A leader in design, manufacturing, hardware platform, and supply chain solutions, Celestica brings global expertise and insight to every stage of product development—from the drawing board to full-scale production and after-market services. The company partners with leading companies in aerospace and defense, communications, enterprise, healthcare technology, industrial, semiconductor, capital equipment, and smart energy to deliver solutions for their most complex challenges.

Supporting such a complex value chain requires Celestica’s employees to work together effectively and share knowledge and ideas across functions and geographies. As part of an ongoing digital transformation and application modernization strategy, Celestica was an early adopter of Google Workspace, moving the majority of its global workforce to Google apps in 2012.

Before Google Workspace, users had a limited 400MB mailbox quota in IBM Lotus Notes, which required them to spend extra time managing their inboxes. Email, calendar, and contacts were only available when users were connected to the Celestica network or accessed over a VPN. Employees wasted valuable time emailing documents back and forth, and cutting and pasting between applications.

“Google Workspace was exactly what we needed to improve mobility and enable employees to work more collaboratively using an integrated toolset,” says Paul Stanners, Director of Celestica’s Digital Transformation Program. “It’s all about providing a better user experience, which was our primary motivation to adopt cloud-based apps.”

The entire IT department of approximately 400 employees volunteered to migrate first, to lead by example and better understand how the change would impact users. Shortly afterward, Celestica began an early adopter program, onboarding 1,600 volunteers who represented every country and every business function. To generate enthusiasm during the early adopter phase, Celestica held contests, awarding Chromebooks to employees who shared the best Google Workspace tips and tricks. The company provided training in nine languages, helping employees around the world embrace new cloud-based ways of working.

The global go-live was a great success, with no disruption to the business. In the weeks following, early adopters served as Google Guides, helping other employees within their departments get the most from the new tools. Celestica continued to promote Google Workspace internally and offered fun training opportunities, allowing users to earn “belts” and become Google Ninjas by taking quizzes built with Google Forms.

“We found Google Workspace adoption to happen naturally,” says Kenneth Sheng, Employee Collaboration Services, Celestica. “While we did provide formal training, much of the knowledge transfer occurred between employees. When you see a colleague doing something cool in Google Workspace, you want to do it too—and it’s easy to learn!”

Instant access to data and colleagues

Celestica migrated 180 days of email for employees and a large number files from IBM Lotus Notes document libraries to Google Drive, as well as creating a new intranet built on Google Sites. Previous shared inboxes became Google Groups, improving access and freeing up local hard drives. Celestica replaced its previous enterprise social networking platform with Google+, giving employees an easy way to connect with other Celestica professionals.

Users can now access their mail, calendar, and files anytime, anywhere, using any device, enabling Celestica to offer a voluntary bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program while keeping company data safe. Celestica used the mobile device management capabilities included with Google Workspace to replace its legacy Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) environment, reclaiming software license costs.

Celestica also equipped 64 rooms around the world with flat-screen monitors and Chromebox for Meetings. Instead of relying on 5 large video-equipped conference rooms, Celestica can turn any room into a video collaboration hub using Google Meet.

“With Google Workspace, all our users have easy access to the latest data as well as enterprise-quality video collaboration,” says Paul. “We’re averaging 3,800 Google Meet per month and reducing the cost to equip a room with voice and video capabilities by 90%.”

Inspiring creative solutions

Employees are finding creative ways to use Google Workspace tools together. In one case, when a customer’s product was being manufactured in both Thailand and Canada, Celestica used Google Apps Script—a JavaScript platform in the cloud—to create input forms to collect metrics for the customer’s scorecard and then display the team’s progress via KPI charts. By automating tasks across Google Workspace with lightweight scripts, Celestica captures needed metrics and displays them on Google Sites for executive account teams.

“Operations teams in Thailand and Toronto started using Google Workspace to look at metrics on a daily basis and provide real-time visibility into each other’s operations to make sure we’re meeting our customer scorecard metrics,” says Paul. “We went from weekly updates to daily updates.”

Celestica developed a stateless workflow engine on Google App Engine that creates simple request-approval workflows. Request forms are dynamically generated from database fields, with the ability to show or hide fields based on business logic. Business owners control field values via lookups against Sheets. Celestica also developed an application on App Engine that enables the sharing of best practices from teams practicing Kaizen, Lean, and Six Sigma quality improvements, helping other teams achieve the same benefits without reinventing the wheel.

Creating a sustainable workplace

Celestica uses Google+ communities to help promote sustainability initiatives and activities such as volunteering in the community, environment protection via recycling and reuse tips, and employee health awareness through blood donor clinics and healthy lifestyle choices. Employees are asked to take a Sustainable Workspace pledge via Forms.

To accommodate shop floor employees who don’t have a Google Workspace account, Celestica used Google App Maker to create an application based on Google Forms, which HR can use to make sustainability pledge commitments on an employee’s behalf. Celestica also reduces paper usage by deploying Chromebooks in a secure area to enable self-service access to payroll information for manufacturing employees instead of issuing paper pay stubs.

“App Maker makes it easy to extend Google Workspace apps and create custom functionality for simple applications,” says Paul. “It’s easy for employees to take the sustainability pledges, and for our sustainability team to monitor the program to see how well it is working.”

Unlocking a better future

For Celestica, moving productivity and collaboration to Google Workspace enables an even greater focus on the customer, helping the company deliver more value and better outcomes worldwide.

“With Google Workspace, we’re accomplishing more together and doing it faster than ever,” says Paul. “Google Workspace will help us achieve our objectives faster, more efficiently, and with greater success.”