Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Olivier Lacoste, Head of IT at Pierre Hermé Paris, a French pastry company. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.
Being a French pastry chef is a little like being a Kenyan long-distance runner or Brazilian soccer player – you follow a long line of those before you who have been the very best at their respective trades. Pierre Hermé became a celebrity by being the youngest person to be named France’s Pastry Chef of the Year. Mostly, though, people really love his macarons.
Today, Pierre Hermé Paris® has boutiques in France, United Kingdom, Japan, United Arab Emirates and soon in China with our 450 employees making and selling French pastries, macarons, ice cream, candy, coffee, tea, jam and more. We’re growing rapidly as consumers around the world try and appreciate our products. As the head of IT, it’s my job to make sure we have a technology solution to facilitate that growth.
We chose Google Apps because it gave us the most up-to-date technology to work with and was scalable for our internationally expanding workforce. We found that some of our employees were using Google tools on the side, so we decided to roll it out to the entire company with the help of Google Apps Reseller Cirruseo. We were up and running in less time than it takes to make one of our signature chocolate macaroons. We’ve been happy with the way Google Apps lets us do things that weren’t possible before. For example, Pierre Hermé will record a video of himself baking a difficult pastry and store it on Google Drive so our bakers around the world can learn from him while at work or on their mobile devices.
As any pastry chef will tell you, collaboration is key. Pierre Hermé Paris employees need a technology solution that lets them share ideas and recipes easily from anywhere on the globe. Working together on documents may be less sweet, but it’s no less important to our business than working together to produce one of our signature macarons.
