Radio 357

About the client

Radio 357 is one of the youngest online radio stations on the Polish market, as it has been officially broadcasting since 5 January 2021. However, the voices of the presenters and the expertise of the producers are well known to the listeners, because the team includes many former employees of Polskie Radio. 

Radio 357 is the workplace of more than a hundred reporters, publishers, engineers, producers and marketers. The radio station is also co-created by the community of listeners because it is partly supported by crowdfunding on the Patronite platform. 

The main challenge

Radio 357 started its activity in the situation of a full-blown pandemic, which is why the main challenge for the team was to organise a safe space for hybrid work. Each employee had to be equipped with tools for work and online communication, which would be equally useful in the studio, at home and while working in the field.

Solution to the problem

Two competing sets of office applications – Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 – were subjected to a cost-benefit analysis. In previous workplaces, the chief system administrator learned about both the services and the advantages of cooperation with FOTC. It was his suggestion that finally convinced the Radio 357 management to implement Google Workspace with the support of a Google partner.

Results

Collaboration from anywhere in the world

Radio 357 proves every day that the heart of a vibrant radio station is people, not a physical place. The headquarters of the radio station is located in Warsaw, but its reporters and remote employees are scattered all over the world. The studio is prepared so that even its presenters can broadcast from home. You never know who is going to be in the headquarters, yet everyone stays in touch and sends files to others over the cloud. 

Sounds straight from the cloud

Every Radio 357 employee knows that they can find all the digital resources necessary for their work on Google Drive. Thanks to a well-thought-out folder structure, productions, recordings, podcasts and shows (whole or divided into news and excerpts to use) are always organised and available online.

Remote collaboration is not a problem when all processes in the company are geared towards efficiency. Each recording is immediately shared with the appropriate user group. You can download them onto any device, create new content based on it and immediately upload the result back into the cloud. This greatly accelerates the work of the people responsible for creating podcasts and thus allows them to regularly publish interesting content on various channels of communication with the audience. 

Freedom from paper

Google Drive is the place to store all documentation related to the daily functioning of the radio station. The description of a show always takes place in Google Docs, often co-created by more than ten people at the same time. Radio employees can forget about printing and organising pages in physical binders, because most of what they send to the accounting department are text files, PDFs and document scans.

Automated reports for record labels

Radio 357, like many other music radio stations, must keep a detailed list of the tracks that are broadcast into the ether. Fortunately, gone are the times when data analysis had to be carried out manually. 

Google Sheets are fully synchronised with the broadcast schedule, so they aggregate information in real-time about the number of plays, track titles, performers and producers. Although earlier attempts were made to build such a system with Excel and Notebook, it proved much easier with Google Sheets. The application retrieves, calculates and segregates the corresponding values automatically. After the initial setup, employees no longer have to manage it by hand – the only thing they need to do is generate a full report on the use of the tracks with just one click and send it to record labels. 

Secure communication

Through Google Workspace, radio employees can actively participate in the life of the company anytime and anywhere. The exchange of text messages, data, files and tasks often takes place in Google Chat rooms, but the most important communication channel at Radio 357 is Google Meet. Each week there are about fifteen regular meetings for all users, and at least forty people are present at each meeting, Remote employees can join the conversation from any mobile device, and people present in the studio can use comfortable video meeting stations prepared in conference rooms.

Comprehensive support From FOTC

Administrators from the technical department of Radio 357 can always count on the help of certified specialists from FOTC. This local partner provides not only advantageous discounts on services but also technical support 24/7.