells in a Sheet because I can ask it to help generate ideas or build a spreadsheet template. It also helps prompt me with analytical questions that I’d have never thought to ask. I’m looking forward to empowering everyone at Natura with their own AI agent. The future of work will be defined by people automating monotonous, operational tasks, so they can focus on analyzing information. With Google Workspace and Gemini, we’re watching this change happen in real time.

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