When Grafana Labs prepared to launch its Japan office, they focused early on ensuring the new regional team stayed fully aligned with the rest of the company from day one.

Grafana Labs operates globally, with teams across the US, Europe, and APAC working closely together on product, sales, and customer support. Launching a new regional office meant the Japan team would need to collaborate across time zones and languages.

From onboarding to internal product discussions, communication would be constant.

Starting with HQ-led onboarding

Before the Japan office officially launched, Grafana Labs started using Cuckoo.

The first use case came from HQ HR. As the Japan team began hiring, HR teams at headquarters ran offline onboarding sessions for new hires in Japan. These sessions were followed by 1:1 online meetings between team members in the same function across regions.

This helped new hires ramp up quickly and build working relationships with their global counterparts.

Cuckoo enabled these conversations to happen naturally. Both sides could speak in English but easily fallback to their preferred language while real-time interpretation handled the rest.

From onboarding to everyday collaboration

What started as an HR onboarding tool quickly expanded.

As new hires settled into their roles, the same teams began using Cuckoo for regular cross-regional meetings. Product discussions, sales syncs, and internal planning sessions between Japan, APAC, and HQ started running through the same real-time translation layer.

A language layer across the Japan team

Over time, usage naturally spread across the entire Japan organization.

Today, the whole Japan regional team uses Cuckoo to stay in sync with colleagues across the company: sales updates, product discussions, technical deep dives, marketing campaigns.

Teams speak their preferred language while staying aligned with the rest of the organization.

Building the right infrastructure early

Opening a new region is always a coordination challenge.

For Grafana Labs, putting the right language infrastructure in place early meant the Japan team could operate at the same speed as the rest of the company.

From HQ-led onboarding to everyday collaboration, Cuckoo became the language layer connecting the Japan office with the rest of Grafana Labs.