PriceMinister.com enhances collaboration and reduces costs by going Google
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Editor’s note: Over 3 million businesses have adopted Google Apps. Today we’ll hear from Justin Ziegler, CIO of PriceMinister.com. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google cloud calculator.
PriceMinister.com is one of France’s leading online shopping destinations, connecting over 13 million buyers and sellers in Europe. As a company, we are in constant evolution, both in terms of adapting to the fast paced, and highly competitive industry that e-commerce has become and accommodating our ever-growing number of employees. In terms of technical resources, this represents a regular growth in costs -- each extra work station requiring new software licenses and additional storage.
With this in mind, we decided to examine the market in order to look for a solution that could adapt to our needs and would achieve the following goals:
- Maintain our budget while sustaining a high level of security and performance
- Reduce the number of in-house servers
- Focus resources on core business issues
- Implement new, collaborative tools for all users
- Set-up a platform that enables seamless access to information anywhere
After reviewing all of our options, we decided that Google Apps for Business met all of our needs. Our Network System & Security Engineer Damien Gilloz can now dedicate 100% of his time to making sure that PriceMinister.com is running smoothly. According to Mr. Gilloz, “It was a no-brainer; we used to have two in-house e-mail servers that needed constant maintenance and now we have none, because everything is stored on Google’s servers. This means that I can now concentrate on my core job.”
The benefits of Google Apps were immediate and had a very positive impact on all of our teams. Julian Buhagiar, Account Manager for PriceMinister.co.uk believes that Google’s mobile apps and Google Calender have considerably increased the efficiency of the Sales team: “Since the launch of our UK site in 2008, I often travel abroad to find new business prospects or attend conventions, and I must say that Google’s mobile apps allow us to be a lot more reactive and efficient. You finish your meeting, send an email report back to head office in Paris, and organise the next one according to everybody's availability -- all from your mobile phone.”
The transfer of existing email accounts to Gmail was successfully carried out and 200 employees quickly came to appreciate the possibilities offered by this new system. The simplicity of Google Calendar, the fluidity of the exchanges enabled by Google Docs, and the accessibility from mobile platforms has dramatically increased team productivity.
Posted by Justin Ziegler, CIO
PriceMinister.com is one of France’s leading online shopping destinations, connecting over 13 million buyers and sellers in Europe. As a company, we are in constant evolution, both in terms of adapting to the fast paced, and highly competitive industry that e-commerce has become and accommodating our ever-growing number of employees. In terms of technical resources, this represents a regular growth in costs -- each extra work station requiring new software licenses and additional storage.
With this in mind, we decided to examine the market in order to look for a solution that could adapt to our needs and would achieve the following goals:
- Maintain our budget while sustaining a high level of security and performance
- Reduce the number of in-house servers
- Focus resources on core business issues
- Implement new, collaborative tools for all users
- Set-up a platform that enables seamless access to information anywhere
After reviewing all of our options, we decided that Google Apps for Business met all of our needs. Our Network System & Security Engineer Damien Gilloz can now dedicate 100% of his time to making sure that PriceMinister.com is running smoothly. According to Mr. Gilloz, “It was a no-brainer; we used to have two in-house e-mail servers that needed constant maintenance and now we have none, because everything is stored on Google’s servers. This means that I can now concentrate on my core job.”
The benefits of Google Apps were immediate and had a very positive impact on all of our teams. Julian Buhagiar, Account Manager for PriceMinister.co.uk believes that Google’s mobile apps and Google Calender have considerably increased the efficiency of the Sales team: “Since the launch of our UK site in 2008, I often travel abroad to find new business prospects or attend conventions, and I must say that Google’s mobile apps allow us to be a lot more reactive and efficient. You finish your meeting, send an email report back to head office in Paris, and organise the next one according to everybody's availability -- all from your mobile phone.”
The transfer of existing email accounts to Gmail was successfully carried out and 200 employees quickly came to appreciate the possibilities offered by this new system. The simplicity of Google Calendar, the fluidity of the exchanges enabled by Google Docs, and the accessibility from mobile platforms has dramatically increased team productivity.
Posted by Justin Ziegler, CIO