Since we launched Google Apps Vault, many businesses have adopted it to archive, retain and manage business critical information. Starting today, Vault is available for Google Apps for Government customers. Federal, state and local agencies in the United States can now purchase Vault to help meet their compliance needs.
Google Apps Vault helps protect organizations of all sizes from legal and compliance risks through advanced message archiving, retention and eDiscovery capabilities. It provides the ability to quickly search, identify, preserve and export information in response to litigation, investigation, compliance audits, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Vault helps organizations cull through their data and find messages relevant to such requests, reducing the associated time, effort, and costs.
Google Apps Vault can also be used to address knowledge management needs. It enables authorized users to search, manage, and review data. For example, if an employee leaves abruptly and the organization needs to understand the status of the employee’s projects, Vault will help find the needed information. Customers using Vault can ensure that data with critical business information are preserved and can be reviewed.
Vault built on the same infrastructure as Google Apps and recently completed an SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II SOC 2 audit. Visit our Google Apps for Government page where you can find more details as well as contact our sales team.
We had been using Microsoft® Office for years, with several Microsoft® Exchange servers across the company, but it became increasingly difficult for our IT team to stay up and running with the uptick in support calls due to a dated system. After exploring various options at different price points, we knew we wanted to move to a cloud-based solution to work more efficiently and provide a scalable and reliable solution.
We invited Google reseller, Sheepdog, to conduct a two-day Google Apps for Business workshop for a small group of employees from various levels and departments within the company. During the workshop, employees evaluated Google Apps against our “success criteria,” which included ease of use, efficiency, functionality, speed and cost. We quickly realized that Google Apps was a good fit for our geographically dispersed company and in July we started moving more than 1,000 employees to Google Apps.
Our IT support calls for email plummeted overnight, demonstrating just how easy it is to use Google Apps. For a global company, being able to instantly translate messages in Gmail and use Google+ Hangouts to meet “in person” made the language and geographical barriers easier to overcome. We’ve also estimated that by going Google we will reduce our costs over the long term when compared to the cost of upgrading and maintaining our old infrastructure. As a public company, we’re thrilled with the savings and new ways of working that we discovered by moving to the cloud.
In 2009, we decided we needed to move all of our agents, in more than 80 locations, off of various email systems, including Microsoft® Exchange, onto one platform. This would keep operational costs down and allow our agents and support teams to communicate more effectively. Since our agents rarely come into an office, access from any device was critical.
Today, nearly four years after our initial implementation, Google Apps has dramatically increased productivity and transformed our business. Now, our agents are using Google Docs to collaborate with each other on projects and can meet virtually anywhere using Google+ Hangouts to share ideas and best practices from their experience. With no more servers or software licenses, we reduced our projected costs from other solutions by almost 70 percent. That kind of savings delivers true value to our bottom line.
As a company, we have been able to leverage Google APIs to help us be efficient. When an agent joins or leaves the team, our provisioning system manages all account items with our Google integration.
In addition to the add/change user administration, we utilize Google Groups to constantly maintain distribution lists for email and control file security related to GoogleDrive/Docs. This automated maintenance promotes increased use of Docs collaborative capabilities. An office manager never has to worry about sharing docs or managing a distribution list again.
After this successful integration, we integrated our CRM platform with the Google calendar. All of our agent appointments are pushed to Google Calendar and then to their mobile phone automatically. Any update on the phone is then reversed and posted back to Google and CRM. We were able to leverage the Google platform and its APIs to deliver for the business without incremental licensing costs.
When it comes to recruiting and sustaining our growth, Google Apps has been instrumental in helping us hire new agents quickly while ensuring that they are equipped with the information they need to be successful. With all their documents, calendars and email accessible on the go, our agents are always connected to each other and clients, no matter where they are. This platform has really helped our teams stay connected and collaborate in ways they hadn’t imagined.
IT is no longer a barrier and no one has to wait to meet with someone from the IT department to get going with Google Apps. In fact, I personally haven’t had to pick up the phone once to call an email administrator. It has been truly amazing to see the natural adoption of the product by our field agents.
