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Intellect Design Arena: Enabling agile design thinking with seamless collaboration

Intellect empowers employees in their creative design thinking process with Google Workspace, ensuring seamless collaboration opportunities to create the ideal digital solutions for customers.

intellect-design-arena-logo

Intellect Digital Core (Intellect) is a fintech product company with a mission to design for digital. With the belief that “Good design is at the heart of better business,” Intellect helps empower fintech and insurtech industries with its proprietary solutions. The company supports more than 400 end-to-end user journeys andIt is ranked number one in retail banking, transaction banking, and insurtech by Global IBSI Sales League Table 2021.

Features used
Drive
Docs
Sheets
Slides
Google Chat
Google Meet
Gmail
Currents
Jamboard

Intellect empowers employees in their creative design thinking process with Google Workspace, ensuring seamless collaboration opportunities to create the ideal digital solutions for customers.

Google Workspace Results

Improves employee productivity rate by 15% for more innovation

• Smooth, zero-defect migration process to Google Workspace

• Supports 85% of employees on Meet for collaboration within two weeks of implementation

• Enables 4,800 employees around the world to participate in an online social festival

• Empowers employees to experiment with new ideas freely on Jamboard**

“We were not only looking for an improved email solution, but also a strong collaboration platform. Google Workspace stood out as the best solution because of the large suite of products it offers.” – Andrew Winston, Head of Global Technology Infrastructure & Services, Intellect Design Arena

When was the last time you walked into a bank? It’s not surprising if you can’t recall. Today, many consumers expect to get their banking done online. Across the board, the finance industry is undergoing quick digital transformation. Coupled with the increasing need for digital access due to the pandemic, financial institutions are required to be more agile and adopt new technologies quickly. This is where Intellect Design Arena (Intellect) comes in, supporting banking and insurance companies with their wide range of products that provide a seamless end-to-end customer journey.

“From Chennai to Chile, we have more than 30 offices across the world including the US, UK, India, and Singapore, and work with eight central banks across the globe,” says Andrew Winston, Head of Global Technology Infrastructure & Services at Intellect. With design thinking being a part of its DNA, the company’s mission is to design for digital. “This means that all of our products are built based on design thinking principles.” Having a platform where employees can collaborate seamlessly is therefore critical to the success of the business.

Intellect successfully migrated to Google Workspace in March 2020, pivoting from a legacy platform to cloud. “We were not only looking for an improved email solution, but also a strong collaboration platform. Google Workspace stood out as the best solution because of the large suite of products it offers,” says Winston.

The Intellect team now uses Gmail, Google Meet and Google Chat as their main communication tools, and collaborate on Docs, Sheets, and Slides on a day-to-day basis.

A swift and timely migration

The company-wide migration to Google Workspace was not only a fuss-free experience, but a very timely move for Intellect. “The migration was on schedule without delays. We implemented Google Workspace in the first week of March, and little did we know, by the third week of March the lockdown began,” Winston recalls.

The timely deployment meant that employees could immediately begin using Meet for meetings as they started working remotely. Within two weeks of onboarding, 85% of employees started using Meet. The ease of use that comes with Google Workspace products, alongside its intuitive interface enables employees to jump right into using the tools without any need for training.

Despite being on a legacy platform for years, the introduction to Google Workspace was a welcome move as employees could now work securely from anywhere, anytime. Moving to Google Cloud also improved the company’s overall productivity rate by 15% with everything they need accessible at their fingertips.

Enabling seamless innovation with Jamboard and Currents

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“We use Jamboard for our planning exercises, whether it’s for the business, on a specific product, or to plan our operations. The versatility of the board is what makes Jamboard such an effective tool.” – Andrew Winston, Head of Global Technology Infrastructure & Services, Intellect Design Arena

Intellect runs a large design centre, FT8012, in Chennai where product designers work together to create new innovative solutions and adapt new technologies to meet specific client requirements. Here, employees use Jamboard to collaborate with colleagues from around the world in real time. They also leverage Currents to communicate their ideas and get instant feedback from their peers.

From upper level management to the product engineering teams, almost everyone at the company uses Jamboard. “We use Jamboard for our planning exercises, whether it’s for the business, on a specific product, or to plan our operations,” says Winston. “The versatility of the board is what makes Jamboard such an effective tool.” With features like sketching tools and drag and drop functions for images and documents, it makes users feel like they’re working on a traditional whiteboard, but with added functions.

Intellect runs an eight-week leadership programme in a classroom setting for employees, where they use Jamboard as the main tool for teaching and learning. Working closely with Google Cloud partner agency Brio, the Intellect team ensures it maximises the capabilities of both Jamboard and Currents by learning the different ways the technology can be used most effectively.

Bringing physical collaboration spaces online

As a product development company, employees spend most of their hours at work collaborating within their teams. In the past, employees would often be found working in a “Benzene ring” setting, where people sit around a table in groups of six to communicate and collaborate easily. With Meet and Currents, this same concept can be easily transferred onto a digital platform.

Work aside, a festival called “Intellect Month” is held every year where employees get to showcase their talents outside of work. “It used to be celebrated over one day at a physical venue in India, so not everyone could participate,” says Winston. However, with the ongoing pandemic, the event has turned into a month-long online celebration involving all 4,800 employees around the world.

“We used Currents during the festival in 2020 to encourage and cheer for our peers during their performances. Despite being online, the atmosphere was lively because of the tools that enabled active participation,” says Winston. Of course, the stability of Google Workspace was crucial in enabling seamless participation for everyone.

Moving towards a microservices infrastructure with Google Cloud

“We are at an exploratory stage now on how we can use Google Cloud to go to market more effectively. Google Cloud can provide the infrastructure, while we provide the application to meet customer needs.” –Andrew Winston, Head of Global Technology Infrastructure & Services, Intellect Design Arena

Intellect is now in the process of exploring Google Cloud technologies to support the DevOps side of the business. “We are at an exploratory stage now on how we can use Google Cloud to go to market more effectively. Google Cloud can provide the infrastructure, while we provide the application to meet customer needs,” says Winston. “We’ve completely migrated out of our legacy mail systems to become a 100% cloud-based company, and we look forward to many great opportunities working with Google Cloud products and solutions.”

*Google Workspace was formerly known as G Suite prior to Oct. 6, 2020.

**Jamboard is winding down. Learn more.

Google Cloud Premier Partner

About Brio

Brio is a cloud consulting company that helps businesses accelerate their digital transformation journey. The Google Cloud Platform Partner aims to create value and simplify lives using technology, specifically in helping businesses migrate to cloud.