“To stay ahead in a rapidly evolving industry, we've adopted Google Workspace. Its secure and intuitive collaboration suite has been instrumental in streamlining our operations and enhancing productivity across the entire organization.” - Rufino Jr. Tinio, Head of Infrastructure & Service Management, Personal Collection"
Personal Collection Direct Selling, Inc. (PCDSI) is a proudly Filipino-owned direct selling company with over 600 branches and millions of dealers across the Philippines and Malaysia. It offers hundreds of high-quality, science-backed products across eight categories, including home care, personal care, and baby care. With a 3,200-strong workforce across the Philippines and a growing presence in Malaysia, the company needed a robust, scalable, and cost-effective solution to support its distributed teams.
The company's legacy collaboration tools were behind the curve in technology and cost-effectiveness, entailing high maintenance costs and complex management due to multiple license expiration dates and varying license tiers. Furthermore, the company's practice of multiple employees sharing accounts presented potential security vulnerabilities and hindered personalized user experiences.
Personal Collection (PC) chose Google Workspace primarily because it offered a lower total cost of ownership than the company's previous provider, and also due to the need to mitigate potential audit exposures from its former vendor. Beyond cost, Google Workspace had a reputation for innovation and familiarity among PC users, especially those accustomed to Gmail and Android - this made it a good choice for a smooth transition and long-term growth.
“Google Workspace has truly kept us up to date. It centralizes our applications and documents online, making our organization more efficient and responsive to our business needs.” - Enrique Juan Velez, IT Executive, Personal Collection
As Rufino Tinio Jr., PC's Head of Infrastructure & Service Management, describes it,
"To stay ahead in a rapidly evolving industry, we've adopted Google Workspace. Its secure and intuitive collaboration suite has been instrumental in streamlining our operations and enhancing productivity across the entire organization."
“Google Workspace is a big step in our Tech Up PC journey — building a high-performing organization with secure, modern tools while optimizing costs. With cloud and AI, we're modernizing our systems and infrastructure for scale and speed, empowering our people and the organization to drive growth and transformation.”
- Marc Nicholas Angeles, Vice President, Head of Information Technology
Since migrating to Google Workspace, PC has transformed its daily operations, enhancing productivity and enabling seamless collaboration across its large and geographically dispersed workforce. With individual licenses for each employee, global teams can now use the integrated tools to work more efficiently.
The connectivity between Google applications, particularly Google Drive, has improved document access, sharing, and real-time co-editing, allowing teams to collaborate on projects simultaneously from any location. HR teams, for example, use Google Forms for employee surveys, which streamlines feedback collection and internal communications.
The PC team also makes innovative use of AppSheet to develop customized, proprietary applications. A case in point is PC Dictionary, PC's own dictionary app for internal company terms, which aids new employees in onboarding and quickly familiarizing themselves with the organization's unique jargon. This exemplifies how employees are going beyond off-the-shelf tools to actively build solutions tailored to their specific needs, driving internal efficiency and innovation.
Furthermore, there has been a notable increase in the adoption of Gemini, with employees using its advanced generative AI across Workspace apps. Users across the organization personally attest to Gemini's advantages, especially its seamless integration with other Google systems, such as the Google Chrome browser, offering features such as email summarization that surpass other AI platforms.
In the words of Enrique Juan Velez, an IT Delivery Lead at PC, "Google Workspace has truly kept us up to date. It centralizes our applications and documents online, making our organization more efficient and responsive to our business needs."
This widespread adoption of AI-powered features further streamlines workflows and empowers employees with intelligent assistance. The transition was ably supported by Kollab, a Google Cloud partner, which handled the implementation and provided extensive training. As a part of its post-deployment support, Kollab organized a "Google Day" to engage employees and facilitate their familiarity with the new platform, ensuring a smooth cultural and technological transition. "We're proud to be working with Personal Collection on their digital transformation journey. For more than 20 years, they've helped improve the lives of countless Filipinos, and it's inspiring to see how they continue to innovate and empower their dealers, customers, and communities across the country," adds Jonathan Ty, CCO at Kollab
Personal Collection's transition to Google Workspace has increased its operational efficiency and enhanced collaboration across its extensive workforce. Moreover, using the solution's integrated suite of tools, the company has streamlined communications, bolstered security with individual user identities, and empowered employees to innovate with custom applications built on AppSheet and advanced AI capabilities like Gemini. All these positions Personal Collection for continued growth and responsiveness in a dynamic industry.
Established in 2014, Kollab is a premier digital transformation advisor for more than 1,100 companies across Southeast Asia. Kollab certified professionals collaborate with enterprise customers to achieve transformation through cloud-first and AI-first solutions and services. Kollab is certified as a Great Place to Work® and with distinction as one of the Best Workplaces™ in Asia. In 2024, Kollab was ranked No. 1 among the Philippines Best Workplaces™ .
