Posted by Daniel Durgan, IT Business Partner at ISG

Editor's note: Today we hear from Daniel Durgan, IT Business Partner at ISG, an international construction services company delivering fit out, construction, engineering services and a range of specialist solutions. Daniel explains why there’s never been a better time to digitally transform the construction industry.

The construction industry is undergoing a digital revolution. Companies that have for decades relied heavily on printed contracts, drawings and documents are now moving to online tools to save time and money and keep productivity up in a marketplace that’s more expansive and more demanding. At ISG, we’re using Google’s cloud-based tools to ensure that we’re at the forefront of this industry shift.

With Google Apps, we’re taking full advantage of technology-enhanced collaboration, productivity and mobility. Over the course of a few hours, I can use Google Drive to review a presentation on my tablet, Gmail to check emails and Google Calendar to schedule meetings on my phone while away from the office. I can also jump into a meeting with colleagues from around the world from any of the 26 Chromeboxes that are set up in one of our conference rooms. Whether I’m on a site visit, in the office or on the move, Google Apps allows me to continue working and collaborating with my team.

Projects move fast with real-time collaboration It’s essential for our business to control who has access to certain documents. Drawings must only be issued to authorised people, and each person must review the latest version as it’s being developed. Drive enables us to completely control what’s shared inside and outside of our company — the fact that our team alone has 1.5 million files in Drive speaks to our reliance on the tool for secure file storage.

Google Docs allows us to collaborate on shared documents at the same time, no matter where we are in the world. I can start shaping up a proposal in London and invite a colleague in Europe to work on it with me. There’s also more of a human element. When someone comments, you see their face next to it — it ties you emotionally to the process. We keep track of all our revisions in Sheets to monitor our progress. And we can always instant message each other with quick questions or suggestions, so we feel connected, all the time.

A lot of what we do is very visual. It’s hard to describe building plans and designs over the phone. With Hangouts, we can bring everyone together to discuss these plans and drawings as if we were all in the same room. We can move quickly from stakeholders to contractors to suppliers to make sure the right people are involved in the right conversations.

Staff expect more from an IT solution A big part of my team’s role is to help build relationships and ensure employees communicate effectively and get the support they need. When we sent out a survey using Forms to ask all our staff what they’d like to see from IT, they told us they wanted to find out more about our Google tools. We’re using Synergise Google Apps Training to help our stakeholders go beyond the basics and use the suite to its full potential.

Quality: getting it right the first time Quality is extremely important in our business, so we carry out frequent on-site check-ins to ensure teams are following the proper processes and delivering a high standard of construction correctly the first time. When we do these quality checks, we submit recommendations and observations using Forms on Android tablets. The information is imported into Sheets, and using Apps Script, we create dashboards, so employees across teams and functions can easily track the check-ins in real time.

We’re improving the way we work all the time, and that’s thanks to the support and enthusiasm of our employees. Many of our automated solutions have been suggested by them, and it’s great to see how passionate they are about Google Apps. There’s also an excitement among my team around what the future holds for us and our industry with new tools at our dispense and a new way of working for our customers.

Editor's note: Today we speak with Kyle Coleman, Director of Sales Development and Kelly Payne, Customer Programs Manager at Looker, a data analytics software company that makes deep data understandable and useable for business teams. Looker uses Google Apps and Asana to track and collaborate on all their work.
Can you tell us about Looker and why the company needed collaboration and productivity tools?
Kelly: Our team at Looker is building software that helps business teams find, explore and understand the data that matters to them. As a fast growing startup, we think a lot about scaling our team and processes effectively and efficiently. We need the right tools do this well.

Why Google Apps?
Kyle: We’re heavy users of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. We can easily share our work cross-functionally and always feel confident that the person we’re working with has the most up-to-date version.
Kelly: We’re constantly pulling up a Google Doc to have everyone work from the same place at the same time. There’s a huge benefit to having our work and discussions update in real time and to easily share what we’re working on with anyone in our organization.

How and why does your team use Asana?
Kyle: We use Asana for important cross-functional workflows like new hire on-boarding, sales development and for almost all of our marketing team’s work. From campaign management to launches, every piece of content we publish — whether video, customer case study or blog post — is tracked in Asana. There’s so many moving pieces involved in a complex and collaborative workflow; Asana lets us track every detail.
Kelly: With Asana, we can more easily keep track of who's doing what, and stay updated on the progress of projects. As we’ve grown, Asana has helped us identify how repeated tasks can become standardized processes. Developing process standards brings the clarity and accountability that help us work together well.

How are you using Asana and Google Apps together?
Kelly: We're always linking our docs, spreadsheets or slide decks into our Asana tasks, which is easy to do with the Asana and Google Drive integration. Asana is where we make our work actionable, so the task becomes the place where all the relevant information is stored. Connecting Google and Asana makes it easy to ensure that everyone’s working out of the right documents. We’ve added a good deal of efficiency to our workflow by not duplicating efforts across teams.
How has productivity improved on your team by integrating Asana and Google apps?
Kyle: Two things that matter deeply to us as a growing team are productivity and priorities. Having everything in the same central place saves us so much time as a team, and Google Apps and Asana have given everyone a sense of what they need to be working on and when.

You mentioned that you’re constantly working collaboratively at Looker. How does using Google and Asana side by side make working together easier?
Kelly: With these tools that we’re now using, it’s so much easier to be collaborative and build a sense of trust and empowerment within our team. Whether we’re making a comment in a Google Doc or “hearting” someone’s task in Asana, we’re having a lot more fun moving our work forward together.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about how Looker makes work fun and collaborative using Google Apps with Asana. You can learn more and enable Asana in your Google Apps account by visiting their application listing in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Editor's note: Today Google Sheets unveiled an original artwork in NYC , designed entirely in Sheets by two artists working together from different continents. To turn their artwork into reality, we worked with Colossal Media, a Brooklyn-based company and Google Apps customer that hand-paints murals all over the world. At Google, we’re always inspired by innovative uses of our collaboration tools, so we spoke with Colossal co-founder Adrian Moeller to learn what inspires him.

Can you tell us about Colossal Media and what drove you and your co-founder to start the company?
Colossal was founded in 2004 to bring hand-painted advertising back. It was tough to get clients at the beginning because nobody wanted to hand-paint anything, it was a completely dead industry. So we built a sustainable business out of a startup, guerrilla-style beginning.

Why hand-painted advertising?
Hand-paint is in your face. It’s exciting. Being high up on buildings and painting on rigs, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Now we’re working on 400 of these projects a year.

When did you start using Google Apps?
Colossal has been using Gmail as our corporate email platform for about 10 years and in around 2008, we began to use Google Apps.

What made you choose Google Apps?
From a logistical standpoint, it made the most sense. We’re physically all over the place. We all work from different locations (offices in New York, co-workers in California, painters working out in the field across the globe) and needed a solid solution for communication and information exchange. Apps makes it easy to share concepts and ideas.

Which apps do you use most and why?
Google Drive is super helpful for Colossal. It helps keep all projects organized and managed. It’s also nice having a sharing tool to use that can be kept private.

We also use Sheets, Forms, Hangouts and Docs. From the shop perspective, Sheets is a great web-based solution that helps us create database systems for organizing, compiling and calculating job information during pre-production. Sheets also helps us deliver accurate, up-to-date information to our crew and clients who are in several locations around the city on any given day. Forms let us collect feedback from the field and gather Peer Evaluations and End-of-Job details.

How has Google Apps changed the way you work?
As Colossal has grown as a company, communication has become harder because it’s not always face to face. Google Apps has made communicating from anywhere more streamlined and efficient. The flexibility to have instant, easy access to everything we need to get the job done — whether we’re on site for a paint job or in the office across the country — from colleagues we’re collaborating with has helped us scale. When you work outdoors and wrestle with the elements, anything can happen when you least expect it. Google Apps brings all of our information to us wherever we are, whenever we need it. It’s also great that we’re able to go back and find things from eight years ago and look at it. It’s like a treasure trove of memories that travels with you.

Posted by Chris Hewertson, CTO of glh

Editor's note: Today’s post is from Chris Hewertson, CTO of glh, the largest owner-operator hotel company in London with over 5,000 rooms throughout London as well as two locations in Malaysia. Chris was recently named “disruptive player in the crowded hotels market” in the CIO top 100 list. Here, he shares his secrets to success.


In 2013, we launched the world’s fastest hotel wi-fi and put our focus on digital. We had big ideas to transform our business, and we knew we couldn’t do it alone.

We’re always looking for new and innovative technology solutions that can help us deliver the best guest-centred experience in hospitality. Hosted services and real-time responses are becoming more and more of a basic customer expectation in other industries so we thought, why not hotels? We worked with implementation partner Cloudreach to adopt Google Apps as our fully integrated, enterprise-wide cloud collaboration and storage solution.

Let product enthusiasts within your teams help usher a smooth adoption With over 33 hotels, more than 1000 users and nearly 4 million files, how were we going to move everything and everyone onto Google Apps for Work? The answer was obvious – Jedis.

Well, not Jedis exactly, but pretty close. Our nominated Google Guides were a group of 65 champions across all our locations and departments – from night managers to head housekeepers – who helped kick-start our Google Apps for Work adoption. Their support and enthusiasm for the tools meant we could truly bring Google Apps for Work into every part of our business.

Not only did they help us cut down old and unused data as part of the migration process (we have now almost halved our original 3 million files), they encouraged everyone to use the tools for creative solutions. This is a great example of how a user led change approach can lead to high levels of engagement and adoption while minimising the need for a traditional data migration.

Find creative ways to use new tools to improve customer experience At glh, we take guest complaints seriously and try to accommodate each request as much as we can. At our biggest hotel, room moves and changes happen daily. Guests move rooms to be closer to their travelling party, away from their boss (yes, really) or even to avoid odd numbers.

Before Google, this would cause major disruption across a number of teams from Housekeeping to Concierge. Now, all teams can see and edit real-time room changes in Sheets, and housekeepers can even use it on their mobiles. As a result, we’ve significantly minimized delays, confusion and complaints.

From internal invites to office polls, Forms has been a welcome addition to the working lives of all of us at glh. Now we have a form that allows staff to check out a guest from anywhere in the hotel in seconds. No more printed paper that was popped into a box at reception.

Invest big savings from new technology tools into workplace improvements Trans-atlantic Hangout conversations have led to a 42% reduction in conference call charges. Hourly printouts of various logs and reports of over 1,000 pages are now shareable digital Docs that are securely stored on Drive. The logs are updated in real time and available on any device.

It’s just over a year since we introduced Google Apps for Work, and in that time we’ve made so many apps-based ideas a reality – like our Manager of the Month initiative, where everyone votes using a Form.

Our Google Guides, who were so central to our training and awareness a year ago, are still coming up with new suggestions all the time – it’s amazing how creative people can be.

Posted by Paul Hsu, Chief Operating Officer at Fancy

Editor's note: Today we hear from Paul Hsu, Chief Operating Officer at Fancy, which uses Google Apps with ProsperWorks CRM to help manage merchant partnerships, gain transparency into sales team activity and optimize their internal processes. Register here to join our Hangout on Air on June 14 at 9 a.m. to learn more about how ProsperWorks, a Google recommended app, can improve your business.

Fancy, the place to discover, engage with and buy goods from top brands, works with trendsetters and tastemakers to curate thousands of goods. Keeping track of new merchant product launches can get complicated, but Google Apps helps ease the coordination process. For example, we often need to schedule last minute meetings to review products that we want to feature at the start of every day. We use Calendar to find meeting times that fit our schedules, Drive to share product launch proposals and Sheets to manage product launch timelines. Since Google Apps tools are designed to work and integrate smoothly with one another, running these meetings is a seamless process. We’ve used it heavily since we started the company, and the tools have been vital to our productivity and growth.

Growing with Google With a quickly growing merchant partnership base, we’ve found it increasingly important to keep track of all potential vendors and new interactions. Working with thousands of merchants and even more products, we needed a CRM solution to help scale this part of our business.

Since we were already using Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Contacts and Drive for most of our operations, we saw ProsperWorks as an effective CRM solution, given how integrated it is with Google’s entire ecosystem of apps.

ProsperWorks with Gmail and Calendar After we integrated the ProsperWorks Chrome extension — which only took a few short hours — our brand development team began using it immediately. They used ProsperWorks to track communications and interactions with merchants in Gmail and identify items that required follow-up. We saw an increase in our team’s productivity and growth in our brand partner network that we directly attributed to this integration.

With easy-to-use and intuitive tools from ProsperWorks, we experienced a significant increase in the number of merchant partnership deals closed due to the ability to better track customers and share real-time information that helped us close deals.

ProsperWorks with Drive and Sheets In addition to the benefits for our brand development team, our executive team gained tremendous insight through ProsperWorks reporting capabilities, which work perfectly with Sheets. ProsperWorks' integration with Sheets allowed our brand development team to simply aggregate, organize and visualize our sales in a single dashboard. This gave us immediate access to important insights, such as those gleaned from comparing pipelines by stage, opportunity assessments, customer types, team workload, monthly team progress and even the status of our leads. We were able to get a bird’s eye view of all our sales pipelines without leaving Google Apps.

Using ProsperWorks with Drive gave us insight into product category gaps that we weren’t pursuing and showed us categories that had more partners than we needed. With ProsperWorks, we were able to easily identify these areas and refine our focus to develop partnerships that would expand our reach into new categories while reducing time spent on categories we had already built out.

Optimizing our brand management team with ProsperWorks and Google Apps for Work On the ground level, our brand management team used ProsperWorks as a way to communicate, manage workflow, manage and assign tasks, share documents and more. Our brand development team has thousands of interactions daily across Gmail, Calendar and Hangouts, and it’s really helpful that on ProsperWorks, the profiles and status of each lead are automatically updated so that every email exchange, event and file is easily accessible by any team member.

Using Google Apps alongside ProsperWorks has helped us optimize the processes of our brand development team and make better decisions faster, which definitely gives us an edge over our competition.

Posted Mike Knapp, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Shoes of Prey

Editor's note: Today’s guest post is by Mike Knapp, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Shoes of Prey. Shoes of Prey creates handmade, bespoke women’s shoes designed by the customer.
Like a lot of tech companies these days, Shoes of Prey started as an exchange of ideas between a few friends — in my case, casual discussion with longtime friends from college, Michael and Jodie Fox. That day, a little magic happened for us when we landed on an idea that would spark interest for customers around the world — an online platform built to inspire creativity and truly honor individual expression. Shoes of Prey allows customers to design their own made-to-order shoes from anywhere via our online store, as long as they have Wi-Fi access.

The flexibility and freedom to be as creative with our personal expression as we choose is at the core of what we offer to customers, and we want the same from our workplace technology. We use cloud-based tools like Google Apps that allow employees to work how they want, from wherever they please.

Sharing information is particularly crucial now that we’re a global team with offices in the U.S., the Philippines, Australia, Japan and China. We save thousands of dollars we’d otherwise spend on travel by meeting face-to-face over Google Hangouts and working simultaneously in shared Google Docs.

Being able to write a document with people in three different offices at the same time is incredibly powerful. We compile our weekly global newsletter in a single shared Doc. Each team contributes its updates when ready, and there’s no need for multiple meetings and back-and-forth email attachments. Most teams share their weekly meeting notes in Docs as well.

We also use Google Sheets to manage financial budgeting across teams and have a singled shared master Sheet to track monthly expenses and cash flow. Each team updates its expenses in a designated Sheet and then the team lead or manager updates the master, which is access-controlled.

With Google Apps, we can maintain a highly collaborative culture and keep our data secure. Thanks to sophisticated sharing settings in Docs, we’re able to share customer and employee information only with intended recipients, grant specific permissions and adjust who has access even after sharing a link. We know that we have Google’s security experts watching out for us, which gives us peace of mind.

We’ve grown our company using Google Apps from day one, and I can’t imagine working any other way. Once you've worked this way, there’s no other way to work. And we’ve saved thousands of dollars by not having to hire people to manage servers or perform software updates, as these are automated with Google. Google Apps keeps our talented workforce from getting bogged down with outdated or mundane processes so that it can continue to create the best experience — and shoes — for our customers.

Posted by Tonino Ciuffini, Head of Information Assets, Warwickshire County Council, Warwick, UK

Editor's note: Today we hear from Tonino Ciuffini, Head of Information Assets at Warwickshire County Council, the local authority for Warwickshire, UK. The council handles social care, highways, public health, the fire service, economic development, education and more for the region’s 540,000 citizens. Read how £260,000 a year is just the start of their savings with Google Apps for Work.


The best thing about the work we do is the sheer range of ways we help people. While one group works to bring broadband to small businesses, another will tackle a fire or care for children in need. So when the government cut our council budget by 20%, we knew we faced tough decisions. For IT in particular, a £2,000,000 cut to our budget meant we had to look at all options for new ways of operating, and helped drive the decision to replace our 20-year-old email system. But it wasn’t just about saving money in the short-term. We wanted to share our facilities more effectively, improve the flexibility of our IT for staff and make it easier to work with external partners. Google was a perfect fit.

Tonino Ciuffini, Head of Information, Assets, Warwickshire County Council

Deploying 5,500 Google Apps accounts was much easier than I had imagined. With the help of Cloud Technology Solutions, who provided migration tools, advice and support, we migrated 3,000 users in just 8 weeks. Now Google Apps saves us £260,000 a year that we would have spent on our old system: £100,000 on licenses, £100,000 on infrastructure and £60,000 on support staff. But the really significant savings go deeper than that, and come from efficiencies made right across the organisation.

Saving time by working together on Drive. Instead of multiple versions of a document flying around on email, or saving documents to unrestricted servers, staff can work together on a single document on Drive, comment, make changes, choose their own access settings and even share documents with external agencies. This has also led to increased collaboration between staff and teams.

The mobility of web-based apps frees office space. We now have the flexibility to not only work from home or elsewhere, but to also work more closely with customers and partners. When working on-site with the police or health workers, council staff can essentially take the office with them.

Saving on transport costs with Hangouts. Face-to-face meetings with the citizens we serve are still important, but cutting out the financial and time costs of travelling to internal meetings generates further savings.

Cutting bureaucracy with Docs and Sheets. Taking notes during meetings on Docs eliminates the need to type notes afterwards. Everyone can leave comments, which improves accuracy and transparency, and voting with Forms gives us immediate, presentable results in Sheets.

Google logins make working simple. We no longer waste time dealing with forgotten passwords or typing separate logins into different applications. And being able to use multiple logins on a single device saves money on hardware, too: teams going to trade shows can share a single Nexus 9 tablet and log in simultaneously instead of using one device each.

Automatic upgrades saves on IT maintenance and keep us ahead of developments. In the four years that we’ve used Google Apps, every upgrade has felt like a natural evolution, and we’ve never had to implement new training to accommodate changes.

Google Apps has improved our effectiveness, too. Our team of four roadworks inspectors use Apps on tablets to be on the road for 80% instead of 50% of their day, significantly improving compliance with timetables for roadworks. And our family social workers use Calendar to advance safety by ensuring teams know where they are.

We also use notes on Drive to improve security and save paper with digital notes. At the top of our organisation, most of our elected county councillors have other jobs and don't work in our offices. Now they use Google Apps on a device of their choice, instead of clunky remote access systems, and check in more often to keep track of progress.

Budget cuts made life complicated for everyone at the council, but satisfaction with our IT system has actually increased during this difficult period. In the year we introduced Google Apps, our staff satisfaction scores increased in all 55 categories of an independent benchmarking run by a UK society of public service IT organisations called SOCITM. And last year, we ranked number one out of 60 UK councils in the SOCITM benchmarking survey for flexible working practices. That flexibility generates real savings without compromising on quality, and it was all made possible by Google Apps for Work.

Posted by Bret Knobelauch, Senior Director at ProsperWorks

Editor's note: Today we hear from Bret Knobelauch, Senior Director at ProsperWorks, a SaaS provider of next generation CRM solutions and — along with RingCentral — a Google Apps partner in the Recommended for Google Apps for Work program. Read how this rapidly growing technology company uses Google Apps to radically simplify customer facing sales and communications. And register here to join our Hangout on Air, on March 29 at 9 a.m. and learn how ProsperWorks went all in on the cloud with Google and Ringcentral.


ProsperWorks is the world's first “zero input” CRM. Designed specifically for Google Apps, ProsperWorks helps companies sell faster by identifying, organizing and tracking sales opportunities right in Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive. Our company was founded in 2011 with the vision to empower small business sales and marketing with a fantastic user experience for CRM.

Going all-in with Google Apps and the cloud When we started the company, we were already committed to leveraging the benefits of Google to run our business. After all, we build a SaaS CRM solution that is deeply integrated with Google Apps. So, in addition to choosing Gmail as our email platform, we went all in with Google technology for various aspects of our business. This included:

• Google Hangouts to interact with prospects and customers who are Google Apps customers themselves
• Google Drive for onboarding and sharing our sales assets with a rapidly expanding team of sales development reps and account executives
• Google Sheets for exporting and reviewing sales reports using the ProsperWorks integration

We soon discovered the need for not just any, but the right cloud-based, enterprise-class phone solution. There are two key features that our cloud phone solution must have:

• Ability to make and receive calls directly from within Gmail. My sales team spends 60-80% of their day at their desktop engaged in prospecting and sales calls. The ability to make and receive calls directly from a phone number within Gmail and ProsperWorks CRM keeps my team super productive. Plus users can see their communications history including call logs and voicemails, directly from within Gmail.

• Sales call analytics and reporting. From my mobile phone, I can regularly check on the call productivity of the team. For example, I can check on inbound versus outbound calls following the launch of a campaign. I can see trends and intervene if there seems to be an issue that needs to be addressed.

Why we chose RingCentral We switched from a vendor we worked with prior because RingCentral offered the enterprise business capabilities that we truly needed. I’m responsible for our sales development reps and account executives, and call activity is a key measure of productivity. RingCentral has robust call analytics and reporting that helped us gauge and increase productivity.

I didn’t want to take any risks with security and reliability, so the fact that RingCentral had been vetted by Google meant a lot. I also appreciated that RingCentral was an overall leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications in the cloud, and most importantly, the user experience and integration with Google Apps was fantastic.

ProsperWorks’ vision is about simplifying the CRM user experience. RingCentral shares this vision for business communications, and Google shares this vision for work productivity. Google Apps has proven to be a great unifying platform for partner solutions such as ProsperWorks and RingCentral. Empowered by Google Apps and RingCentral, we couldn’t be better equipped to serve and empower our own customers.

Posted by Adan Muñoz, co-founder and Director of Operations, BQ, Madrid, Spain

Editor's note: Today we hear from Adan Muñoz, co-founder and Director of Operations at BQ, a producer of smartphones, tablets, e-readers, 3D printers and educational robots based in Madrid, Spain. Founded in 2010, BQ now has a global team of more than 1,300 people at offices in Germany, France, Sweden, Russia, Italy and the UK. See how Google Apps for Work has played a central role in BQ’s rapid growth and unique work culture right from the start.


We don’t just want our customers to use our devices, we want them to understand what they’re using. That’s the core idea behind all of our products, whether it’s our “flatpack” 3D printer, our customisable smartphone or Zowi, our educational robot. Our goal is to get people thinking about technology, because the next great idea could come from anyone, anywhere.


With the same emphasis on engagement, we try to run BQ as a team of equals, where everyone has a voice. We know we do our best work when colleagues in design, engineering, technical, marketing and sales are free to bounce ideas off each other. But with 1,300 people at 10 offices, open communication can bring challenges. That’s why we built our business around Google Apps for Work from day one. Its forward-looking, simple and powerful tools have allowed us to shape our ideal working environment and work team.

• Drive gives us an open central platform that everyone can access. If we receive product information from a third-party, for example, we save it in Docs for anyone in the organisation who’s interested to read and leave comments or queries. That gives us oversight and transparency so that we can avoid problems before they occur.

• Instead of an email hierarchy of labels and folders, Gmail’s powerful search lets us find what we need in seconds on any device, and links directly to Docs on Drive and meetings on Hangouts. We don’t need to subdivide and separate projects and personnel, so teams develop more naturally.

• Every prototype we make is run through a series of tests by different groups before teams go back to the drawing board. With Drive, all of the information from every test is immediately available, and because we only have one version of the results on Sheets and Docs, we always know we’re working from the correct files.

• Google Apps makes it easy to coordinate teamwork. At the beginning of every project, we create a plan of action on Sheets for colleagues to keep track of progress. Rather than trade emails, now when someone wants to organise a meeting they go directly to Calendar, check someone’s availability and create a meeting, adding a link for a video call on Hangouts when they can’t meet in-person but still want that person-to-person time.

• Hangouts allows employees hundred of miles apart to feel that they work in one office. We use Hangouts daily to ensure maximum staff contact while saving on travel costs, video conferencing hardware, telecom bills and even time spent looking up phone numbers.

• We keep minutes of meetings in Docs so that staff can add to the same document simultaneously and leave comments on the public document after the event.

• Intuitive interfaces and simple administrative setup mean that when we bring on someone new, we can swiftly integrate them with our team. We even give them a Form asking where they will sit and what materials they need, so that we’re ready for their arrival ahead of time.

Our work at BQ is part of a long-term project. When we teach children how to program and design their own Zowi the robot, we’re not just teaching them basic robotics, we also want to prepare them for a future in which technology will play an ever greater role. Google is the perfect partner for that mission, with its understanding of the fast-evolving tech landscape and the constant updates to its Apps. Ultimately, our goals are aligned: we both want to give people the tools to empower themselves.

Posted by Matt Charman, Senior Product Marketing Manager


Today we’re launching the #maketime website, which builds on the movement to hold uninterrupted time on our calendars during the hours when we’re most creative. The website helps you prioritize time for the things that keep you inspired, over the things that just keep you busy.

Did you know that we spend 2.25 hours a day on average answering emails and 86 hours a month on average in meetings? The workplace is changing. We have the freedom to work and collaborate across any device and the flexibility to finish tasks and create from wherever we are. But we’re also more accessible.


Use the #maketime website to look at how you spend your work hours, so you can stamp out needless time takers, and not just save time, but #maketime for the things that are important to you.

Here are a few ways you can save time to #maketime with Google Apps.

Save time with Reminders in Google Calendar
Use Reminders in Google Calendar to combine an evolving and editable to-do list with your scheduled events. See the items on your list that you haven’t “checked off” yet at the top of your calendar each day, until you give them that triumphant swipe “complete!”

And Reminders sync with your contacts, so you can add phone numbers and addresses. When it’s time to call in dinner reservations at a favorite restaurant, dial directly from the Reminder.


Save time with machine learning and Inbox
From Inbox, use Smart Reply to respond to emails without typing out the reponses yourself. Machine learning recognizes emails that can be answered with short replies and creates natural language responses instantly — often with a few versions to choose from.

Save time by researching and collaborating in Docs
Switching between tabs and tools costs incremental time that adds up. In Docs and Slides, you can use the Research tool to do a quick Web and file search for terms you need to gather more info on. And now you can do the same on the go within the Docs app on Android.

From Docs, Sheets and Slides, you can also use the instant comments feature on the Web or your Android or iOS device to add teammates to the conversation by simply adding their names (just start typing names and contacts will appear in the comment box). So when you’ve got some great feedback on a line of text or a table of data, you can add a note right next to it that sends an email. No need to go back into Gmail to draft an additional note.

Also in Sheets, Explore deciphers your data for you and automatically creates charts and insights that illustrate trends. The time cost on your end: seconds.


Save time by converting image text
One of the coolest recent innovations in Drive for Work is the Optical Character Recognition that converts text in images into text documents to collaborate on. You can take a photo of a whiteboard brainstorm or an inspiring message on the other side of the subway window and turn that photo into a shared doc.

We can’t stop the clock — or to a large degree control the number of emails that flood our inboxes or the amount of traffic that slows our work commutes. But we can find ways to make more minutes meaningful.

Posted by Kenneth Karlsson, IT Manager, GANT AB

Editor's note: Today we hear from Kenneth Karlsson, IT Manager for GANT AB, a multinational clothing company based in Sweden. From its Swedish headquarters and three overseas subsidiaries, GANT coordinates 50 suppliers with 40 franchise partners worldwide to bring its brand of wearable fashion to more than 700 stores around the globe. Read why GANT chose Google Apps for Work to bring this global network together.


When I started work here in the 1980s, GANT was far from being the major multinational brand it is today. And though we’ve always been expanding, we’ve grown at a much faster pace since 2009 – the year we upgraded our communications and transitioned to Google Apps for Work. Since then, GANT and its partners more than doubled our number of stores, opening an additional 392 new stores spread across the world.


We initially switched to Google Apps to replace an email solution that was expensive, overloaded and incompatible with the range of operating systems we used. And with our subsidiaries in Sweden, the US, the UK and France effectively running as separate organisations and without essential collaborative abilities, including shared calendar access, we also had to find a way to come together if we wanted to compete globally. I was convinced that a web-based email platform would be the cost-effective, forward-thinking solution we needed. In 2009, the only major company to offer that was Google, and they’ve stayed ahead of that curve ever since.

It took our small IT team just three months to roll Google Apps for Work out across four countries. First, we ran a pilot programme in Sweden with 20 users, assisted by Avalon Solutions, the IT consultancy that enabled our switch to Google Apps. Then we deployed 400 accounts over two months by holding training sessions with small groups. People who already used web-based private email required minimal training, and because it’s a web-based system, we simply sent out log-in information instead of installing a client on every computer. Now we’re running 1,000 Google accounts and have decommissioned our expensive email server. That means we’re saving on hardware maintenance and cut out the hassle of handling spam or chasing people to free up space by deleting their emails. Factor in cheaper licenses and zero software installation costs over the past six years, and we’re saving a huge amount of money.

Google Apps for Work is uniquely suitable for doing business on a global scale. It’s not just about relying on web-based mobility to access all of our files and emails anywhere, anytime. Because Google Apps works through a browser, we no longer have compatibility problems with our 40 independent franchise partners, each of which has its own IT setup. Assigning single-sign-on accounts to those partners gives them controlled access to our intranet and Drive. Using Drive lets us centralise administration from our Stockholm office and provides a shared hub to consolidate accounting and retail information across all of our subsidiaries. We use Docs and Sheets globally to manage orders and deliveries with our 50 suppliers in China, Portugal and Spain, while local colleagues can work alongside each other on a single document to craft swift and thorough reports. And Google’s size and reputation gives us peace of mind about its security and stability that we would not get from smaller cloud systems.

By using Google Apps for Work, we enjoy constant and automatic system improvements. New functions regularly appear on Drive, so we’re always ahead of the game as the marketplace evolves. For example, in 2009, Hangouts and tablets didn’t exist. Now outside every meeting room we have an Android tablet linked to Calendar so we can see who’s booked them, while inside the rooms we have Chromebox for meetings to enable Hangout video conferencing. With another IT solution, after six years we’d already be looking for a replacement. With Google Apps for Work, we’re still ahead of the game.

Posted by Sebastien Marotte, VP, Google Apps for Work


Cloud-based workplace tools are no longer niche. Companies from small startups to Fortune 500 giants like Whirlpool and PwC have realized that servers are expensive, teams need real-time collaboration and employees need access to email, calendar and collaborative editing tools on their phones. For many companies, deciding to move on-premises systems to the cloud is a no-brainer. Figuring out which cloud solution delivers the most return on investment when both major providers claim their tools are “mobile-friendly” and offer “real-time collaboration” is the tough part.

To provide customers with concrete data on the benefits that productivity, mobility and collaboration can bring to an organization (even after moving to the cloud), Google commissioned independent market research firm Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study. Forrester surveyed seven companies in North America, EMEA and APAC in a range of industries — including professional services, retail, real estate, IT and media — who migrated from an alternate cloud solutions to Google Apps. For a composite organization based on feedback from the interviews, Forrester found that switching to Google Apps for Work resulted in the following benefits in a three-year period:

• 213% return on investment (ROI)
• Payback in just 1.9 months
• Nearly $1 million in collaboration and productivity gains

In addition to these hard numbers, Forrester uncovered a few common themes that customers experienced after switching from their previous cloud solution to Google Apps for Work:

Google Apps “just works” People crave simplicity. With Google Apps, teams can create a new document in seconds or add a conference room to a calendar invite with a single click. Customers reported there are no headaches with Google Apps — whether on a desktop, laptop, mobile phone, tablet, Android or iOS, Google Apps works exactly as they expect it to.

Quick adoption results in speedy ROI It’s no surprise that most companies want their employees to use the tools they pay for. Popsugar reported that Going Google saves the organization $100 thousand each year in annual enterprise volume software licenses — an agreement that their IT director says included software the company neither wanted nor needed.

After switching to Google Apps, customers reported that overall platform adoption increased significantly compared to engagement with the previous solution. Many interviewees attributed this rise in engagement to the intuitive nature of Google Apps and broad employee familiarity with Google products like Gmail.

Collaboration is a breeze While the interviewees’ previous cloud solution claims users can work together at the same time, their former customers told Forrester they struggled with browser and device compatibility, and had difficulties working with colleagues who had different license types. Google Apps works from any device on any modern browser, and all users can work together, regardless of what type of license they have.

Easier collaboration means that employees are productive, and when employees are more productive, companies save money. When it comes to creating content, Forrester found that productivity increased by 20% due to the ease and mobility of real-time collaboration offered by Google Apps — particularly when it comes to Docs, Sheets and Slides.

Customers’ voices matter Everyone likes to be heard. Customers said they felt more supported by Google than their previous provider: issues are resolved faster, customers feel like they’re an important part of the product development process, and they reported they were happy to find that feedback can be easily submitted directly from the admin console.

One customer described Google’s 24/7 phone, email and chat support like this: “The previous platform provider resolved only 3 of 10 issues satisfactorily and often took 12 to 14 hours to do so against an 8-hour SLA. Google is closer to 9 of 10 and always within the 8-hour window.”

Visit our Insights page to learn more and download “The Total Economic Impact™ Of Google Apps For Work: An Analysis Of Cloud-To-Cloud Migration Value.”

Posted by David Harrington and Brent Sarver, Google for Education team

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: Georgia schools are seeing great success with Google for Education. We talked to educators and administrators in Georgia to reflect on how technology has helped them innovate and create more efficient processes. From creating more efficient ways for parents to pick their children up from school, to enabling more efficient coaching on the baseball field, technology has improved the student, teacher and parent experience across the state. To learn more about Google solutions for education, join us for a Hangout on Air focused on the next phase of content in the classroom on February 23rd at 2pm ET / 11am PT.

Many schools are replacing former processes with more efficient ways to personalize learning and provide students with the skills to be successful. That level of innovation requires teachers and staff to think about how they can use technology in new ways. Schools in Georgia are using Google Apps for Education to drive innovation in small areas that ultimately inspire new ways of thinking across the district. We’d like to shed light on how schools have transformed their old processes using technology.

Transforming lectures into project-based learning 

Old: For many students, elementary and high school involves listening to a teacher lecture, reading a textbook and taking tests. This common approach to learning leaves out the interactive elements that often help students learn best.

New: The Center for Design and Technology, a project-based STEM program at Lanier High School in Gwinnett County, gives students real-life experiences to apply the skills they’ve learned. Every student works on six team projects per year, and every team creates a website using Google Sites, with links to Google Docs, Sheet and Slides used for team planning and collaboration. “Google Apps helps students learn communication skills, collaborate with teammates and think creatively,” says Mike Reilly, technology teacher at Lanier High School.

The program has helped teachers and students learn outside of the classroom and expand the skills they’re most interested in developing. For example, a team of four students worked with video editor Walter Biscardi to create a 3D model of a disease spread by flies, which appeared in the PBS movie “Dark Forest Black Fly.” They shared ideas in virtual brainstorming sessions via Google Hangouts and collaborated in real time using Google Docs.

Bringing instant communication to an ineffective system 

Old: Picking up students from school is often a slow, disorganized process since schools often have thousands of students to manage and communication isn’t always the smoothest between all staff involved.

New: At Forsyth County Schools (case study), teachers and staff are using Google Apps beyond the classroom to help make the after-school pick-up queue more efficient. In the past, parking lot attendants who escort students to their cars and cafeteria attendants who supervise students didn’t have clear lines of communication. The principal turned to Google Sheets as the solution to increase communication.

All students are assigned a number in a shared spreadsheet. When a parent picks up her child, she displays the student’s number on the windshield, and the parking attendant uses a tablet to flag on the screen in the cafeteria that it’s time for the student to go to the pick-up area. Introducing new technology improved real-time communication and inspired teachers districtwide to talk about innovative ways to use Google Apps to improve processes.

Creating a more streamlined, collaborative process both in the classroom and out on the field 

Old: Monitoring and recording sports team performance can be a time-consuming and tedious process when it’s done the old-fashioned way with a notebook and pencil.

New: With Google for Education tools, coaches at Jeff Davis County Schools (case study) can record and keep track of the high school baseball team’s pitch speeds and number of pitches to make sure a pitcher isn’t throwing too many pitches. A member of the tech staff reads the pitch speed from a radar gun and enters the number into a Google Sheet using a Chromebook. Another Chromebook is connected to a TV in the dugout, so the coaches can monitor the speed and number of pitches thrown. With the sharing feature, the tech staff and coaches are able to view the same information that’s being edited in real time.

Coaches now have more information to make more informed decisions about their players. “If a pitcher has thrown too many pitches or hit pitch speed begins to decrease, the coach can determine if the pitcher needs to be taken out of the game and a relief is sent in,” says Keith Osburn, technology and special programs director at Jeff Davis County Schools.

Coach at Jeff Davis keeping track of pitch speeds on a Chromebook

Schools are continuing to reinvent old processes to provide students with a 21st century education. Check out more inspirational stories from schools.

We’ve heard great stories from many of you about how you’re using technology to do amazing things in your schools, so we're going across the U.S. to see for ourselves! Check out the map below to see where we’ll head next. We’d love to hear what’s happening in your state, so please share your story on Twitter or Google+ and tag us (@GoogleEdu) or include the #GoogleEdu hashtag.

Posted by Ryan Weber, Product Manager, Google Docs

If you’re like most of our Google Apps customers, there’s a good chance you’re working from different locations throughout the day. Whether you’re on a tablet at the breakfast table, a phone on the train or a laptop at the office, it’s important to have a suite of apps that allow you to be productive from wherever you are. So starting today, you can use the same rich commenting experience across Google Docs, Sheets and Slides on your Android and iOS devices. You can now also quickly add a teammate to the conversation just by starting to type their name in a comment.

For the times when you’re at your desk, you’ll notice the new commenting experience makes it easy to instantly insert a comment using the comment bubble that appears on the right side of a doc.

At Google, we know that mobility is critical for today’s professionals. That’s why we continue to invest in features that make being productive on the go simple, such as the Research feature in the Docs Android app, or making the Google Docs app on mobile fullscreen so you can see all the info you need and hide the controls you might not want immediately (although they’re only ever a click away).

Docs, Sheets and Slides are just part of the mobile experience for Google Apps. Join a video meeting from your phone with Hangouts, check your agenda in Calendar, or see your most important emails in Gmail — your apps are in easy reach and help you collaborate from anywhere. Google Apps for Work also includes advanced security and control with complete Device (MDM) and App (MAM) Mobile Management.

Learn more about Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.

Posted by Carl Rossey, COO, Raiffeisen Bank

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Carl Rossey, COO of Raiffeisen Bank, one of the top five banks in Romania and a unit of Raiffeisen Bank International. See how Raiffeisen Bank uses Google Apps for Work and Android for Work to work better together across its 527 branches and offer innovative banking services to two million customers.


The way people manage their bank accounts today stands in stark contrast to a decade ago, or even just a few years ago. Where they once walked into branches to deposit or withdraw money and check on their balances, they now use laptops and mobile devices, and they do it from anywhere and at any time of day. As a business, we know we need to change with them, to be as mobile as they are, so we’re on a constant quest to transform both how we work with our customers and how we work ourselves. Moving to Google Apps for Work and using Android for Work are two steps we’ve taken to further that digital transformation. We’re proud to be one of the financial services industry’s earliest adopters of Google to create true mobility for both customers and our team.

Before moving to Google, we were relying on tools that held us back rather than pushed us forward. We were using Lotus Notes, which lacked the necessary collaboration tools and required people to be at their desks to do their work. We had to shuffle presentations and reports back and forth between employees, so new products took months to get to markets.

Our deployment to nearly 5,400 employees took just 90 days, and with the help of our implementation partner Netmail, we’re already on our way towards becoming a completely new bank. During the rollout, for example, we created a Google+ community called “Simply Coll@borate,” and invited employees to share advice and tips on using Google. It quickly became the fastest and most useful channel for seeking guidance on our new tools. And our Project Management Office, the first department to shift all its work to Google, now creates and shares Google Docs and Google Sheets in Google Drive, and builds monthly project reports using Google Slides.

Our Human Resources department used to gather feedback on training and hiring by using paper forms or sending out emails that generated few responses. Now they use Google Forms to make data collection easier and more seamless – like gathering suggestions for improving the quality of HR services. They’re also replacing phone interviews with interviews via Google Hangouts, as meeting candidates over video helps hiring managers get more accurate first impressions. The retail bank sales team also uses Hangouts for sales meetings, saving travel time and costs.

We’ve also completed rolling out smartphones equipped with Android for Work to every employee, and we believe we’ll see our vision for the mobile Raiffeisen Bank team come to life. No longer tied to our desks, we’re free to work in new ways for our customers. We save them time and offer them a higher level of customer service by meeting where they work — or from anywhere using Hangouts on mobile devices. We put the rigid ways of traditional banking behind us and have our sights set on a more flexible, innovative future.

Posted by Christoffer Lorang Dahl, Digital Director, SMFB, Oslo, Norway

Editor's note: Today we hear from Christoffer Lorang Dahl, Digital Director at SMFB, an advertising agency based in Oslo, Norway. In the 14 years since it was founded, SMFB has delivered award-winning campaigns for local and international clients including Geox, Ikea and Statoil. Read how SMFB created a whole new work environment around Google Apps for Work and made its clients, collaborators and 65 staff happier in the process.




It’s hard to be a 21st century creative agency when we’re bogged down with a 20th century-like IT platform. As SMFB’s Digital Director, I work with creatives and account managers to make digital ideas happen. With at least five projects on the go on any given day, my hands are full, but I always make time to help out with IT, too. One year ago, this informal role took up at least three hours of my work week, while the rest of the team collectively lost 10 working hours a day to spam and a calendar system so clunky it was almost unusable. It was time for a change, so we trialled two possible solutions and chose Google. Not only did we see huge potential in Drive, we guessed that staff would be familiar with Gmail and adapt quickly. We were right.

Google Apps solved the core problems we wanted to address. Gmail fixed our issues with spam, and Google Calendar is exactly the synchronised, reliable and easy-to-use calendar we were looking for. Because of its straightforward interface, everyone can use it to book meeting rooms and tell designers which teams to work with on which days. We used to run everything through a server in Sweden, and when it crashed, none of us could work. We’ve never experienced any downtime since switching to Google.

As well as fix the problems we knew we had, Google Apps for Work has rejuvenated our creative process. It’s hard to put someone in an office and tell them to “be creative.” That’s not how creativity works, but it’s exactly what we used to do. A typical day at SMFB used to begin with a briefing from the account director to the creatives. After that, the creatives would head to their offices to come up with ideas, which they would share by late afternoon so that they could get feedback by the next day. Now creatives start every morning with a Hangout, spend the day in a cafe, under the sun or wherever they like, and share their ideas on Docs. The account director and account manager — even the clients — can pitch in on the process, concepts and copy, which constantly evolve. And we never experience the confusion that results from multiple drafts and versions floating around. Film scripts do change, but if the wrong draft is sent to an animator or a director, the consequences can be dire.

Once we have a project concept, we compile a budget together in Sheets and contact external production companies. We handle at least five of these at a time, and they change from one day to the next, but because Drive documents can be shared with anyone, we can send these external companies briefs, handle agreements and manage the whole process on one platform. Anyone can immediately see how a project is progressing by looking it up on Drive — something that’s vital for running campaigns on social media, where every second counts.

I like to help my colleagues, and Google’s simple administration interface makes it easy. When a workmate accidentally deleted crucial files, I retrieved them from Drive, which lets you recover documents from up to 10 users for up to 25 days. And rather than just react, I suggest better ways of doing things — like creating a group email account for a new project, which I can have ready in two minutes. It’s a whole new way of working. So much so, in fact, that I recommended Google Apps for Work to our partner agency, Forsman & Bodenfors. Now they’re on it, too.

Posted by Barry Kelly, Enterprise Architect at United Biscuits 

Editor's note: Today we hear from Barry Kelly, Enterprise Architect at United Biscuits, a leading international manufacturer and marketer of biscuits and cakes, producing brands including McVitie’s, Jacob’s and Carr’s. Read how the company’s employees use Google Apps to work together globally and deliver significant incremental sales.

Christmas is a peak trading period for us here at United Biscuits, as people up and down the country stock up on their favourite snacks and treats to get ready for the festive period. We make 30% of our yearly sales then, so it’s important to get every area of the business focussing on driving seasonal sales. But with thousands of employees based all over the country, we had to find a way to work as a single team and get around the geographical challenges.

By using Google Apps for Work we’ve become a stronger team: we share over 700,000 documents on Drive, spend 1,600 hours a month meeting together on Hangouts, use Sheets to help coordinate marketing efforts and rely on Sites to continually develop our company intranet for better communication.

Google Apps tools have also delivered huge sales increases that add to our bottom line. Richard Williams, Field Sales Controller has been leading our seasonal in-store promotion days — or Making A Difference Days (MAD), as we call them. These now bring in additional significant revenue each year, thanks largely to the motivation and inspiration teams get from being part of our Google+ community. These specific days see up to 200 employees from across the company working together to improve our customer offer and taking on roles they’d normally never do. MAD days are a chance for people at every level to contribute to the customer-facing parts of the business during our busiest time of year.

On our MAD Day last Christmas, teams used Google+ to instantly share over 700 photos and videos with colleagues in other stores, and teams inspired and encouraged each other to go the extra mile. By allowing teams to share ideas across regions instead of work alone in a single store, Google+ revolutionised the day, and staff left feeling exhilarated rather than exhausted.

Google technology has transformed our merchandising days — and, with this year’s Christmas activity not far away, we’re confident our sales figures will reflect this. And by year end, every single United Biscuits employee will be a member of our Google+ community, meaning knowledge and ideas will continue to be shared and developed across the business, no matter where we’re based.

Posted by Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director IT Resources, RSPCA

Editor's note: Today we hear from Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director Resources-IT at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the UK’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity with 1600 employees across England and Wales. In 2014 the £43 million that the organisation received in voluntary donations helped rescue more than 128,000 animals from cruelty, abuse and neglect. Read how the RSPCA is using Google Apps for Work to help give these animals a new chance.

I often refer to our IT spend as kitten food, since that helps us focus on its value. Every pound we save with our solutions helps to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome animals across the country. So when our legacy email system reached the end of its working life, we wanted great value for money in the short term and opportunities for cost-saving and innovation further down the line. With Google Apps for Work, we got both.

We started the rollout with the IT team, then added superusers, then everyone else. We called these stages “ready,” “steady” and “GO.” In the “steady” stage, we trained up superusers and gave them t-shirts and flags so their colleagues knew who to turn to for advice. We installed timers on everyone’s desktops with a day-by-day “Countdown to Google” that created a real sense of excitement about the change and used Forms to gather post-go live feedback from 1,000 members of our team. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

From the start, we saved significantly on equipment costs alone. Our previous system operated from more than 40 servers, all of which have been decommissioned and will never have to be replaced. At £3,500 per server, that saved us £140,000 just on equipment. And digital signage now costs one tenth of the price we used to pay, from £1,500 per store to a solution using Chromebox and Slides that costs just £150 per store. Chromebooks have proven so cost effective that we bought 150 this year and plan to adopt them further. And because they connect to Drive, we don’t need to carry heavy paperwork around, which is good for the environment, our budget, and our backs. Also, when we needed to add 500 staff to our email platform, we did it in a matter of days with no additional infrastructure other than the provision of Android smartphones.


Every year we find new homes for more than 50,000 animals, and Google Apps tools make that rehabilitation process so much faster. Our 500 RSPCA inspectors are out in the field every day, investigating animal cruelty and complaints. Under our old system, none of them were connected to a central email hub, but now they all have Gmail and Drive on Android phones and access to Chromebooks, so they can instantly share test results, check documentation, send pictures and request temporary accommodation for an animal at one of our animal centres. And as soon as an animal is ready for rehoming, the quest begins to find new owners. We used to make promotional videos that we would burn to DVDs and deliver to our shops and centres by hand once a month, but now we can use Slides and a Chromebox to send promotions instantly to our screens, the same day an animal’s ready for a new home. No driving, no hassle with DVDs.

We’re committed to creating a more united, mobile, flexible workforce by the RSPCA’s 200th anniversary in 2024, and with Google Apps for Work, we’re well on the way to making that a reality. Working together in Docs isn’t just making our internal processes more transparent, it’s connecting people from parts of our organisation that otherwise operate independently and allows us to share knowledge and advice across the country. Hangouts let us meet face-to-face online and keep workflow moving with instant messaging. We’re also using Calendar to keep in synch and Sheets to work out duty rosters and book holidays.

Every time a supporter puts a pound in one of our collection tins, they want it to be spent wisely. By streamlining our services with Google Apps for Work, we make sure that more of that money serves the animals who need it. In the end, it could be food for a kitten, or a puppy, a horse, a seal, a hedgehog…

Posted by Per Jakobsen, CIO, Narvik Kommune, Norway

Editor's note: Today we hear from Per Jakobsen, head of IT operations and development at Narvik Kommune, a Norwegian municipality 343 kilometres north of the Arctic circle. Read how Google Apps for Work is being used at Narvik Kommune to make life simpler for staff, so that they can spend less time doing paperwork and more time managing healthcare, childcare, schools, transport and housing services for the people that depend on them.

Norwegians value the human touch in social services. We call this “warm hands,” and we know nothing can replace it. But as a municipality, we need cool efficiency to make sure that our carers, teachers and medics are in the right place at the right time for 20,000 citizens across more than 2,000km².

Photo by Pål Jakobsen

Every day, Narvik Kommune coordinates 1,600 employees across 58 locations — but our old email system was holding us back from doing our best work. An obsolete user interface made it difficult to navigate, spam was a chronic problem, and we depended on expensive consultants for maintenance. Buying 750 Google Apps for Work accounts hasn’t just resolved these issues at a reasonable and predictable price; it’s made Narvik Kommune more efficient, more reliable and more mobile. We worked with Avalon Solutions, a Google Apps Premier Partner in the Nordics, who contributed to the successful migration.

We’ve gained several hours each week now that we use stable and secure Google servers, instead of wasting time servicing a spam filter and antivirus software and troubleshooting email instability. And the minimal training necessary to use Google Apps tools means departments throughout Narvik Kommune are discovering creative and productive ways to use them — all on their own:

• Working together under tight deadlines in Sheets: Our economy team uses Sheets instead of Excel, so they can update documents simultaneously during hectic periods and avoid the delays and confusion caused by multiple copies when union representatives and others are involved in compiling records.
• Collecting and sharing information across teams with Sites: HR uses Sites to reach out more effectively through the organisation when collecting and presenting information on large internal procedures.
• Staying on top of meetings with Calendar: All teams use Calendar on our smartphones to organise meetings (and receive SMS notifications before they start).
• Digital discussion notes on Docs: All teams use Docs to take notes during discussions, which keeps everyone better aligned and saves time and cost on printing.
• Building budgets on Drive: Our councilman and managers across the administration used Drive to compile our last annual budget, saving time on a joint task that we would previously handle with fileshare documents that could only be opened and edited by one person at a time.

Most importantly, Google Apps for Work keeps our internal data secure. We have the added peace of mind knowing that our information is protected on one of the most secure infrastructures in the world.

With the flexibility of Google Apps tools, we can prepare for a smooth relocation while the Narvik town hall shuts down for two years of renovation and our core team spreads across three locations instead of one. We’ll use Hangouts on five Chromeboxes to meet and collaborate face-to-face, so we don’t lose that important personal interaction among teams.

We’ve been so impressed by the power of Google Apps, that we’ve extended the advantages of Google Apps tools to local students. We implemented Google Apps for Education accounts for each of the 2,000 pupils at our nine primary and lower secondary schools, and we’re trialling Chromebooks and Classroom. Digitizing public services with Google hasn’t just brought us national attention — it has freed up resources to invest in our future.

Posted by Simon King, European Operations Director for Imagination

Editor's note: Today we hear from Simon King, EMEA Operations Director for Imagination, a full-service, independent global design, communications and experiential agency serving clients that include Ford, Shell and Canon. With 1,200 people working across 20 global offices, Imagination uses Google Apps to increase efficiencies and save money. Learn how they’ve created efficiencies worth in excess of 800,000 pounds to the business over the past 5 years by adopting Google Apps.

Our team works together across the globe to deliver creative campaigns for some of the world’s most well-known brands. But imagine this: a team of 1,200 sharing a 750,000-asset library that’s virtually impossible to keep track of. Now add a manual and time consuming recruitment process and you’ll begin to understand how technology is every bit as crucial to our business as creativity. Google Apps for Work offers the exact tools we needed to overcome these challenges.

Google Drive has created efficiencies worth in excess of 100,000 pounds per year to the business by more than halving the time we spend searching for files in our cloud-based asset library. We no longer waste time with daily file searches hampered by misfiled, duplicated or out-of-date data, as each and every uploaded asset is tagged with metadata that makes it instantly searchable. With an average of 28 searches per day, each one taking just one minute to complete, the Google Drive asset library has revolutionised the way we work.


The cloud technology also means any member of staff with authorised access can download any file, no matter where or when it was created. Today our teams operating in 80 different countries can access the entire Imagination portfolio – anytime, anywhere – knowing they’ll be able to find the right files instantly. We’ve used it to create presentations in Moscow hotel lobbies, and review work in Sydney that was created a few moments before in London, all by easily pulling up files in our asset library on Google Drive. As one of our EMEA Client Services Directors explained to me, “Having the entire Imagination portfolio wherever I am is a game changer for business development.”

We also use Google Forms to simplify the process of recruiting. Google Forms have replaced a lengthy and time consuming paper-based recruiting process, with the digital system creating efficiencies worth in excess of 60,000 pounds every year in our London office alone. Each of the completed Forms triggers an email to relevant staff members, giving us a single, simple way to procure resources. By linking Google Forms and Sheets, our staff can manage critical resourcing no matter where they’re working, whether it’s from home or in an airport lounge. It’s added increased rigour to a crucial business process, and removed the potential for errors.

Google Apps reduced the time to get new joiners productive — we simply share access to Google Drive, using Drive’s advanced security settings to share relevant information with the right people, and they’re ready to work. From day one, they have instant access to more than 25 years of Imagination’s work and experience, and with two-factor login authentication, we can be sure we’re protecting confidential information.

As one of the early adopters of Google Apps in 2010, we’ve made use of all it has to offer to reach our primary goal: Transforming business through creativity. The technology has helped us minimise the back office challenges and maximise how we communicate and share our achievements with our colleagues globally. Google Apps has helped us create a real competitive advantage and save thousands in the process. Imagine that.