• Driving a culture of creativity by giving employees more independence from IT with Google Workspace

• Harmonizing IT infrastructure, connecting previously isolated mills on 3 continents with a collaborative cloud environment

• Simplifying global collaboration, making up-to-date information readily available via Google Drive and the Google Sites-hosted intranet

• Reduces travel costs by 30%, helping Mercer International to continue shrinking its carbon footprint

• Gives employees a comfortable and familiar way to work digitally and access data, whether they’re on-site or home-based

“Our mills used to be isolated, each with their own IT infrastructure,” explains Uwe Schmidt, Head of IT-PMO & Change Management at Mercer International. “To increase productivity, connect our employees, and save money, we decided to create a unified infrastructure with Google Workspace.”

For Uwe and his team, a cloud provider is more than just a vendor, but a partner whose views and philosophy should reflect those of Mercer International. Because Google has a carbon footprint of zero, moving on-premises applications to the cloud helps reduce the company’s carbon footprint as well. “We’re trying to be as green as possible in everything we do, and although we’re developing into a globally connected digital company, a core value here at Mercer is sustainability,” says Uwe. “This value is very important to us, especially our CIO Christoph Grewe-Franze, who includes sustainability in every decision he makes. With Google Workspace, we found a solution that ticks both boxes, taking collaboration to a new level with a sustainability focus.”

At Mercer International, digital transformation is an evolution, not a revolution. To tackle the biggest challenge yet for the company’s IT department, they enlisted support from Devoteam, a go-to partner for businesses that want to push the envelope with people-focused digital transformation strategies. “There’s a fascinating tension between the centuries-old forestry industry and a state-of-the-art cloud setup,” says Devoteam’s Michael Herkens, Expert Director Google Cloud Consulting. “The slogan ‘Mercer Connected’ stands for the vision of a virtual IT organization, and represents our values, such as better connecting employees through digitization. With this in mind, we developed a road map to transform the company’s isolated mills into one connected ecosystem.”

Go-live was originally planned for June 2020, but pulled forward when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Three months ahead of schedule, Mercer International and Devoteam managed to roll out Google Workspace to the company’s 2,300 employees across three continents fully remotely. In training sessions via Google Meet, employees learned the ropes of the new ways of working, and the simplicity of the Google Workspace toolkit ensured quick adoption across the board.

“Changing the way we work not just sooner than planned, but 100% remotely was a huge challenge for us,” says Uwe. “Because Google Workspace is built from the ground up for digital collaboration, we made great strides quickly. Hundreds of employees could continue their work from the home office virtually without interruption, and that wouldn’t have been possible without Google Workspace.”

But at Mercer International, digital transformation isn’t just a COVID-19 measure, but a culture shift that’s here to stay. Today, all 2,300 employees have a Google Workspace account, leveraging the entire spectrum of collaboration features.

300 key employees use Google Chat to stay connected and share high-level ideas about improving the business. “We implemented two chats, one each for English-speaking and German-speaking employees,” says Uwe. “It’s an amazing way to collaborate immediately, without having to loop everyone into long email chains.”

For the emails that do need to be sent, Mercer International uses Gmail, but reducing the flood of emails by 30% is one major target of the digital transformation. Google Drive is a key tool to make information previously spread across email communication more widely available. “Google Drive is a driver of collaboration and productivity here at Mercer International, enabling us to implement global project drives quickly and streamline corporate communication,” says Uwe.

Google Workspace has opened up numerous opportunities for the rapid digitization of processes throughout the company. In a large number of areas, Mercer employees use tools such as Google Forms to enter data faster, which saves a lot of time. And by creating templates for each legal entity within the included template gallery, it is possible for employees to easily select the right designs for each piece of corporate communication, helping to maintain and secure the corporate identity on a global level.

Using Google Sites, several Mercer sites have created local intranets to share key messages and organizational updates. “It used to be tricky to provide employees around the world with information that’s valid and up-to-date,” says Uwe. “Google Sites has been excellent for training purposes, and even crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic.” In 2021, Mercer hopes to launch its own global corporate intranet using Google Sites. “We looked into the cost of a global intranet with an external provider, which would have cost us per user per month. By mapping the same functionality with Google Workspace, we’ll be able to save thousands.”

A more independent workforce has been one of the major achievements of Mercer International’s digital transformation with Google Workspace, and an important milestone to further establish its corporate culture. In the past, employees and teams were dependent on IT departments even for basic processes, which slowed things down and restricted employees’ creativity. “Instead of waiting a week to gain access to a file server via support tickets, our employees can get access within a minute,” says Uwe. “By giving our employees more control, Google Workspace strengthens cross-team collaboration and drives a culture of creativity.”

On this new, digital playground, it didn’t take long for employees to get creative on their own, using Google Workspace to simplify processes. The company’s HR team, for example, built a home office time tracking table with Google Slides and Google Form in a heartbeat, keeping productivity steady even in times of COVID-19. “Google Workspace has increased our productivity tremendously by making our workforce more independent of IT,” says Uwe. “Across the company, employees are leveraging these cloud tools to discover new possibilities, which is incredibly motivating.”