Natura: Inspiring cultural change across 14 countries with Google Workspace with Gemini

Natura began by rolling out Google Workspace in 14 countries, starting with early adopters and then in waves by country, migrating 20,000 accounts and 900TB of data in just six months. Since then, the company has focused on evolving adoption and discovering new use cases.

"Our previous solution had the same interface for over 30 years and wasn't set up for seamless collaboration," Marques recalls. "Workspace started as a native collaboration tool, so when we started using it, people started collaborating in a truly natural, intuitive way."

Security was also a top concern for Natura. As a secure-by-design solution, Workspace gave the company confidence that it had chosen the right partner for its security needs. And with advanced security features like embedded data loss prevention, Natura doesn't need separate solutions to protect its data.

Beyond collaboration, Workspace empowers Natura's end users in innovative ways, including building custom tools without the need of developers or coding expertise. In a short time, employees have already developed almost 2,000 business applications with AppSheet, a no-code tool included with Workspace that empowers people to build applications that power productivity. For example, the finance team created an AppSheet app that eliminated more than 17 hours of manual work per week and enabled them to refocus on strategic work. "AppSheet equips our teams to solve their own problems," Marques says. "Our adoption rate is also incredibly high, with over 80% of people actively collaborating and adopting all the features."

Natura's biggest transformation, however, came with Google Workspace with Gemini. The team initially tested the tool's potential with a control group of 400 people — and then they temporarily turned it off. "People immediately felt lost without Gemini," Marques says. "This proved to us that Gemini has a significant impact on productivity and that it's quickly become a valuable part of how we work."

For Marques, Gemini acts as a personal assistant, helping identify and prioritize the most important emails from the week, provide action items, or summarize long documents so she's always in the loop. Other teams use Gemini to find fast answers. For instance, the governance team can quickly ask questions like, "What contracts are expiring in the next six months?" and get immediate results.

Gemini also helps enhance communication. As a Brazilian company, Natura interacts with Latin American countries and American partners, which Marques says can create language barriers. "Sometimes I write emails and ask, 'Put this in a more formal tone,'" she says. "Then the magic happens: Things become much more professional and adapted to specific cultures." This also proves helpful when adapting communications to speak to different generations of employees.

With this in mind, Natura transformed its company intranet from a multi-layered, menu-based system to a simple Google Sites with Gemini-powered search. Employees can type a prompt into a simple search bar and instantly find the information they need.

With Gemini supporting diverse workflows, Natura's teams save around 2.5 hours per week. But now that Gemini is included in all Workspace licenses, Natura no longer has to build a business case for it — teams can simply use it to enhance their work, across the applications they already use every day. This also helped Natura prevent the use of non-approved AI solutions, which posed a security risk. With an enterprise license, all company data and governance are managed internally, providing a secure tool for everyone.

By empowering employees to create their own specialized Gemini Gems, we're not just improving efficiency—we're expanding our expert workforce by making their unique knowledge scalable.

Nowadays we have 78% of collaborators using Gemini every day.

Natura is also experimenting with NotebookLM to make resources easier to digest. For example, after a large retail show in New York, attendees quickly created a comprehensive presentation deck using NotebookLM, collaborating to prepare slides that they could easily share with the entire organization. This helped everyone get up to speed much quicker than if they had to read through documents on their own.

As Natura deepens its use of Google Workspace with Gemini, the company is focused on deploying Gemini across four dimensions: everyday tasks, changing operations and services, impacting customers, and internal optimization. But to Marques, the best way to get the most out of Gemini is through Natura's people. "Google Workspace Gemini and NotebookLM have generated a shift in mindset, inspiring people to think differently about their jobs and solve problems in creative ways," she says.

This transformation trickles down to Natura's consumers. By optimizing internal operations and resolving administrative tasks more efficiently, the company has reduced lead times and become more effective in serving them. More than that, teams are being upskilled and actively creating new possibilities for customers.

"We now use Gemini every day," Marques says. "We're already looking back and saying, 'How did I live without it?'"