Delivering a radical transformation of Google's tech ecosystem | Case Study

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. So what happens when the tech leader falls short of its own employees’ tech needs?

“The garden had become a jungle.”

The company’s annual employee survey, Googlegeist,  indicated a deepening dissatisfaction with the internal tools, systems, and processes used by Googlers in non-tech roles. The same innovation-focused mindset responsible for best-in-class B2C products had turned the garden into a jungle, putting culture, strategy, and operational efficiency at risk. Corporate Engineering manages a dynamic catalog of 5,000 tools and systems, with product roadmaps and budgets co-owned by functions as diverse as UX, Product, Engineering, — and Finance, Legal & Compliance, Marketing, HR, and Real Estate & Security. Executive leadership was looking for a greater understanding of the situation to help make informed, data-driven decisions around priorities and investments. 

Solution

Using a mixed-methods research approach, the Toolgeist initiative developed and launched a comprehensive Qualtrics survey in collaboration with 20+ subject matter experts across UX, product, and business. The survey targeted approximately 15,000 non-tech full-time employees across 9 diverse business functions with a focus on 75 business-critical products (1P and 3P) and 110+ core processes. 

“Helpful products. Built with you in mind.”

Quantitative and qualitative results were brought together to achieve greater insight, and this data was validated against product log analyses, as well as similar studies and academic literature. We conducted expert interviews to further clarify pain points and opportunities, and kicked off additional studies to understand the roles that Trust and Effectiveness play in overall product satisfaction. 

Results

Toolgeist findings provided context and insight into non-tech Googlers’ discontent with internal products and related workflow processes, including statistical results with greater depth, and new metrics and benchmarks with which to track progress over time. We delivered actionable recommendations to objectively inform product roadmaps and investments in the form of 22 specialized reports, as well as a Looker Studio Dashboard for deeper data visualization and filtering.

“Unlock better execution through improved tools and less bureaucracy, make it easier to get things done through smarter and more efficient core business processes, and deliver $700 million return in the form of productivity gains, cost savings, and cost avoidance.”

Our guidance and recommendations provided: 1) specific core business processes to streamline and simplify, 2) opportunities to improve customer user journeys with better understanding of overlaps and outliers, 3) user interfaces to improve ease of use, 4) the need for a knowledge base of product pages to aggregate training, documentation, and tech support, 5) prioritization of greater data maturity and a single source of truth, and 6) the opportunity to leverage AI for personalizing user experiences, predicting needs, and automating more tasks. These recommendations helped teams and leaders make more informed decisions moving forward, as well as synergized key strategic themes set forth by the C-suite, and the success of the Toolgeist program informed a new company-level OKR.