How NZTE Digital Operations Set the Bar for Government Communications with Zoom

The New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) Digital Operations department is a little different from your typical government department. When a role is advertised, they’re inundated with responses.

“We have the best job in the country. We work for a cause: New Zealand” says Aaron Evans, Director Digital Operations at NZTE.

Tasked with growing the country’s economy and reputation by introducing overseas investors and exporters to local high-growth opportunities, Digital Operations attributes its success to a connected culture and innovative technologies like Zoom.

Evans says the digital forerunner was ‘digitally unenviable’ five years ago. The technology for connecting people was there, but it wasn’t seamless. It sometimes took 15 minutes to join a conference call via the legacy video conferencing solution, and for an organisation selling New Zealand to the rest of the world, it was unpalatable. 

From three Zoom Rooms to 129

NZTE went to market with an RFP for a video communications platform that worked well and was easy to use. Zoom stood out from 25 plus different responses for its intuitiveness. 

“We were looking for the catch,” Evans confesses. They decided not to make a big deal about replacing conference software. Three Zoom Rooms were introduced to key APAC locations, which went down really well. Before he knew it, Evans had budgeted for 40 more. “In almost no time at all we ended up with 129!”

Zero to Hero

Soon Zoom Meetings was available to employees to use on their phones and in their homes. They were launching Zoom from within Microsoft Outlook and Teams without having to stop and set up a web conference in motion. NZTE’s employees also began using Zoom Rooms in other ways to maximise meetings during the Covid-19 restrictions, including in-meeting polls and Breakout Rooms for brainstorming. 

An All-Hands to Remember 

Evans’ organization recently took on the company’s annual all-hands, spanning three time zones, in Zoom. The organization successfully coordinated a full green screen studio production with New Zealand-themed backgrounds to show off the country’s rural beauty, as well as animated PowerPoints and broadcast-style ads showing video snippet recaps from earlier sessions throughout the event.

Evans says he couldn’t have imagined staging the year’s largest cultural event with such a small team if it weren’t for Zoom. 

“Zoom’s HD video and audio support for up to 1,000 people means everyone gets to join in without having to contend with pixelated screens or audio lag!”

Today New Zealand, Tomorrow the World

Next on the list is a project that Evans’s deeply passionate about. He’s looking into ways to help the New Zealand government achieve its commitment to net zero carbon by the year 2050. He is on a steering committee taking on the challenge and sees technologies like Zoom playing a key role. 

“We have a rock-solid, video first communications strategy. We really don’t need to be in the sky burning aviation fuel for every single meeting and event,” he says.

To learn more about how NZTE is using Zoom to streamline its collaboration and communication, read the full case study.