• Saves hours in employee travel time with Google Meet

• Promotes employee efficiency as employees don't have to worry about server space that causes disruption to the workflow

• Speed up innovation with collaborative tools on Google Drive to share and comment on new product design

In addition to phone calls and in-person meetings, email is essential for business communication at Origami. The sales team needs to update clients on project status and communicate client requirements to the design team. At the same time, mill operators need to be able to quickly inform the production team about bottlenecks when they happen. On its legacy email server, Origami encountered frequent problems such as missing or undeliverable emails because employees were running out of email storage space. As a result, employee productivity dipped as missing emails hampered operations.

The email issues intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a manufacturer of essential products, Origami was allowed to operate during the lockdown to prevent supply shortage. But while plant employees worked on-site to maintain production capacity, most of Origami’s corporate staff worked remotely to minimize infection risk. The problem? Employees couldn’t access corporate emails from home.

Pranali realized an urgent need for a robust email solution, instead of risking security breaches by allowing employees to use their personal email accounts or messaging apps for work. This is when she turned to Google Cloud Premier Partner Shivaami to launch Google Workspace. Within a month in June 2020, all 200 employees at Origami migrated to Google Workspace, and were able to resume their work without disruption.

For starters, Shivaami set up features that employees frequently use, such as the offline mode to access Gmail. This Gmail feature is a favorite for salespeople who want to be more efficient between travel locations by drafting emails on their mobile devices, without internet access. Gmail then auto-syncs across devices when a connection is available.

“Shivaami eased our transition to Google Workspace with a smooth onboarding process and took away the stress from employees who had problems getting emails before the cloud,”says Pranali. “Without the worry of email access, they can work more freely and focus on what matters, their work.”

The Shivaami team also provided training to help employees get more out of the Google Workspace apps and functions.

Pranali’s personal favorite is the ability to manage multiple emails in one Gmail inbox. This comes in handy as Origami owns several domains for different customer segments. Origamiindia.com caters to the corporate website, Origamitissue.com for its direct to consumer website, while Good Karma promotes Origami’s recycled tissue to environmentally-conscious consumers and businesses. Having full visibility of all emails in one place helps her organize her priorities, as well as ensures that she doesn't miss out on any urgent emails.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Origami experienced an increase in retail demand because more people worked and studied at home, they also used more household items such as tissue paper and toilet rolls. At the same time, there was a sharp drop in commercial use because some sectors, such as airlines, hotels, and restaurants, were not fully operational. To address these changes in their paper supplies and needs, the sales team kept in touch with clients through Meet.

“As an organization, we’re very used to in-person meetings, even same-day return flights to client locations. But travel restrictions because of COVID-19 forced our shift to video,” says Pranali. “Meet helps us stay connected with customers and work closer as a company. We can see each other’s availability on Calendar and schedule video meetings without playing phone tag with colleagues who may be on the production floor.” She adds that having meetings on Meet also saves the team hours of time that would have otherwise been spent commuting. These meetings with customers led to interesting insights and development of new solutions.

One question that keeps the marketing team up at night is, ”How do I make our product stand out on the store shelf?”

To attract consumers, Origami frequently works with designers to introduce new packaging for existing and new products. The marketing team also produces point of purchase displays to promote products to attract customers and differentiate them from the herd of products available in the category.

The marketing team creates folders on Drive to store design assets for each project. They can then invite key stakeholders, such as customers, designers, or printers, to access the files with permission to view, comment, or edit directly on the file. Users can easily view version history to see who made what changes. Origami Marketing team also works with various design agencies to create marketing strategies to promote Origami products better. Most of their interaction happens through Google sheets and slides to present and share their ideas.

“Google Workspace greatly improves project management and collaboration. We can work off the same version of Docs or Slides, without overriding each other’s changes. The ability to share creative files of any size on Drive greatly improves our creative process,” says Pranali. “We can move quickly from design ideas to print and attract more consumers with our innovative packaging designs.”

She adds, “Moving forward, we’re exploring more Workspace apps, such as using Forms for feedback for our newest project, Origami Good Karma, to get quick customer insights and continue to improve our product and customer service.”