Imerys applies engineered processing to the raw materials it extracts in order to create innovative products that answer the needs of industry today, be it conductivity, lightness, durability, or purity. In the past 20 years it has grown significantly through the acquisition of around three to four companies annually, which has influenced its internal structures. “The fact that we have grown by acquisition really impacted our working culture, as we were extremely decentralized,” explains Joël Fromont, Chief Digital & Networks Officer at Imerys. “Two years ago, Imerys’ management decided this situation needed to change.”

In order to reorganize Imerys’ internal IT operations to reflect the innovation and expertise it applies to its products, and prepare the business for the future, Imerys decided to undertake a digital transformation project to update its infrastructure. Google Workspace proved the perfect answer to many of its needs.

“Innovation is key to the company’s strategic goals,” says Joël. “Today, you can’t innovate with an IT infrastructure that is stuck in the 20th century. Imerys’ management understood this and decided to invest significantly in IT.”

A whole-company process

Working together with implementation partner Cirruseo, Imerys developed a comprehensive change management plan for implementing the Google suite. This included using Forms to identify key users who would lead the process and staging Google Transformation Labs. “Using a metric based on the survey, we chose and trained 700 ambassadors to help less advanced users to develop their use of Google Workspace,” says Barthélemy Delerm, Digital Workplace Director at Cirruseo. “It’s something that we’ve consistently used across different populations,” says Joël. “We do it at the beginning of every Transformation Lab to assess the maturity of the participants. We’ve done 10 so far and they were a great success; people were really enthusiastic about participating in them.”

Expanding the ecosystem

Imerys has already seen a significant rise in collaboration and productivity thanks to its implementation of Google Workspace. “We’ve seen video conference usage rocket from 500 video conferences a month to more than 12,000. The usage of video conferencing has really enabled progress in the company’s collaboration culture.” Imerys is considering the implementation of Meet hardware, currently in proof of concept in France, America, and Brazil. Thanks to Google Mobile Device Management, Imerys has also reduced costs on mobile software licenses and its employees benefit from excellent support for Android devices.

With Forms, internal administrative processes are becoming quicker and more unified. “For example, every year, our tax department has to collect documents from all over the world,” says Joël. “This year, rather than an intern spending two months gathering and consolidating information, everything was done with Forms. Using that solution, they saved really significant amounts of time.” Uptake of Drive and other core functions has also been very positive. “Employees immediately took to Drive as a repository and we have almost two million files stored. Finance officers are transposing their proficiency into Sheets and are starting to see the benefits.”

Now, Imerys wants to complete the process of decommissioning its own servers and migrating to a Google native environment for word processing and spreadsheets. “It’s really transforming the company. It’s not just an IT project, it’s a whole-company workstyle project and we want everybody to be ready for that.”

“Working with a collaborative tool like Google Workspace is key,” says Joël. “The role of our IT department has changed. It is no longer to maintain servers but to help ensure that the business benefits as much as possible. We are more user oriented and business oriented.”