Globo has concluded its digital transformation with the standardization of its communication and collaboration, in addition to a wide use of low code solutions to automate multiple processes, ranging from the front door, Human Resources to core areas of the company, such as Entertainment and Journalism. After training sessions and a Hackathon that accelerated this process, the company created a Center of Excellence to deal with the high volume of applications created by employees empowered by technology.
With a history that began with the circulation of the newspaper O Globo in 1925, Organizações Globo today comprises a range of companies that bring together a vast menu of products. Among these companies is the largest broadcaster in Latin America and the third largest in the world: TV Globo.
In 2019, the Organization merged five companies, comprising approximately 18,000 employees and a large volume of legacy systems. To structure itself more and more, standardize the environment and add governance, the company noticed the opportunity to transform itself, with modern and intelligent technologies.
In a few months, this movement was driven even further by the pandemic, which was enacted shortly after the merger, forcing Globo to work collaboratively and with more productivity remotely.
Standardizing collaboration with an easy-to-use solution
Globo saw in Microsoft Teams, from Microsoft 365, an opportune tool to standardize and improve collaboration and communication between employees. The tool’s potential was evident when the company saw a 300% increase in the number of users within a month, at the beginning of this process.
“We were concerned at first, but we’ve made such a huge leap in one month with Teams, work groups in Teams, and sites in Sharepoint that we calmed down. Since then, Teams has become our Collaboration and Productivity HUB”, says Sabrina Lopes, Innovation and Productivity leader at Globo.
The adoption of Sharepoint followed a similar pace: Globo went from 300 sites on the platform to 3,000 in six months, reaching a total of 22,000 sites on Sharepoint in mid-2022.
Driving app creation with low code solutions
The next step was to empower employees using Power Platform tools, accompanied by a skilling journey that covered approximately 2,000 people trained on the platform.
“By the time we implemented it, we had already built more than 2,000 applications, some of which were very important for the company. So, we brought Microsoft’s governance program with the Power Platform, which was a game changer, as we were able to understand exactly everything we had”, explains Sabrina.
Since then, Globo has been adding knowledge, implementing, and adapting technology– bringing governance to the company. Divisions were created between the production environment, where employees develop any type of application; the approval environment, which is where it will start operating and, finally, a critical environment – this one more closely monitored with core applications.
During this period, some important applications have already been developed for the company with Power Apps. One of them automated the employee dismissal flow, reducing a process that took around 40 days to be carried out in just 7. For occupational health, an app was built with the entire timeline of the employee’s life within the company and schedule of exams. At the peak of the pandemic, requests for Covid-19 tests, psychological consultations and any assistance or guidance with doctors and nurses were also carried out using these apps, as well as the vaccine application – all integrated with the ERP and administrative portal.
Accelerating the technology adoption process with a Hackaton
“We brought intelligence, agility, and less repetitive activities, empowering our employees. We greatly reduced data input, the possibility of error, and the time gain is very great”, adds Sabrina.
In May 2022, Globo took another step towards digital transformation when the Power Platform Hackathon was organized internally with the participation of Microsoft, involving various areas of the company such as Human Resources, Finance, Infrastructure, Legal, Entertainment, Technology, Performance Data, among others.
The event brought together 90 participants, divided into 15 teams, whose objective was to develop apps that could solve the company’s problems. At the end of the competition, the top three projects had their applications implemented by the end of the year. One of them is focused on the management of invoices, which can reach a volume of 500 notes per day. With Power Automate, which uses artificial intelligence to read the PDF and fill in fields in the application itself, the process gained agility and value. What was initially to be implemented in affiliated broadcasters of Rede Globo in São Paulo, was expanded to the whole country.
The other winning app has already been implemented. It operates in the acquisition of international films for the Telecine channel and soon its use will cover national films. Finally, the third app labels items for Globo’s channels grid, such as content’s genre and age range. This data is cross-referenced with an Ibope (Brazilian social data Center) database and uses artificial intelligence to generate insights on the best hour the films should be aired and the expected revenue.
“We had a very strong and significant growth in the development of applications after the Hackathon, our employees were avid for this type of technology and we have impressive results”, celebrates Sabrina. “Not so long ago, we were the Brazilian company with the biggest amount of applications developed, and we reduced it for governance reasons”, she adds.
After the Hackathon, Globo had a 30% growth in Power Platform consumption, as well as the Power BI tool, creation of Dashboards, in addition to Power Automate applications. Today, the organization has approximately 16,000 Power BI dashboards, 3,600 Power Apps applications, with approximately 5,800 flows in its environment, running up to one million flows per month.
Another app that yielded good results was Set Alocação, which leased sets during the pandemic, maintaining employee safety while planning Entertainment productions – which is a crucial area of the company.
“We had the images of our sets, scenography cities and all of our scenarios within a Power Apps application, this way the director in charge could choose the set he wanted to use and how many people would be there, which artists would participate in that scene, which costumes and makeup would be used, and these information would be sent to everyone via email, with a flow in Power Automate. Thereby, the artists could go to the correct set, the clothes were already be separated and allocated in the dressing room”, explains Sabrina.
The importance of Microsoft Unified is also highlighted, for the engagement of value-added services such as training, customizations and advisory on the solution, as well as an entire incident resolution structure in an agile way, important elements for Globo’s evolution journey.
Full steam development
Application development spread throughout the company, ranging from Human Resources to Data Performance, passing through the areas of Journalism and Entertainment. With this volume of solutions, the company created a Power Platform Excellence Center, and today there are many areas within Grupo Globo where Microsoft’s low code solutions are present, which resulted in empowerment for its employees, according to Sabrina.
“Our satisfaction is in the heights. I always say that we can do almost everything with the platform. It is very gratifying to see that people can work more and more in a smarter way, and, for me, this is the greatest gain we have. Now we have multidisciplinary teams doing wonderful things within the company”, she concludes.
