How First Team replaced Gmail, WhatsApp and Google Drive with kSuite

First Team has become one of the leading French-language NBA media outlets, with 750,000 followers and 100 million views a year, including 200,000 on YouTube. It is part of the Influx creator network (Léo Duff, Legend Media, Laurent Baffie, Hardisk, Romain Lanéry and others). Rapid growth has gradually changed its needs: a bigger team, more projects to coordinate and several terabytes of video content to manage every day. To support this change of scale, First Team centralised its communication, data and work tools with Infomaniak’s kSuite. The result: smoother production and a better ability to steer all of its activities and run projects in parallel.

From 10 to 10,000,000 views: professionalising the organisation

Today, First Team is run professionally and reaches an audience of several hundred thousand subscribers, with millions of views on YouTube. Yet when it was founded in 2016, the team worked as amateurs. Its three founders, former basketball players Erwan Abautret, Thomas Dufant and Stephen Brun, had no formal production process. Everything went through personal messaging apps such as WhatsApp, and documents were scattered across everyone’s own tools.

This set-up remained workable until the audience and production volume grew. In a few years, First Team went from 10 to 100 million views a year and multiplied its formats and simultaneous projects: shows, a website, partnerships, merchandising and events.

This growth increased the volume of videos and put the team’s internal organisation to the test. Information was becoming hard to find, files were often scattered and project tracking lacked clarity. Some topics could be slowed down or left aside for lack of structure. For the same reasons, the use of personal email addresses and the absence of collaborative tools held back the professionalisation of exchanges with partners.

To keep developing, First Team needed to organise its workflows better, improve collaboration between team members and centralise video files to simplify project tracking.

Why First Team chose Infomaniak’s kSuite

• Storage capacity: kSuite (kDrive) can handle several terabytes of data, with video files of up to 50 GB.
• Storage-to-price ratio: the model still fits growing volumes, with no extra cost tied to storage.
• kSuite’s unified environment: all files, emails and conversations are brought together in one place, and conversations are structured so that each activity can be tracked separately.
• Infomaniak’s values: its clear environmental commitment matches the team’s convictions.
• Training: the Infomaniak team is on hand to help get started with the tools and train the team.

The challenges of a fast-growing media outlet

Improve project management: centralise conversations, files and information by project to avoid dispersion and make tracking easier.

Enable collaboration between several stakeholders: coordinate players, agents, clubs and partners with differentiated access levels.

Keep data accessible on the move: give access to information from the team’s various devices, while travelling and in the field.

Handle large volumes of content: store and share HD videos and all kinds of documents without technical constraints.

Guarantee the confidentiality of sensitive data: secure exchanges and protect contractual information in particular.

How to migrate to kSuite: the 4 steps First Team followed

1. Initial training with Infomaniak

The Head of Operations took a one-hour training session with the Infomaniak team to get to grips with kSuite. This first step allowed him to structure how First Team would use the tools and then train the rest of the team internally.

2. Migrating from Gmail to Infomaniak Mail

First Team overhauled its email set-up, which had previously been spread across personal addresses such as Gmail. The team migrated more than 20,000 emails to Infomaniak Mail, with a professional address for each team member and generic addresses per department, such as production@, socialmedia@ or recrutement@. This centralises conversations so that information for each area of activity can be found faster. Access rights for these addresses are managed directly by the team in the Infomaniak Manager. Moving to kSuite also strengthens First Team’s branding with its contacts and makes the organisation more credible by bringing all email signatures up to the same standard.

3. Migrating from WhatsApp to kChat for internal communication

The team replaced WhatsApp conversations and groups with kChat, with one channel to track each project or production. This set-up brings together everything relating to content, approvals and adjustments in one place and makes it easy to switch from one to another.

Centralising conversations gives an overall view of First Team’s activities, which makes it possible to quickly spot topics that have been left waiting too long.

4. Migrating from Google Drive to kDrive for video files

The team centralised all production files in kDrive. Files previously stored in personal cloud services were imported via the kDrive desktop app. Folders are organised by project, with specific access rights for each team member configured in the Infomaniak Manager. Throughout the week, the teams share video versions (up to 50 GB each) via public kDrive links to work with editors and sponsors. Including versioning, total production storage exceeds 6 TB of data. Every version (V1, V2, V3) is accessible to everyone, which makes it possible to follow the approval stages without any break in the loop (nothing gets lost). When a clip is ready, a team member shares it from their phone for quick approval by the team, so corrections can follow on immediately, even when someone is unavailable and without waiting to be back in the office.

The results after migrating to kSuite

First Team now steers all of its activities in a unified environment, with continuous production cycles and immediate visibility on every project. It gains on several fronts:

• Multi-project coordination transformed: First Team has multiplied its shows and productions despite a small headcount. Each project is managed in a single dedicated communication channel. The team saves time: it can follow progress in real time without having to cross-reference several channels and regularly double-check information.
• Better project context: whether a new team member is joining the company or someone is joining a project, the context is directly accessible thanks to the conversation history and the centralisation of all files in kDrive.

• A simpler, shorter production cycle: 5 to 6 shows a week are produced with 4K files. Versions are centralised and shared within the team almost instantly. As soon as a version of a video is produced, it is approved and/or corrected straight away.
• Simpler content sharing with partners: editors and sponsors can access shared files directly, which avoids having to duplicate files to upload them to transfer tools, as before.
• A stronger professional image: email addresses per department and signatures are harmonised across the team, which clarifies external exchanges and strengthens First Team’s image with its contacts.