July 14, 2015 at 12:19Business IT: Google Apps for Work
We live among gadgets and they make our life easier: they remind us of business, send letters, allow you to communicate over great distances, buy online, walk along the streets of distant cities without getting up from your favorite couch. This is our fully formed, information and technical atmosphere. But it’s worth coming to the office, as we are often greeted by a worn diary, a monitor glued with reminder stickers, a note from a colleague on a marker board.
A few years ago, the transition to electronic commerce, document management, CRM and ERP-systems, project management systems was a growing trend. In 2015, this is the objective need of most companies in all sectors of the economy. Corporate software firmly entered the life of Russian business and affected almost all business processes. And how do you breathe in your IT atmosphere?
There are a lot of excuses that justify refusing to use convenient corporate software: a small company, a young company, normal internal communication, few customers, and so on ... In fact, they are all untenable - using this kind of software is justified even if you are alone IP, working as a director, manager, programmer and accountant in one person.
There are many ways to approach the implementation of enterprise software: from installing simple software organizers to deploying complex and expensive CRM and ERP implementation projects. However, if you are a small company that develops in the market and seeks to increase the volume of its customer base and profits, it is worth starting with reliable solutions available that optimize business processes. Such as, for example, Google Apps.
Each business generates leads - a large pool of individuals for whom its goods or services may be of interest. A lead can have a number of parameters: gender, age, hobbies, favorite colors, etc. ... As a rule, these parameters strictly depend on the company’s sphere of activity and are not subject to unification. But there is one parameter that is most interesting for business - user contacts: phone, address, email. If you once worked with collecting data from a site or offline, you noticed that the address and phone number are often provided false, but the e-mail address is up-to-date.
Purely psychologically, people attribute the phone and address to a more private area than email, which, in addition, you can receive news from companies, for example, about promotions and discounts (relevant for B2B and B2C). In addition to leads and contact details of existing customers, the business constantly conducts business correspondence - with partners, suppliers, authorities, fiscal authorities, etc. That is why perhaps the first request to corporate software: reliable, convenient and functional mail.
Google, obviously, knows a lot about the organization of corporate communications - that is why business users receive from Google Apps not only reliable mail that has absorbed the best practices of Gmail, but also additional benefits. One of them is mail on its own domain. That is, if you have thebestme.ru website, then your mail addresses will not look like ivanov89561@gmail.com , but like ivanov@thebestme.ru . Such mail looks more solid, inspires confidence in the sender and associates it with the company, which means that the letter will be more likely to be read. With Google Apps email, you can manage your contacts and distribution groups, conduct business correspondence and send out newsletters with information and marketing messages for your customers.
Google Apps Corporate Email includes anti-spam protection - you won’t waste time searching for the right emails and deleting numerous spam emails. Built-in calendars and flexible productive search will allow not to forget about a single case and easily find the necessary correspondence in a few clicks. Corporate customers are guaranteed 99.9% uptime and 30 GB of storage space.
Many Internet users are familiar with the Google Docs service, which allows you to create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations online and offline, and with the Google Drive service, which saves documents, photos and other files in the cloud. Of course, business needs to take full advantage of these solutions.
Another type of document that you can create in Google Apps is profiles and web forms. They are created extremely simply and involve checking the correctness of the response given by the respondent. Based on the results of the study, analytics is formed according to the results with which you can work in tables. This solution is useful for almost any business - you can easily question users, find out customer preferences, or collect feedback on the basis of activity.
If for some reason the basic functionality of Google Apps is not enough for you, we recommend that you pay attention to the advanced version of the application - Google Apps Unlimited , which comes at a small additional cost. In this version, additional tools for auditing, reporting and administering Drive, unlimited disk space for data storage, as well as Google Safe for all employees of the organization are available. The extended version provides tangible benefits to both users and system administrators.
Users get unlimited storage space for files on Google Drive, messages in Gmail and photos on Google+ (if the organization has less than 5 employees, each user is provided with 1 TB of storage). Administrators can use Google Vault to work with staff correspondence (archiving, storage, export, search), search all Drive files, access APIs and advanced audit features. User groups created by the administrator in the advanced version of Google Apps Unlimited get the ability to synchronize files with a computer, the ability to open documents to external users, work with documents offline, access to add-ons for Google Docs created by other developers, etc. ...
For those who not enough disk space, but the rest of the basic functionality suits, Google provides for the possibility of expanding the space in Google Drive. By default, every Google Apps for Work user has storage space for 30 GB of downloaded files in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. Users can purchase licenses for additional disk space on their own or through an administrator. Please note that in Google Apps Unlimited storage space is not limited, therefore, for the accounts of the advanced version, the purchase of additional licenses for disk space is not required.
If you watched the movie “Frames” (Internship), then you can easily remember the moment when two friends are interviewed by Google managers, communicating with him virtually using a microphone and a web camera. This Hangouts is a special application that allows you to communicate via a web camera and microphone with an arbitrarily remote point on the planet where there is Internet. Hangouts can host HD meetings with up to 15 participants right from your phone, tablet or laptop. This is a modern way of communication that gives business new opportunities.
Modern business practice actively uses the achievements of technological progress - communication via the Internet has become the norm and is not surprising. If earlier personal meetings could be postponed due to the long preparation and coordination of the parties, now it is much easier to choose the time for business communication without leaving the workplace. This saving of time and money on organizing a meeting is attractive for all negotiators. Even if you and your business partner are in different areas or cities, you no longer need to stand in traffic jams, spend time and money on air travel - just join the meeting.
Any modern manager faces a huge stream of tasks - keeping track of everything can be extremely difficult. Google Apps has a built-in calendar with the ability to set tasks in it. Reminders will be sent to the mail about the need to complete the task and make a call. The calendar also shows your appointments in Hangouts.
A group calendar with excellent graphical implementation allows you to plan teamwork and create phased plans for the implementation of the project. One glance at the calendar is enough to highlight areas of responsibility and specify the milestone on which the project is located. If necessary, the schedule of movement of corporate transport, lunch, booking a meeting room, the distribution of night shifts and much more can be attached to the calendar.
Almost no one is now building a business without their own corporate website. Its creation is not an easy task, which requires a careful approach to the selection of an artist. The site, in turn, can be used as a portal for company customers and as an internal portal for exchanging information, accumulating a knowledge base, communicating and maintaining a corporate culture.
Google Apps provides the ability to create project sites - in an intuitive editor, creating a site is as simple as a text document, no special programming skills are needed, no web designer is required. On the project page you can report on milestones of implementation, tasks, events, etc.
During the life cycle of the company, a significant amount of valuable information is generated: customer data, corporate correspondence by mail and chat, documents, etc. ... Of course, each company makes sure that its corporate data is safe. And there are groups of data that must be guaranteed to be protected from deletion, for example, working correspondence with important clients. To protect some data from unwanted losses, Google Apps additionally comes with a Safe service for archiving mail and chat accounts. If an employee leaves the company (especially not very good leaves), the administrator blocks his account and all data of correspondence, chat and even search queries are stored in the “safe”. In the administrator’s console, you can specify how long to keep messages grouped by date, unit, and a number of other attributes.
Actually, the admin console itself is a real control panel for the entire ecosystem of Google Apps. With its help, the administrator can manage services, make settings, set a security policy (for example, two-step authentication). In the event of the loss of a mobile device, the administrator blocks access to the data - and they certainly will not fall into the wrong hands. In general, any suspicious activity can be monitored using the remote control functions and special audit tools.
Another advantage of Google Apps - API integration with other services and ready-made integration with a number of business applications. If you need to expand the pool of software used, you can contact the Google Marketplace and get the necessary applications and add-ons.
... a beginner advertising agency of 7 people.
Before Google Apps.A request comes from the client to create a promo for a pizzeria. The account manager writes contacts to the sheet, writes a letter asking to fill out a brief, makes an appointment, writes the date in a diary. Three days later, the client sends a brief in an unreadable format, they try to open it in different editors. The account recalls the meeting shortly before it, rushes to the client’s office. The client asks to wait - the day is lost. According to the brief, the project cost is calculated and a presentation is prepared. At the client’s office, the presentation opens with errors in reading images - a conflict between the open source and licensed office applications. After discussion, there is a long correspondence with corrections in the brief, the document changes beyond recognition, comments written in the chat and written over the phone are lost. The project begins to drag out
With Google Apps. A request comes from the client to create a promo for a pizzeria. The account manager gives the client access to the brief form, opens the project, puts the contact in the mail. A client fills out a brief, discusses it with the account and creators at a convenient time in Hangouts, and makes joint edits. After working out the layouts, the designer demonstrates the presentation again using Hangouts - no problems in application compatibility. All correspondence is stored in the archive, tasks are distributed based on the urgency of each order - no overlap. The work goes well, the discussion is fast, the customer is satisfied.
Obviously, using Google Apps helps save time and allocate resources to tasks. The work becomes more organized and dynamic, which in turn gives additional time, for example, to search for new customers.
Unfortunately, Google Apps applications are not available in the Crimea - this is a temporary difficulty due to the external situation. Therefore, entrepreneurs from Crimea will have to use other solutions to optimize business processes. However, as soon as Google reopens access to Google Apps, you can easily migrate existing data and take full advantage of the offer.
Many care about the problem of transferring personal data of Russians to data centers based in Russia. While there are no official statements by Google, it’s obvious that the company will not want to lose the Russian market and information is already appearing in the media about the transfer of some servers to Russia .
Implementation of the Google Apps solution is promising for many companies - this is a great start to optimize all processes in the company. And what the IT atmosphere of your business will be like is up to you.
Thanks for attention!
A few years ago, the transition to electronic commerce, document management, CRM and ERP-systems, project management systems was a growing trend. In 2015, this is the objective need of most companies in all sectors of the economy. Corporate software firmly entered the life of Russian business and affected almost all business processes. And how do you breathe in your IT atmosphere?
Benefits of optimizing business processes with enterprise software
There are a lot of excuses that justify refusing to use convenient corporate software: a small company, a young company, normal internal communication, few customers, and so on ... In fact, they are all untenable - using this kind of software is justified even if you are alone IP, working as a director, manager, programmer and accountant in one person.
- The introduction of software applications for corporate use at an early stage guarantees order in business. Sooner or later, the company will expand, the flow of customers will increase - there will come a time when there will be lost customers, leads, requests.
- The use of such software ensures the safety of data and protects the employer from losses caused by the departure of employees.
- The corporate information system allows you to effectively accumulate experience, create a knowledge base that will serve a good service, for example, when training newcomers or horizontal translation of employees.
- The system of setting tasks and reminders is guaranteed - you will be a company with the image of a reliable and punctual partner.
There are many ways to approach the implementation of enterprise software: from installing simple software organizers to deploying complex and expensive CRM and ERP implementation projects. However, if you are a small company that develops in the market and seeks to increase the volume of its customer base and profits, it is worth starting with reliable solutions available that optimize business processes. Such as, for example, Google Apps.
Email - The Best Gmail Experience
Each business generates leads - a large pool of individuals for whom its goods or services may be of interest. A lead can have a number of parameters: gender, age, hobbies, favorite colors, etc. ... As a rule, these parameters strictly depend on the company’s sphere of activity and are not subject to unification. But there is one parameter that is most interesting for business - user contacts: phone, address, email. If you once worked with collecting data from a site or offline, you noticed that the address and phone number are often provided false, but the e-mail address is up-to-date.
Purely psychologically, people attribute the phone and address to a more private area than email, which, in addition, you can receive news from companies, for example, about promotions and discounts (relevant for B2B and B2C). In addition to leads and contact details of existing customers, the business constantly conducts business correspondence - with partners, suppliers, authorities, fiscal authorities, etc. That is why perhaps the first request to corporate software: reliable, convenient and functional mail.
Google, obviously, knows a lot about the organization of corporate communications - that is why business users receive from Google Apps not only reliable mail that has absorbed the best practices of Gmail, but also additional benefits. One of them is mail on its own domain. That is, if you have thebestme.ru website, then your mail addresses will not look like ivanov89561@gmail.com , but like ivanov@thebestme.ru . Such mail looks more solid, inspires confidence in the sender and associates it with the company, which means that the letter will be more likely to be read. With Google Apps email, you can manage your contacts and distribution groups, conduct business correspondence and send out newsletters with information and marketing messages for your customers.
Google Apps Corporate Email includes anti-spam protection - you won’t waste time searching for the right emails and deleting numerous spam emails. Built-in calendars and flexible productive search will allow not to forget about a single case and easily find the necessary correspondence in a few clicks. Corporate customers are guaranteed 99.9% uptime and 30 GB of storage space.
Documents, cloud storage and data sharing - everything at hand
Many Internet users are familiar with the Google Docs service, which allows you to create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations online and offline, and with the Google Drive service, which saves documents, photos and other files in the cloud. Of course, business needs to take full advantage of these solutions.
- Creation of text documents, tables and presentations. In Google Apps documents you will see everything you’re used to: formatting, styles, formulas, fonts, special characters, etc. ... In Google Apps, you can calculate a business plan, enter it into tables, describe it in text and immediately prepare a presentation. In this case, all documents will be automatically saved during the work on them - this minimizes the risk of data loss in the event of a sudden technical failure.
- Access to reading and editing files from any device - you can continue to work on an important document or view it in traffic, travel, business trip. You will not need to upload files to make changes or comment on them.
- Collaborative editing - you can work on files at the same time as colleagues without requiring you to close the file. Those who assembled and agreed on a sales plan or created a description of the annual report together with other units will truly appreciate this opportunity. In addition, collaborative editing saves time, which is usually spent on sending and editing documents multiple times.
- Access by link - you can differentiate access rights to the document and forward the link to colleagues and all interested parties.
- If the basic functionality was not enough for you and new functions are needed for permanent work, you can create scripts (the macro analogy is partly appropriate here) and prescribe the necessary algorithms. To work with scripts, you need JavaScript skills.
Another type of document that you can create in Google Apps is profiles and web forms. They are created extremely simply and involve checking the correctness of the response given by the respondent. Based on the results of the study, analytics is formed according to the results with which you can work in tables. This solution is useful for almost any business - you can easily question users, find out customer preferences, or collect feedback on the basis of activity.
Need more features?
If for some reason the basic functionality of Google Apps is not enough for you, we recommend that you pay attention to the advanced version of the application - Google Apps Unlimited , which comes at a small additional cost. In this version, additional tools for auditing, reporting and administering Drive, unlimited disk space for data storage, as well as Google Safe for all employees of the organization are available. The extended version provides tangible benefits to both users and system administrators.
Users get unlimited storage space for files on Google Drive, messages in Gmail and photos on Google+ (if the organization has less than 5 employees, each user is provided with 1 TB of storage). Administrators can use Google Vault to work with staff correspondence (archiving, storage, export, search), search all Drive files, access APIs and advanced audit features. User groups created by the administrator in the advanced version of Google Apps Unlimited get the ability to synchronize files with a computer, the ability to open documents to external users, work with documents offline, access to add-ons for Google Docs created by other developers, etc. ...
For those who not enough disk space, but the rest of the basic functionality suits, Google provides for the possibility of expanding the space in Google Drive. By default, every Google Apps for Work user has storage space for 30 GB of downloaded files in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. Users can purchase licenses for additional disk space on their own or through an administrator. Please note that in Google Apps Unlimited storage space is not limited, therefore, for the accounts of the advanced version, the purchase of additional licenses for disk space is not required.
Hangouts - Big in the distance.
If you watched the movie “Frames” (Internship), then you can easily remember the moment when two friends are interviewed by Google managers, communicating with him virtually using a microphone and a web camera. This Hangouts is a special application that allows you to communicate via a web camera and microphone with an arbitrarily remote point on the planet where there is Internet. Hangouts can host HD meetings with up to 15 participants right from your phone, tablet or laptop. This is a modern way of communication that gives business new opportunities.
- You can hold business meetings without leaving your workplace. An additional advantage of such a communication organization is the availability of all necessary documents on the computer desktop. You definitely will not forget to take the necessary materials.
- You can demonstrate the presentation to colleagues and partners and even show your screen - now inter-regional meetings are as convenient as possible: you do not need to go to an additional branch to the other end of the city or even the country, just schedule a meeting and send invitations to corporate mail that will go to the calendar and will notify all participants before starting work.
- You can demonstrate your product to customers and hold informative or training webinars - you no longer need to expand the staff of regional managers. Your customers will be grateful for this approach to the meeting - they will not need to prepare, just connect to the conversation.
- You can organize a live broadcast and broadcast a training or information seminar or conference for any number of users on your YouTube channel or on your website. You can answer user questions during the broadcast.
Modern business practice actively uses the achievements of technological progress - communication via the Internet has become the norm and is not surprising. If earlier personal meetings could be postponed due to the long preparation and coordination of the parties, now it is much easier to choose the time for business communication without leaving the workplace. This saving of time and money on organizing a meeting is attractive for all negotiators. Even if you and your business partner are in different areas or cities, you no longer need to stand in traffic jams, spend time and money on air travel - just join the meeting.
Calendar and Tasks - Remember Everything
Any modern manager faces a huge stream of tasks - keeping track of everything can be extremely difficult. Google Apps has a built-in calendar with the ability to set tasks in it. Reminders will be sent to the mail about the need to complete the task and make a call. The calendar also shows your appointments in Hangouts.
A group calendar with excellent graphical implementation allows you to plan teamwork and create phased plans for the implementation of the project. One glance at the calendar is enough to highlight areas of responsibility and specify the milestone on which the project is located. If necessary, the schedule of movement of corporate transport, lunch, booking a meeting room, the distribution of night shifts and much more can be attached to the calendar.
Sites, safe and other interesting Google Apps features
Almost no one is now building a business without their own corporate website. Its creation is not an easy task, which requires a careful approach to the selection of an artist. The site, in turn, can be used as a portal for company customers and as an internal portal for exchanging information, accumulating a knowledge base, communicating and maintaining a corporate culture.
Google Apps provides the ability to create project sites - in an intuitive editor, creating a site is as simple as a text document, no special programming skills are needed, no web designer is required. On the project page you can report on milestones of implementation, tasks, events, etc.
During the life cycle of the company, a significant amount of valuable information is generated: customer data, corporate correspondence by mail and chat, documents, etc. ... Of course, each company makes sure that its corporate data is safe. And there are groups of data that must be guaranteed to be protected from deletion, for example, working correspondence with important clients. To protect some data from unwanted losses, Google Apps additionally comes with a Safe service for archiving mail and chat accounts. If an employee leaves the company (especially not very good leaves), the administrator blocks his account and all data of correspondence, chat and even search queries are stored in the “safe”. In the administrator’s console, you can specify how long to keep messages grouped by date, unit, and a number of other attributes.
Actually, the admin console itself is a real control panel for the entire ecosystem of Google Apps. With its help, the administrator can manage services, make settings, set a security policy (for example, two-step authentication). In the event of the loss of a mobile device, the administrator blocks access to the data - and they certainly will not fall into the wrong hands. In general, any suspicious activity can be monitored using the remote control functions and special audit tools.
Another advantage of Google Apps - API integration with other services and ready-made integration with a number of business applications. If you need to expand the pool of software used, you can contact the Google Marketplace and get the necessary applications and add-ons.
Now imagine ...
... a beginner advertising agency of 7 people.
Before Google Apps.A request comes from the client to create a promo for a pizzeria. The account manager writes contacts to the sheet, writes a letter asking to fill out a brief, makes an appointment, writes the date in a diary. Three days later, the client sends a brief in an unreadable format, they try to open it in different editors. The account recalls the meeting shortly before it, rushes to the client’s office. The client asks to wait - the day is lost. According to the brief, the project cost is calculated and a presentation is prepared. At the client’s office, the presentation opens with errors in reading images - a conflict between the open source and licensed office applications. After discussion, there is a long correspondence with corrections in the brief, the document changes beyond recognition, comments written in the chat and written over the phone are lost. The project begins to drag out
With Google Apps. A request comes from the client to create a promo for a pizzeria. The account manager gives the client access to the brief form, opens the project, puts the contact in the mail. A client fills out a brief, discusses it with the account and creators at a convenient time in Hangouts, and makes joint edits. After working out the layouts, the designer demonstrates the presentation again using Hangouts - no problems in application compatibility. All correspondence is stored in the archive, tasks are distributed based on the urgency of each order - no overlap. The work goes well, the discussion is fast, the customer is satisfied.
Obviously, using Google Apps helps save time and allocate resources to tasks. The work becomes more organized and dynamic, which in turn gives additional time, for example, to search for new customers.
Instead of an afterword
Unfortunately, Google Apps applications are not available in the Crimea - this is a temporary difficulty due to the external situation. Therefore, entrepreneurs from Crimea will have to use other solutions to optimize business processes. However, as soon as Google reopens access to Google Apps, you can easily migrate existing data and take full advantage of the offer.
Many care about the problem of transferring personal data of Russians to data centers based in Russia. While there are no official statements by Google, it’s obvious that the company will not want to lose the Russian market and information is already appearing in the media about the transfer of some servers to Russia .
Implementation of the Google Apps solution is promising for many companies - this is a great start to optimize all processes in the company. And what the IT atmosphere of your business will be like is up to you.
Thanks for attention!