Communicating change for a smooth migration to Google Workspace

"After selecting Google Workspace, we communicated the migration road map to employees to help them mentally prepare for change,” says Angus, adding that most employees were already familiar with Gmail outside of work, so that transition was relatively seamless. But there was less understanding around Sheets and Docs; some staff weren’t sure how these solutions were better than the software they were used to. “We knew that all we had to do was show them the value of real-time collaboration and sharing functions on Google Workspace,” shares Angus. “Once they saw how useful it is to be able to work on the same documents at the same time, and share one true version across the team, they were totally on board.”

The company smoothly migrated 150 user mailboxes from its legacy email system to Gmail using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). At the same time, it ran training sessions to make sure that all employees, regardless of their familiarity with Google Workspace, were able to make the most of their new productivity solution.

“At HK01, our employees stay connected with colleagues and clients from anywhere, especially since many of them began working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. They can schedule and hold meetings easily with Calendar and Google Meet,” says Angus. “Employees can work side by side on sales presentations and spreadsheets using Slides and Sheets, and create data analytics visualizations with Google Data Studio.”

“Authentication used to be a problem on the legacy email system,” Angus adds. “We used to have to set up a VPN so employees could access the company server and work from home. Everything is now on the cloud so employees can easily work remotely using Google Workspace.”

Improving location insights for food takeaway and pet care

HK01 uses Google Maps Platform to help customers search for restaurants within its food takeaway app, Eatojoy. According to a Nielsen research study, 46% of consumers in Hong Kong say they will order food takeaway more often as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Developers use the Places API to pinpoint the location of more than 1,800 restaurants that offer takeaway through the app.

Customers need to allow the app to use their phone’s location in order to find restaurants nearby. The Geocoding API converts the latitude and longitude coordinates to display the user’s current location with accuracy in the app. Eatojoy provides reliable directions to the restaurant with the help of the Distance Matrix API so the customer can pick up their food quickly and return to their home to enjoy their meal.

Apart from incorporating Google Maps Platform in the Eatojoy app, HK01 also uses Maps data to customers on its platform.

“Our news team includes the Maps Embed API in relevant stories so readers can visualize a hiking route or find the exact location of a weekend market,” says Angus. “We also help pet owners get medical attention for their sick or injured animals by locating nearby vets on Google Maps in our PetCare directory.”

Improving workflow efficiency with cross-team collaboration on Google Workspace

The HK01 advertising team frequently uses Slides and Docs to develop sales decks for meetings with prospective clients such as brands who want to promote their products to HK01 fans through joint marketing campaigns. The files are shared securely with clients on Drive and protected by setting access permission so they can viewed, edited, or printed.

“It used to be a challenge to collaborate with external parties such as advertising agencies on pitch documents and presentations. By using Slides, we can scale up for urgent presentations very easily,” says Angus. “Instead of waiting for each other to review and approve content, we can save time by editing documents and presentations in real time to meet tight deadlines.”

“Meet is an excellent tool to set up and join meetings with teammates, especially for those working from home, or in another location,” says Angus. “Our engineering team uses Meet for daily scrum meetings to discuss progress on new features and improvements. We use Jamboard** as a whiteboard through Meet to sketch application system designs and communicate user interface ideas.”

Building brand loyalty with artificial intelligence

The Hong Kong Marathon attracts more than 70,000 runners each year, many of whom enjoy sharing photos from the race with their family and friends on social media. In 2017, HK01 launched a service for runners to search their own photos on the HK01 platform by using Cloud Vision to recognize the runner’s unique bib number. This race photo service attracted 1.07 million views in the first week of launch and won HK01 the 2017 WAN-IFRA Asian Digital Media Awards in the “Best Fashion, Sports, Entertainment Mobile Service” category.

Thanks to its success, HK01 today offers this photo service for all marathons. How does it work? First, HK01 photographers take photos of the runners at the event and upload the images on Google Cloud for processing. Then Cloud Vision AI detects and identifies text in the images and filters out the bib numbers.

“Developing our own OCR solution would have been costly and time-consuming. Cloud Vision AI helped us reduce development efforts and deliver the service in days,” says Angus. “More than 41,000 runners downloaded our HK01 app within a week to find their marathon photos on the platform. The service, powered by Cloud Vision AI, increased the stickiness of our platform and encouraged these runners to further explore our content.”

“Moving forward, we’re exploring opportunities to enhance our data infrastructure and advertising business with the help of Google Cloud,” says Angus. “By using big data and machine learning on Google Cloud, we hope to learn more about what our users want and improve their user experience with new features and services.”

"We have big plans for the future, whether it's making our site the most visited lifestyle platform in Hong Kong, or using data to innovate our services,” Angus adds. “Working with Google Cloud, we know that we have the right partner to make our ambitions a reality.”