API Restauration is more productive thanks to Google Workspace
About API Restauration
Founded in 1956, API Restauration specializes in collective catering under contract. Located in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany, the company employs more than 10,000 people and achieved a turnover of €817 million in 2022.
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About Inaubi
Inaubi, a Google Cloud Partner, supports companies throughout their digital transformation with Google Workspace, Google Cloud, and Google Chrome solutions.
Thanks to Google Workspace, API Restauration significantly improved work processes and exchanges between colleagues, who are spread across Europe, while optimizing security and significantly reducing administrative tasks at workstations.
Google Cloud results
- Increased productivity thanks to automated processes
- Strengthened social bonds despite the geographical distance between colleagues
- Significant reduction in workstation-related administrative tasks
- Optimized workstation security
Secure and easy-to-maintain workstations
Founded in 1956, API Restauration is a family business that specializes in collective catering under contract. First established in France, the company has continued to develop over the years and has now expanded abroad, most notably into Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany. In 2022, it cooked 950,000 meals a day, made directly on its customers' premises or delivered to businesses mainly in the education, corporate, and healthcare sectors. Strongly committed to sustainable development in all its forms, API Restauration stands out from the rest thanks to its involvement in ecological transition and culinary innovation.
Streamlining tools and improving security
Ahead of its time, API Restauration considered streamlining collaboration and business tools as early as 2013, the year it opted for Google Workspace. The company was about to open its first subsidiaries in Germany and, drawing on its experience in France, it wanted to adopt a new approach. As Sébastien Delcambre, IT Director at API Restauration, points out, "Our employees in France are spread across the country, so we already had a significant need for collaboration, even back then. We were using a wide range of tools from different software publishers to cover these needs. Managing a fleet of mixed applications and a growing number of workstations was becoming problematic and very time-consuming. So we took advantage of our expansion into Germany to test new solutions and, after comparing the offers on the market, we chose Google Workspace."
"Managing a fleet of mixed applications and a growing number of workstations was becoming problematic and very time-consuming. After comparing the offers on the market, we chose Google Workspace to replace our existing solution."
—Sébastien Delcambre, IT Director at API RestaurationThe issue raised by exchanges between colleagues at API Restauration was made even more complicated by the fact that the company's employees are spread across multiple sites (roughly 3,500 to date), so a large part of these exchanges take place on customers' premises. Securing exchanges in this context would have required the implementation of VPN-type solutions, which would have led to extremely high network connection costs. By opting for a cloud-based collaborative suite, API Restauration solved this problem. Secure exchanges are directly guaranteed by Google Cloud mechanisms, especially the SSO service associated with Workspace. "So employees can use classic connections and log in from anywhere, at any time, while still having access to the same level of service. In other words, Google Workspace allowed us to offer a wide range of productivity tools to our employees in a secure environment, for significantly less than we would have had to spend on networks and management if we had stuck with the mixed model used in France," says Thomas Gadenne, Managing Director of Digital Strategies at API Restauration.
Working more efficiently and improving exchanges
Photos of a dish or a location, feedback on a recipe, as well as video conferencing, API Restauration has always had advanced remote collaboration requirements. The arrival of Google Workspace not only facilitated these exchanges but also created a healthy break for the company's employees in terms of work habits. "A version upgrade is rarely enough to overhaul work habits," explains Thomas Gadenne. "As great as the new features are, they are often underutilized—or even ignored—by employees who continue to work as before. By switching to Google Workspace, we created a clean break that encouraged employees to use new working methods to increase productivity." To cite an example, "Before Google Workspace, some of our employees spent time sending out tables that other colleagues had to fill out. Once all the tables were completed and sent back by email, they then wasted a considerable amount of time copying and pasting to consolidate the data. With online collaboration and notification features, we helped users save time when drawing up documents collectively and improved security. For example, the use of Google Forms helped to structure user requests, as well as the collection of information. So we have optimized a lot of our processes."
In order to support exchanges between colleagues who are located far away from each other and strengthen social bonds, API Restauration also leans heavily on Google Meet.
In this context, the company invested in roughly 60 Google Meet hardware devices that provide users with the familiar Google Meet interface in the meeting room and save precious time by removing the need to adjust connections and settings.
As a result, "When the need to shelter in place was announced during the pandemic, the API Restauration support services were able to continue working normally thanks to the best practices already adopted through Google Workspace, well in advance of COVID," states Sébastien Delcambre.
Optimizing the management of a fleet of more than 5,000 workstations
With a fleet of workstations that continues to grow as the company expands, API Restauration is glad it opted for a productivity suite that no longer monopolizes its IT resources in terms of management. Satisfied with its approach that frees the IT Department from tasks with no added value while providing users with modern and highly accessible tools that greatly improve their work efficiency, API Restauration decided to take things to the next level by replacing its existing PCs with Chromebooks.
"With the online collaboration of the Google office suite, we have eradicated the time wasted by users on laborious and boring tasks. So we have optimized a lot of our processes."
—Thomas Gadenne, Managing Director of Digital Strategies at API RestaurationThe change hasn't happened overnight, and is part of a global approach aimed at making the client more reliable while reducing the maintenance costs of a fleet that at one point included 5,000 PCs. Google Workspace was just the first step for the company, as it made its tools accessible via a browser. The company then transformed its business tools, in order to also have a client available via a browser. API Restauration rolled out its first Chromebooks in 2015.
Still in progress, the process of replacing the existing PCs should result in improved workstation security and huge time savings for the IT Department, as Sébastien Delcambre points out: "Managing and updating 5,000 Windows PCs is a daunting task. We simply no longer had the time, and hiring an external service provider for support would have cost hundreds of thousands of euros. With Chromebooks, we offer the best client to our users while reducing maintenance as much as possible. It's not only easier for us but also much more secure for our information system. Application maintenance is carried out centrally and nothing is downloaded to the client, which limits the risk of information leaks."
Harnessing the potential of Google Cloud
True to its permanent transformation policy that is intent on making the most of technology, API Restauration is now considering abandoning its IP telephone system in favor of Google Voice, again to relieve its IT Department of tasks that do not add value to the business.
"We decided any new applications developed for our guests would systematically be hosted on Google Cloud as the environment is more reliable, more secure, and much more scalable than anything we have internally in our data centers."
—Sébastien Delcambre, IT Director at API RestaurationSupported by the service provider Inaubi, an expert in Google Cloud solutions, the company has also started harnessing the true potential of Google Cloud, in particular BigQuery data services, to take full advantage of its data. "More generally, we also decided any new applications developed for our guests [i.e. the company's customers] would systematically be hosted on Google Cloud as the environment is more reliable, more secure, and much more scalable than anything we have internally in our data centers," concludes Sébastien Delcambre.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About API Restauration
Founded in 1956, API Restauration specializes in collective catering under contract. Located in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany, the company employs more than 10,000 people and achieved a turnover of €817 million in 2022.
About Inaubi
Inaubi, a Google Cloud Partner, supports companies throughout their digital transformation with Google Workspace, Google Cloud, and Google Chrome solutions.