Posted by Hidetomo Aramaki, Vice President of Innovation & IT Strategy, ANA Group
Cross posted on the Google for Work Japan blog
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Hidetomo Aramaki, Vice President of Innovation & IT Strategy at ANA Group (All Nippon Airways, Co., Ltd.), a Japan-based airline operating more than 1,000 flights each day.
As Japan’s largest airline we have lots of moving parts to manage. And we don’t just mean planes and passengers. We’re a global organization with more than 40 departments across the world. While we’ve always had a strong sense of teamwork, we’ve run up against some walls as our company has grown. So in March 2013 we switched to
Google Apps for Work so all our 49,000 people - in the air, on the tarmac and in our offices — could use a communications and IT platform that supports our culture.
The move was a big part of our broader “Work Style Innovation” program which is designed to connect our employees around the world as one team and provide better service to our customers. Since moving to Google tools, we’ve been able to launch some new initiatives with a level of staff input that was previously unimaginable. It used to be difficult to get input from multiple departments on big projects, but now we can upload project documents to
Google Drive and teams can simultaneously make edits and instantly share issues. This was very helpful when we overhauled our international flights reservation system — a company-wide project.
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The ability to connect departments and employees around the world was also key during the redesign of our new uniform. This was the first change to our uniform in 10 years, and we found it really easy to share designs and pictures of staff wearing uniforms through
Gmail and Drive with our New York-based designer. No matter where we were, or what device we were on, we could make adjustments to files and discuss everything from breathability to elasticity with
Google Hangouts.
Being able to access files from anywhere using Google Drive has been great for our safety teams too. If maintenance staff at Haneda Airport see a problem they’re not sure how to solve, they take a picture of it right from the tarmac with a tablet and share it with the global team. Other maintenance and safety experts review the images and can give advice from wherever they are. The new process results in problems getting fixed faster and an overall increase in our safety standards.
As well as improving work processes and communication, tools like Google+ have been great for supporting internal communication. We have some really active Google+ communities for working mothers and fathers to share stories, advice and experiences.
Our industry demands information at jet speed. Google Apps helps our employees share ideas, opinions and updates no matter where in the world they happen to be, so that time zones and language barriers don’t hinder our ability to work well together and we can better serve the customers who fly with us.
