Editor's note: From Ada Lovelace to the ladies of ENIAC, women have played an important part in driving technology forward. As Women’s History Month winds down, we’re highlighting a handful of women who are making strides, driving change and shaping the future of technology. Today, we hear from Bethany Kemp, VP of Technology & Information Systems for Design Within Reach, a Google Apps customer.

How and when did you first get involved in IT?
I first joined Design Within Reach in 2001, back when it was much smaller, starting in the call center. By 2002, I'd worked my way up into a shipping coordinator role. In 2004, they decided to move my part of the business from San Francisco to Kentucky - but I didn’t want to leave San Francisco. The head of IT, who I had worked closely with and who had seen how I ran operations in the shipping center, asked me to stay and join his team as Systems Coordinator. My first major task was to roll out a new ERP for the company. It was a custom system, so I had to write up all the documentation and run user training. It was a pretty big job for my first time in IT, but a great way to dive in headfirst.

Aside from a two year stint running operations, I’ve been in IT for almost ten years now. Managing operations gave me a good idea of the challenges the business faced - it was a good experience to work hand-in-hand with that team as the company grew. I liked operations, but I also realized along the way that I wanted to tackle our business needs by giving our developers opportunities to make cool stuff, so I moved back to IT. I've been there ever since.

What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in IT?
I believe two especially significant changes have affected the the world of technology, the way businesses work and the role of IT leaders.

First is the mobile revolution. My users want to work from their phones or tablets, not their desktops. Our sales teams rely on their applications working from their mobile devices, whether they're in the store or on location with clients. It’s a totally different way of working and a great opportunity for my team to help create a more personal customer experience - not to mention close sales faster.

The second significant change is the move to cloud computing. Before, I had to conduct a long evaluation process to understand the costs and the impact on our current environment before choosing a new IT solution. Then, we had to build the hardware environment to support those IT investments. Now, I can get an application or new system up and running in a couple months, and if we don't like it, we can stop using it without worrying about lost money or time. The cloud has enabled great innovation. There are so many options for businesses out there, and applications can be integrated and improved so quickly. This level of choice has given more power back to us and our users, and it challenges the provider to always create the best, newest and most exciting products and experiences, because the users has the option of just turning it off and using another option.

The move to cloud computing has also changed the role and make-up of my team. Before, when someone came to me with a request for help tackling a problem, I'd either say it wasn't possible or would take 2 years to implement. Now I can say yes, and figure out how to do it right away. And I don't need a lot of developers; I have business analysts and administrators who know the business. That's a great feeling for me and for my team. I feel like IT is now a business driving role, not just a support role.

What advice would you give other women interested in tech?
I learned early on not to be afraid of tackling something I’m not yet an expert in. I feel that women sometimes hesitate before volunteering to do something new that they’re not comfortable with. Technology is still predominantly male, but you shouldn’t be intimidated by being the only woman in the room. You’ll earn respect in whatever you do by being comfortable with who you are and confident in your knowledge.

The last thing I’ll say is that women need to stick with IT and look for opportunities to support other women in the industry. The more of us that stay in IT and the more we support each other, the more technology can change for the better.

Editor's note: From Ada Lovelace to the ladies of ENIAC, women have played an important part in driving technology forward. As Women’s History Month winds down, we’re highlighting a handful of women who are making strides, driving change and shaping the future of technology. Today, we hear from Jeanne DeWitt, Head of Americas SMB Sales for Google Apps.

How and when did you first get involved in technology?
I grew up watching my dad sell the first PCs for IBM and alpha testing computer games like Midnight Rescue! and Reader Rabbit, so when it came time to graduate from college, I knew I wanted to apply to Google. I ended up on the Gmail Support team just two months after the product launched. It was my job to answer users’ questions and help diagnose bugs, which ultimately led to me working closely with Product and Engineering to help shape the future direction of Gmail.

What other women do you look up to?
I’ve always looked up to Claire Johnson, one of my first Google managers and now VP at Google [x]. As a manager, she delivered tough love that was both direct and highly inspirational — a skill I’ve attempted to emulate throughout my management career. As a leader, she’s incisive and quick to get to the crux of the issue. She’s a classic “all-around athlete” who can take off her functional hat to lead any team. On top of all this, she’s authentic and incredibly witty.

What advice do you have for women interested or working in tech today?
For those considering tech, don’t be worried about having a non-traditional background. I’m a French major who worked in Support, who’s now leading a Sales organization across two continents. You just have to dive in! For women in tech, realize that the fact that you may be one of the few women in the room is an asset and a differentiator. Embrace your unique perspective and style. It contributes to a better outcome.

Posted by Prajesh Parekh, Google Apps Marketing

When we discover something amazing – whether it’s a new local coffee shop or a tool that improves the way we work – we want to share it with people we know so they can also benefit.

For those of us who use Google Apps, the ability to access all of our documents from anywhere on any device and being able to seamlessly collaborate with colleagues or customers across the world, are impressive moments. These are moments we want to share with friends and colleagues because the more the people in our networks use Google Apps, the more seamlessly we can collaborate with them -- whether it’s video conferencing via Hangouts, working together on Docs or sharing calendars. Best of all, it means we can all begin to experience a new way of working.

Many of the millions of Google Apps customers learned about tools like Hangouts, Drive and Gmail for business from their customers, friends and networks. To help continue the momentum, we’re launching the Google Apps Referral Program. The referral program makes it easy to share Google Apps with your network and show them how they too can use these tools at work. To show our appreciation, we’re offering a $15 referral bonus for each new Google Apps user you refer.

Joining is simple. The Google Apps Referral Program is currently available for anyone based in the US and Canada. Find more program details here and start benefiting when the businesses you know sign up.

Posted by Cee Chan, IT Manager, LUSH

Editor's note: Today we hear from Cee Chan, IT Manager at the environmentally conscious handmade cosmetics company LUSH. Headquartered in England, LUSH has multiple manufacturing sites and several head office locations in Poole and London. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At LUSH, we believe in making products that are quality from start to finish and take care to only buy ingredients that have a positive impact on the community from which they are sourced. We send our Ethical Buying Team to visit suppliers, trace the ingredients and meet the growers to ensure care for the environment and fair worker conditions. We take pride in what we do and make an effort to provide our team with the tools they need to create the best products and deliver exceptional service. Yet, as we started to grow, our Scalix email system began crashing regularly, causing our productivity to plummet.

We started looking for a new email solution with three key things in mind. First, we wanted a cloud-based solution that could scale as we grew without causing any service outages. Second, we wanted a solution that would enable seamless, real-time collaboration. We’re a team-oriented company and wanted to employ tools like Google Docs and Hangouts that made collaboration simple, whether it was between two employees in our Poole office or five teams spread across the globe. Third, we wanted a flexible solution that would support our BYOD policy and allow employees to work on any device, from anywhere, at any time. We considered a few different options, but when Ancoris introduced us to Google Apps we found that it was the only solution that fulfilled all of our needs.

Google’s cloud-based solution helps us scale seamlessly without any interruptions to our coverage. Before moving onto Google Apps, we spent at least eight hours a week dealing with IT issues. Now, we can lean on Google to deal with the technology side of our business and we no longer have to worry about things like disk space or email outages—everything just works. The switch to Google Apps is a huge boost to productivity and time savings, which in turn saves us a lot of money. As an environmentally conscious company, it also feels good knowing we are decreasing our footprint by getting rid of our on-site infrastructure and becoming more energy efficient.

Through tools like Docs and Hangouts, Google Apps enables a collaborative and flexible work environment that keeps us all on the same page, no matter where we are located. For example, we use Docs across the company to manage employee schedules and timesheets so that everyone can be on the same page. The fact that any employee can open the shared document and know they’re viewing the most up-to-date version, instead of having to sift through old email attachments, has vastly improved efficiency. The best part is that we can access our documents from anywhere and on any device, helping us maintain a flexible work environment. Tools like Hangouts have also improved collaboration at LUSH, because connecting with colleagues is now so simple and seamless.

Moving to Google Apps was critical to help our business scale, innovate and keep our commitment to producing ethically-sourced products that are good for our customers and good for our suppliers. With Google taking care of the technology side of our business, we can now focus on the things that matter most--making products that are quality from start to finish.

Posted by Nigel Bailey, General Manager - Fairfax Production Services for Fairfax Media New Zealand

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Nigel Bailey, General Manager - Fairfax Production Services for Fairfax Media New Zealand. The company is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, and has two national, nine daily and more than 60 community newspapers in addition to more than 25 magazines and websites. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Fairfax Media NZ was established in 2003 and currently employs approximately 1,800 people. Since its founding, the company has grown its reach to nearly three million New Zealanders across its 90+ publications. We are headquartered in Auckland with additional teams in Wellington and Christchurch. When I joined eight years ago, our IT environment was incredibly fragmented. Every newspaper had its own IT department, systems and ways of doing things.

As the company grew, we began to view our business differently and started looking into how we could restructure the organization. We wanted to consolidate and standardize the different systems we used so we embarked on a systems centralization program.

Four years ago, one of our major challenges was email. Employees in different cities used different email systems—primarily Microsoft Exchange—but we wanted everyone on one central system. We needed a system that would allow teams to work and collaborate virtually. At that time, there wasn’t a comparable solution on the market. Since then, however, Google has made immense progress. In 2012, we began our migration onto Google Apps and by November, the entire company had made the move. Now, for the first time in the company’s history, we have a single view of IT across the organization.

We saw three immediate benefits after moving to Google Apps: real-time collaboration, increased productivity and the ability to work anytime, anywhere. For us, being able to collaborate in real-time is crucial. Google’s cloud-based solution means that we can do anything from anywhere. For a media organisation, this is absolute gold. Having news teams and sales teams be able to collaborate and share information wherever they are is a completely new way of thinking and it has spread to other parts of our business.

At a recent internal event, I was impressed by how efficiently everything ran. Before Google Apps, we shared agendas via email and everyone added their comments in separate documents and one person would cobble all the revisions together. This involved countless back-and-forth emails and a hope that by the end, everyone’s comments were properly captured. The agenda would have to be finalised well before the event because making any updates involved the same cumbersome process. Various versions of notes recapping the event would also be assembled from several different documents.

Now that we’re on Google Apps, we’re all on the same page—literally! Being able to share one document, where everyone can collaborate at the same time, has been a huge time saver and a boost to efficiency. The speed at which we can now turn things around is profoundly faster.The switch to Google Apps increased our productivity by allowing us to work anytime, anywhere.

One of the best parts of the migration was the team excitement about the move to Google Apps. When we announced we were rolling out Google Apps, some staff came up to us and said, “We’ve actually been using Google Apps on the side but hadn’t told the IT department because we didn’t want to get into trouble. Can we now move what we’ve already set up into the Fairfax Media Google environment?” People are using this sort of technology at home already. By moving to Google Apps we’re actually catching up to our employees.

Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Eric Hollenbeck, Sr. Manager of IT & Business Services at Redfin, a technology-powered real estate company headquartered in Seattle, WA that serves 22 markets across the U.S. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Why did you choose Google Apps?
We moved our entire company onto Google Apps five years ago to cut costs and align closely with the tools our customers and employees wanted to use. The benefits we’re experiencing, however, go beyond that and have led to improved efficiency, increased mobility, and better collaboration across our company. We also knew that using Google Apps and other technologies would help us innovate and differentiate ourselves from other real estate companies.

How is Google Apps increasing collaboration across Redfin?
We have offices across the U.S., which could pose obstacles for a team-oriented work environment, but tools like Docs and Spreadsheets help keep our team collaborative. We use Docs to share any work that needs to be viewed or edited by multiple people or parties, like marketing lists or specs for new Redfin.com features. Our staff uses Docs to create and share planning documents and task checklists with 20 or more team members across multiple offices and time zones. The fact that we can all review and comment simultaneously has improved collaboration company-wide.

As a real estate business, your team is often on location. What tools help employees remain efficient while working remotely?
Our real estate agents are frequently out of the office helping clients buy or sell homes, so we really benefit from having remote access to all of our files through Google Drive. Our real estate agents work in teams, with a coordinator helping them throughout the escrow process. By using Google Drive, both team members can access and update the most current version of a contract, ensuring timely and accurate access to critical details about each real estate transaction. It’s also a huge boost to efficiency knowing that anytime we open a document in Drive, it’s the correct version and changes are saved automatically. This eliminates the need to sift through emails on our mobile device to try to find the most recent copy.

Is there a particular tool that helps keep the team organized?
Our intranet is powered by Google Sites. We store and share everything from company announcements and events to many internal resources like HR documents. The entire team knows that there’s a single, centralized place to find all of the basic information they need.

How is Google Apps helping Redfin achieve its goals?
Our primary goal is to use technology to transform the way people buy and sell homes--making it easier and more enjoyable for our clients. Any tools that can help our teams collaborate more efficiently, thus serving our clients more effectively, is a win for Redfin and our customer. Google Apps is helping us deliver that result.

Posted by Rick Mueller, IT Manager for Pediatric Home Service

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Rick Mueller, IT Manager for Pediatric Home Service, a provider of in-home nursing and medical care for medically-complex children based in Roseville, Minnesota. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Pediatric Home Service started offering in-home respiratory care for medically-complex children 23 years ago. Our founder, Susan Wingert, understood that kids thrive at home, not in the hospital, so we brought the medical care to them. Since then, we’ve expanded our services to include infusion therapy, pharmacy, nutrition, education, social work, and most recently private duty nursing. We help care for more than 3,400 children in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

Over half of the 330 people on staff are skilled clinicians and nurses who spend their days in patient homes. Our clinicians do 99% of their charting and reporting electronically, so they need to securely access records right from the patient’s home in real-time. We used to install Windows laptops in some private duty nursing patient homes so nurses could log onto our records system, but that was costly and cumbersome.

When it was time to upgrade our old Microsoft Exchange Server two years ago, we looked at several options, and quickly realized moving to Google Apps would be the most secure, scalable and cost effective solution for our growing organization. We launched Apps in September 2011, starting with Gmail, Chat, Contacts and Calendar. During the rollout, we used the Google Guides program, where we trained a few power users who in turn helped their colleagues learn the ropes of Google Apps.

All of our employees loved Google Apps, so when it came time to upgrade the Windows laptops in the field, we replaced them with Chromebooks, including models from Acer and Samsung. The Chromebooks put critical information, including charts, medication lists and treatments, at the nurses’ fingertips. Many of them are installed in patient homes, enabling our private duty nurses to check Gmail as well as update charts in our Windows-based patient records system via Citrix.

From a cost perspective, we’ve saved over $17,000 buying the Chromebooks versus Windows laptops, but the real savings is ongoing. So far, we have saved at least $50,000 in soft costs due to decreased management and upkeep, and expect those savings to continue.

We plan to buy more Chromebooks and deploy them in our headquarters, our warehouse and among the facility staff. The IT team are all converts because Chromebooks require almost zero maintenance. We use the Management Console to remotely lock machines, get full visibility into usage and configure on-site wireless access. Chromebooks take 10 minutes to set up, and we spend 1/10th as much time maintaining Chromebooks as we do our Windows laptops.

Our nurses and clinicians have one top priority: taking care of the child. They don’t want to fiddle around with technology; they want technology that just works, and with Chromebooks, they’re empowered to better help kids and families thrive at home.

Posted by Simon Turner, Group IT director, Haymarket Media Group

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Simon Turner, group IT director at Haymarket Media Group, a London-based publishing and events company with 60 print and online brands around the world. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

London-based Haymarket Media Group is the largest privately owned media business in the United Kingdom with more than 2,000 employees worldwide. Our 60 consumer and business titles range from marketing, medical and financial to sports and automotive. After more than half a century in publishing, Haymarket Media is transforming itself into a “Digital First” company that focuses on specialist markets via channels which include web, mobile, face to face events and print. This requires a more centralised way of thinking and a sea change in the way we collaborate -- which we get now with Google Apps.

Google caught my eye when a few early adopters in the company from Stuff began using Gmail a few years ago. We were using an aging Microsoft Exchange 2003 for email and needed a technology refresh. I launched a proof of concept last year with 50 staffers. After hearing presentations from Google Apps and Microsoft 365 sales teams, we made the decision to go with Google.

Implementing Google has been smooth. It took just six weeks to move 800 mailboxes earlier this year, with the help of Grove Group, a Google Enterprise partner. Google Apps integrates with other systems we use, like Salesforce.com and Active Directory. It also saves us money -- we have Google Apps for about the same price that an email upgrade would cost.

But it’s the collaboration, flexibility and time savings that our employees love most. The 25 gigabyte mailbox in Gmail means people don’t waste time deleting emails; every single employee has an extra half hour in their week that was previously spent clearing out the inbox. During a recent office relocation employees were able to do their work from anywhere using Google Apps on their laptops and mobile devices.

Hundreds of reporters at Haymarket publications are writing and posting stories faster than ever because of the real-time collaboration capabilities with Google Apps. Several writers and editors in different locations can work on the same document simultaneously. They are sharing calendars too, so editors at PistonHeads know which reporter is covering which event at an automobile trade show in Detroit, for example. They are using Google+ to distribute articles to additional readers, as well as to share live events. In a recent Google+ broadcast, 150 people were talking about technology and media in our studio as part of a WebFest event.

We’re not stopping there, either. Later this year, we plan to adopt Google Sites and Google Drive as tools to support strategic development for the business going forward. Google is proving to be a key part of our Digital First campaign to meet -- and even exceed -- the pace of change in our industry.

Posted by Joseph Kopser, Co-Founder and CEO at RideScout

Editor's note: Today, we hear from Joseph Kopser, Army Veteran, Bronze Star recipient as well as Co-Founder and CEO at RideScout, a mobile app that aims to streamline transportation by showing real-time information on public, private and social options in one single view. See what other companies that have gone Google have to say.

Several years ago, I was on active duty in the Army, serving as Special Assistant to Army 4-Star Chief of Staff General George W. Casey, Jr. at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. I lived less than 10 miles from my office and everyday I faced the question, “what’s the best way to get there?” I could take the bus, I could carpool, I could walk, and I could even take a taxi, but there wasn’t one service that helped me pick my best option for that particular day. Furthermore, I saw so many people, likely going to the same place as me, with four empty seats in their vehicles.

My frustrations spurred a discussion with a few Army buddies of mine, and in 2011, Craig Cummings and I decided to do something about it. Together we launched RideScout, a mobile app that helps people figure out the fastest and most cost-efficient way to get from one place to another. It takes real-time information and schedules on cabs, buses, trains, ride shares, and emerging services like car2go and Sidecar and pulls it into Google Maps so people can easily compare the options. Not only does RideScout help people get where they need to be faster, but it also reduces the number of cars on the road, increasing transportation efficiency and reducing harm to our planet.

Soon after RideScout got off the ground, I moved to Austin to teach leadership and military strategy at the University of Texas. Craig and I realized we needed a platform to help us collaborate and build the company collectively, despite the physical distance between us. We chose Google Apps from the get-go because its cloud-based platform allowed us to do exactly that. Now, RideScout has employees in Austin, D.C., and contractors in other cities working all hours spread across different time zones. We also use a lot of tablets and portable laptops, so storing everything in the cloud and being able to access it — regardless of our device — is essential.

Google Docs has been a crucial tool for the team, especially the product developers as we’ve gone through our app development iterations. We hold dozens of quick brainstorm sessions every week to go over product requirements and designs, and with Docs we can stay in sync throughout the process because we’re all looking at the same information at the same time. As we matured, we started seeing the same kind of collaboration happen in Presentations, and even with Drawings — they all became living documents with people commenting and editing simultaneously. I think of Docs and Spreadsheets as whiteboards, where RideScout employees can throw out ideas and iterate on them as a team in real time.

Security also was an important consideration for us. We knew we wanted a cloud solution from the beginning, and Google Apps is a platform we could trust to keep our information safe. Because we don’t have to maintain our own servers, it’s just one less thing we have to worry about. And as a startup, taking something off your list of things to worry about is fantastic.

RideScout is scaling quickly. In July we had seven employees and we’ve more than doubled since then. The ability to add a new employee to the system in five minutes or less is extremely important when we’re working on limited resources and stretched to the max to get the product to market. With Apps we’ve got a platform that scales with us, so as we grow and expand to new markets, our employees can worry less about the process of sharing work and focus more on building a great product.

Posted by Jonathan Hudgins, Co-Founder and CEO, Flying Scarfs

Editor's note: This Veterans Day, we’re celebrating our veteran’s contributions and successes as entrepreneurs, by highlighting a handful of the 3.7 million businesses run by veterans in the U.S. Today’s guest blogger is Jonathan Hudgins, Co-Founder and CEO of Flying Scarfs, an enterprise that empowers partners in developing countries to flourish in the global economy.

When I deployed to Afghanistan with the 335th Fighter Squadron in the summer of 2011, I didn’t expect to return with an idea for a nonprofit, much less a plan for making it a reality within months of getting home. But that’s exactly what happened over the 6 month stint. During my time in Afghanistan, I spent days exploring the local Bagram bazaar with three of my fellow Air Force Officers and future co-founders, Joseph Stenger, Joshua Carroll and Ryan Bodenheimer. We befriended a merchant who was selling scarves made by widows in the area, then giving the proceeds back to the women so they could educate and support themselves. These women typically didn’t have much access to capital or jobs, so this gave them some financial stability — and with, a stronger political voice.

Flying Scarfs Team

As our deployment came to an end, we realized there was an opportunity to stay connected with and support the Bagram community by selling their scarves back in the U.S. and sending the proceeds back to the women who made them. By sharing their creations with a broader audience, we could stay connected with the community while also helping the artisans achieve economic success and stability. That’s how Flying Scarfs got started. We had the idea, the business plan, the connections in Afghanistan, and even a retail store, my parents’ shop in North Carolina, to sell our first batch of scarves — the next step was finding a tool to connect the dots. Google Apps was our answer from day one: we could appear professional right off the bat with our @flyingscarfs.com email, and with the cloud-based storage and email, we didn’t even need an office. That was essential at the time, since Joey, Josh and Ryan were still on active duty and we were all in different locations. With Google Apps, we could still stay connected and up to speed no matter where we were.

Two years later, we’re grown up and are even more spread out, but with Google Apps, we’re always on the same page, whether it’s on Gmail, Docs or Spreadsheets. Our CFO, for example, keeps a master financial spreadsheet that gives the rest of the team visibility into our expenditures, costs, sales and margins. We review it each quarter, but if an odd charge shows up at any point, he can ping us and ask if we know where it came from. We can just add details to the Notes column in the spreadsheet, and voila, everyone else knows where it came from.

Hangouts have become an equally integral part in keeping the team up-to-date on the latest updates and developments, both on a regular basis and for ad hoc meetings. When ABC World News published a piece about us in August, for example, our daily website traffic suddenly increased by 100 times our average and our order requests from our online store shot up. We were all over the place — our CFO was in Chicago, Ryan was in Idaho, Josh was in DC, and the rest of us were in North Carolina — but by jumping on a Hangout, we were able to outline a clear plan for handling the sudden activity. A phone call doesn’t always do the trick when you’re trying to replicate the kind of brainstorming you’re able to do when you’re together in a room, while a Hangout was exactly what we needed to plan our immediate next steps.

Using Google Apps lets us to focus more on what matters to us: empowering artisans across the world. And since we’re not tied to a single desktop computer or physical office, we’ve even been able to add new partners in Kenya and Haiti and seamlessly start selling their products back in the U.S. Because that’s what it’s all about - sharing the beautiful work of craftspeople with a wider audience, so they can support themselves economically. That’s what we believe in.

Posted by Derek Bennett, former Army Captain and Chief of Staff at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)

Editor's note: This Veterans Day, we’re celebrating our veteran’s contributions and successes as entrepreneurs, by highlighting a handful of the 3.7 million businesses run by veterans in the U.S. Today, we hear from Derek Bennett, former Army Captain and Chief of Staff at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).

When Paul Rieckhoff returned to the U.S. after serving in Iraq as an Army First Lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader, he couldn’t help but notice two things: how difficult the return to civilian life could be, and how important it was for veterans to join the national dialogue in the media and on the ground. Starting IAVA was his way of doing something about it - and it has accomplished quite a bit since its inception in 2004. IAVA is the country's first and largest organization dedicated to supporting and representing new veterans and their families, with nearly 300,000 members and supporters. And we’re as dedicated as ever to our original mission: helping veterans understand the benefits available to them, ensuring their voices are heard in mainstream media, and giving them a safe community to ask questions and get advice from fellow vets.

A lot of amazing people have helped us get where we are now - a lot of selfless veterans, generous civilians and dedicated employees. But we also couldn’t have done it without some help from technology like Google Apps. We’re a mobile company: we have offices in New York and Washington, D.C., but often travel or work from home, and our volunteers come from all over the country, so we have a pretty flexible work policy. Since Apps allows us to access our email and documents from anywhere, whether on our laptops at home or the mobile Drive app on our tablets, our teams can get their work done whenever and wherever they need.

Google Spreadsheets have completely revolutionized our volunteer signup process at recruitment events. Instead of having people sign a piece of paper, entering their names on a spreadsheet, and emailing the new version around, we have our team take tablets into the field and enter information directly into a Google spreadsheet. That way, we know everything is up-to-date at any given moment, not to mention we save time and minimize the risk of typos or forgotten updates.

While Spreadsheets help us bring in new volunteers more efficiently, Hangouts make it possible to build camaraderie between our team and those volunteers. We recently launched Squad Leaders, a program where IAVA ambassadors host barbeques, set up networking events and provide professional mentorship for vets in their local communities. We want to make sure our Squad Leaders feel as connected to the core IAVA team as they do with the vets in their neighborhoods, and Hangouts help make that happen. We use them to conduct Squad Leader training sessions and to run regular check-ins, so our ambassadors feel personal connections with a program that’s otherwise geographically spread out.

Veterans are service leaders, entrepreneurs, teachers, students, parents and politicians. IAVA’s mission is to make sure they’re all those things and everything else they want to be - that they feel fully supported and represented as citizens. Our veterans have already committed so much to their country by they time they return home that they should feel empowered to accomplish even more in the years ahead. With 2.6 million veterans, it’s no easy feat, but with the help of a growing team of employees and supporters, I think we’re off to a pretty good start.

Posted by Rob Dyer, Marine Corps Aviation Officer and Founder and CEO of RuckPack

Editor's note: This Veterans Day, we’re celebrating our veterans' contributions and successes as entrepreneurs, by highlighting a handful of the 3.7 million businesses run by veterans in the U.S. Today, we hear from Rob Dyer, active duty Marine Corps Aviation Officer and Founder and CEO of RuckPack, a peak performance nutrition shot.

The idea for RuckPack was born while I was deployed to Afghanistan with Marine Special Operations Command. While at camp we’d talk about how great it would be to start a company together when we got home — we could keep the gang together and hire other veterans to build up the team. We even came up with a business idea: a nutrition shot with all the vitamins and minerals to keep guys in our position healthy and focused through the long, tough missions. And before we knew it, we had the early makings of RuckPack.

We tried to get the company up and running when we got back from Afghanistan, but it was hard with everyone spread out all over the country. I told a Marine buddy of mine about the business plan and some of the challenges I was facing. He told me the first step to getting the company off the ground was to start using Google Apps for Business. The majority of our team is still on active duty, myself included, but wherever we are, we're able to stay connected using Google Apps. That's helped us release two flavors of our nutrition shot that are being sold at stores and shipped to soldiers abroad.

Google Apps is the technological backbone to RuckPack — it’s what keeps our 12-person, multi-million dollar virtual operation running without an office. Hangouts keep us connected, whether it’s a conversation about a website change or a celebration of a big sale with a retail distributor. After spending day and night with these guys in the military, seeing their faces on a Hangout makes it feel like we’ve still got the gang together.

Google Docs and Drive help us keep track of and centralize our business plans and documents. Any time we get on a call with an investor, think of a topic for a blog post, or request content changes to the website, we open a Doc and share it with the appropriate people. That way, we can all keep tabs on our work, whether we’re checking in from Japan, where one of our teammates is stationed, or from Annapolis, where I live and teach at the Naval Academy.

Today, we launched our Veteran Distributor Program (VDP), which allows any U.S. veteran to join our sales force and receive a commission on any RuckPack product they sell. Our team knew from the start that we wanted to help fellow veterans; this was our way of expanding it beyond the core team. The concept of the VDP was launched and refined in a Google Doc, with each person on the team contributing with additions and comments along the way. We don’t have to be in a room together to get a great idea off the ground. We just needed a shared Google doc.

There's nothing like the bond I felt with the guys I was deployed with. There was a sense of team and trust among us that we all missed when we got back home. What's great about RuckPack is that we’ve been able to revive that same bond and camaraderie. Google Apps has helped us keep that sense of working towards a common goal — only now that goal is building a great business that helps the guys still out there serving our country.

Editor's note: Colorado has enticed all sorts of pioneers since its Wild West beginnings. We’re excited to highlight a handful of these trailblazers - the intrepid entrepreneurs, aspiring micro-brewers and ambitious thought leaders - who have helped create the adventurous and innovative culture the Centennial State is known for. Today, we hear from David Cohen, Co-founder and CEO of Techstars, a mentorship driven startup accelerator based in Boulder, Colorado. Join us next Wednesday for a Hangout on Air with David and fellow Techstars co-founder Brad Feld to learn more about technology in the startup world.

Can you tell us about Techstars?
Techstars is a startup accelerator program that pairs promising entrepreneurs and their companies with seed funding and mentorship from the top venture capital firms and angel investors. We started in Boulder in 2006, and over the last seven years, we’ve opened six new offices, graduated 234 companies, and helped create nearly 1,900 jobs.

Why do you think Boulder has become such a hot spot for entrepreneurs and startups?
Boulder has a very "give first" culture. Investors, inventors, CEOs and engineers open their doors and ears to aspiring entrepreneurs, and they do it without expecting anything in return. People here genuinely want to help others, and it has really turned the area into a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship.

How has Google Apps helped Techstars?
Google Apps is a boon to our operation efficiency. We've saved a ton of money, which is huge in itself, but more importantly, we're far more productive than we could be with other solutions. The collaboration features in Docs and Drive alone have saved us hours we would’ve wasted emailing attachments back and forth, trying to reconcile changes.

Do you see many of the Techstars startups using Google Apps?
More than 80 percent of Techstars startups use tools from the Google Apps platform to run their business. Most of them began using tools like Gmail, Hangouts and Docs in their personal lives, so using the business version of the platform comes naturally for them. Google Apps is heavily ingrained in our startup culture.

What’s one of the major cultural benefits you’re seeing with Google Apps?
Hangouts have revolutionized the way our company, startups, mentors and investors connect and collaborate. Our program relies heavily on successful partnerships between co-founders, startups, mentors, venture firms and employees, so having the right tools to help everyone work is vital. We have dedicated Hangout monitors in each of our offices for ad hoc discussions, staff meetings, and mentorship sessions. We vet and interview Techstars applicants over Hangouts, since our applicants come from all over the world and conference calls don’t quite capture their personality or company vision. And since our mentors are just as spread out as our applicants, we use Hangouts to connect them with the startups they’re advising.

What Google Apps product could you not live without?
I could not live without Google Docs. I literally have 15 Google Docs open at any given time, so I know I’ve got everything I need in front of me and can switch back and forth easily between them to get my work done.

Posted by Brian Morrissey, Head of Web Services, IT Services department at University College Dublin

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Brian Morrissey, Head of Web Services, IT Services at University College Dublin, Ireland’s largest university. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

University College Dublin is the largest university in Ireland and one of Europe’s leading research universities. Founded in 1854, UCD has 6,000 staff and more than 30,000 students. Being able to get accurate information quickly, even when on the go, is important for faculty and students in a highly competitive learning environment. Google Apps and Google Search Appliance are helping us stay connected and informed.

Before Google, we weren’t always able to respond to service issues quickly, particularly if they happened on the weekend when IT administrators were off work. Google’s tools make service issues less frequent and easier to manage when they occur. Because we don’t have all that hardware and software to manage, we can now focus our IT staff on bringing new services to the UCD community. These include collaborative and communications services such as Google Plus and Hangouts, together with improved services through UCD Connect and UCD Mobile.

The ability to integrate Google Calendar and Drive with Gmail was another huge benefit for us. The big game changer for us is Google Calendar. We’re delivering class schedules and other events to students directly in their calendars, so they are easy to update and accessible via mobile devices. With 40,000 smartphones and tablets on the UCD network this is key to helping students make it to class on time.

In addition to Google Apps, UCD is using Google Search Appliance to make all of its publicly available documents searchable through its website, and internal documents searchable by university staff on the intranet. More than 500,000 documents are in the index and people are conducting more than 60,000 searches per month. We’ve implemented numerous custom search display pages and targeted directory searches with specific keywords to make it easier for people to find what they are looking for.

Google’s initial appeal was service availability, coupled with storage improvements, easy mobile access and cost savings. We’re saving about $330,000 a year that would have been spent on servers, maintenance, personnel and power to manage the previous email system, SunMail. Storage was a big concern for us before going Google. We had about eight terabytes of staff emails alone and were always worried that we’d run out of storage and have to buy more. Now, each person has seven times more storage for mail and concerns about exceeding quotas have disappeared. Through the use of Google Apps and Search Appliance, UCD now has a scalable solution for mail, collaboration and search which drives better communication, collaboration and information retrieval throughout our university.

Posted by Mr. Saleh Al-Sagabi, Information Technology Director, Spimaco

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Mr. Saleh Al-Sagabi, Information Technology Director at Spimaco, a Saudi Arabian medical and pharmaceutical business, which develops, manufactures and sells pharmaceutical products and medical appliances. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

As one of the leading Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical companies, Spimaco works tirelessly to register new products with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the fastest time possible. Previously, this involved a team of a hundred people from across the world creating, accessing and editing thousands of documents individually. This meant staff were spending an hour a week inputting into documents, sending them as attachments for others to edit and merging changes from multiple contributors. Across the organization, this added up to 52,000 hours a year spent on managing different versions of the same document and combining changes from individuals.

We’d heard about other large pharmaceutical businesses, Roche and Genentech, moving to the cloud-based communication service Google Apps so we understood its collaborative potential. As an experiment, we decided to offer 50 of our staff access to Google Apps and found that, all of a sudden, teams were no longer wiping out several hours a week on making changes in attachments, sending these to colleagues and merging changes into a single document. They were using Google Docs to work together in the same document simultaneously, seeing each other’s changes as they typed and sharing ideas, comments and feedback instantly across multiple countries. This really showed us the potential of Google Apps for teamwork and collaboration.

We now have 1,100 people using Google Apps and the benefits are widespread. Through Gmail’s search capabilities, finding an email in the labyrinth of folders and attachments has gone from up to ten minutes to seconds, speeding up daily communication.

Not only is our information easier to access from anywhere but it is also more secure. Having used Lotus Domino since 1998, we ended up with over four terabytes of confidential data that needed to be managed and protected by our own teams. This was both time-consuming and challenging. Today, by storing everything in Google’s data center, we benefit from the cutting edge security Google can offer and, if needed, can remotely wipe accounts or devices. Our employees can also see exactly who has access to a document and whether they can edit it or not - all without complex file sharing processes, which used to take IT at least an hour a day to manage. We’ll soon be adding Google Vault to help us further with archiving, e-discovery and improve the information governance capabilities.

We've also cut our IT costs by 75% by moving to Google Apps - that's hundreds of thousands of dollars we can spend developing better medical solutions instead. More importantly, we now have a more productive, better connected, more collaborative workforce. As the largest company in Saudi Arabia to make the move to Google Apps, it is great to think we’re leading the way for others in our country.

Editor's note: We’re excited to announce that Keller Williams Realty International, the largest real estate franchise company in North America, is going Google. We sat down with Jason Tang, Executive Director of Technology, to learn about what drove the move and what they’re looking forward to. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Can you tell us about Keller Williams and your decision to move to Google Apps?
Keller Williams is the largest real estate franchise company in North America. We have 200 employees in our Austin, Texas headquarters and support 90,000 agents across our 670 franchise locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Having a central corporate team and a vast network of independent associates puts us in a unique position from an IT standpoint: we’re responsible for making decisions that help both our internal employees and our agents in the field, whose day-to-day roles differ quite a bit.

Our path to Google Apps was driven by two immediate features both groups needed: a better email platform and a more integrated calendar system. We ran on-premise Microsoft Exchange in our headquarters and a separate system built on an open source platform for our associates. It was an antiquated solution, to say the least. We evaluated Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365, and what clinched it for Google Apps was the future we saw with it. At the 80,000-foot view, our decision wasn’t just about solving our two biggest problems today, but about innovating for the years ahead. We’re betting on a great platform that we know will only get better.

Real estate agents are always on the go. How did mobile play into your decision to use Google Apps?
Mobile, mobile, mobile is our rallying cry. Our agents don’t succeed sitting behind a desk, and when it comes to mobile apps, they want it to “just work” – whether they’re using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. We’ve spent plenty of time imagining a typical day once we’ve got our associates on Apps. Let’s say an agent and her office team receive an email from a client asking to schedule a showing. The office team sets up an appointment in Calendar for 4:00 p.m. that afternoon. The agent, who is out showing properties, gets an alert on her smartphone for the 4:00 p.m. meeting and shows up at the property at the appointed time. If the meeting changes to 5:00 p.m., no problem, she’ll get an instant alert on her smartphone. What’s more, the back-office team has already uploaded a video presentation of the property and the full disclosure packet to Drive. During the viewing, the agent can pull up the video and documents on her tablet to give a very polished presentation.

That fact that this scenario can play out on whatever device our agents prefer is a game-changer for both us and them, and everyone wins.

What excites you most about the future with Google Apps?
What excites us most is the potential with Google Apps. Yes, we’re thrilled to roll out the core products, like Gmail, Calendar and Drive, with the help of Cloud Sherpas, and our employees and agents are thrilled to upgrade to a system they’re so familiar with. From where I stand, I see endless possibilities beyond the core products. I imagine agents using YouTube to feature videos of properties, Drive to upload disclosure packets, Voice to manage their client calls, and Blogger to create blogs on local real estate trends. Google Apps are the building blocks to create a whole new technology infrastructure for our company.

Google Apps Marketplace will also play a big role at our company. Keller Williams is unique, in that our 90,000 associates are independent operators, not employees. Our agents are free to use many different technology tools to run their businesses. For example, some agents use MailChimp or ConstantContact for email marketing. With the Marketplace, our agents will be able to download these and hundreds of other business apps for use within our Google Apps universe. Our agents use the tools they’re most familiar with, and we support them in their choices however we can.

Posted by Elliot Tally, Senior Director, Sanmina

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is our long-time friend and customer, Elliot Tally, Senior Director of Enterprise Applications, Collaboration & Innovation at Sanmina, a global electronics manufacturer headquartered in San Jose, California with over 47,000 employees. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Since I joined the company over 12 years ago, Sanmina business communications have evolved from an organization into an organism. In the past five years using Google’s tools, I have seen the business transform further from a traditional manufacturing company with change-resistant IT infrastructure, basic collaboration, and a reliance on resource-draining travel for “teamwork,” into a modern company that has embraced the cloud, breathing clean air through more inclusive collaboration, and fostering a flexible and dynamic environment for employees to work effectively where and when they need to.

In 2008, when we first looked at moving to the cloud, we wanted to reduce infrastructure and cut IT costs. We were dealing with a lot of data: 112 Exchange servers across 70 locations. We create 2 Terabytes of email per month, and our Guadalajara campus alone was spending $15,000 a quarter on backups. Plus, we were spending millions of dollars on Microsoft licenses. By choosing Google Apps, we now save about $1.5 million a year, reduced our on premise email infrastructure by more than 90% and have seen a reduction in servers, refocusing of staff, licensing costs and other operating expenditures. We only need two people, instead of six, to support Google Apps for our 21,000 employees who use email.

I knew moving to the cloud would impact our bottom line, what I didn’t realize is how it would influence the culture of our business and the way we get things done. Working across time zones used to involve countless emails, crowded teleconference rooms, and expensive travel. Employees quickly and organically embraced Google Docs to work together without worrying about time zones or physical location. Now we have more than 700,000 Google Docs, 3,200 Google Sites and 4,000 Google Groups spanning all functions of the business. For example, our product engineering teams use Google Sites to track documentation, planning, and product testing for many of their projects, including leveraging the platform for customer collaboration. Using Google+ Hangouts on a daily basis has cut travel costs and we find that employees feel more connected and productive, without the jetlag.

Google Drive has also helped us grow by facilitating the discovery and information sharing process during mergers. We used to manage acquisitions using file attachments for everything from the discovery questionnaires to legal contracts. There were too many attachments to create a record for everything. The draft content was usually shared via email or FTP and version control was a challenge. So when we purchased BreconRidge in 2010 we decided to use a Google Site and Google Docs for the majority of the documentation. The advantages were threefold: active collaboration, inherent version control with synchronization, and ease of sharing. We shared docs internally and with BreconRidge throughout the process to reduce some of the travel requirements, be more transparent, and to facilitate the discovery process and negotiations. The increased collaboration & document control effectiveness resulted in this model becoming the de facto choice for managing subsequent M&A transactions.

Google Apps isn’t the only Google offering helping to streamline our business. In our factories, we’re in the process of replacing thousands of data collection points - spanning each part of the manufacturing line -- with commodity Android tablets. These tablets present a touch-enabled and rich interface for employees, which is readily available on their own mobile devices. Our plant managers appreciate the simplicity of the single interface and the automation; we have dramatically reduced the need for expensive PCs, paper or filing cabinets, and printed work instructions, creating instead a convenient platform for our engineers to target with innovative new apps using technology they already know. The tablets can also send notifications to supervisors and issue quality alerts, allowing for speedier resolution of problems in our plants. We’ve leveraged Google App Engine to host a machine maintenance and calibration system we developed to track equipment and spare parts, and automate the relevant business processes, reducing parts inventory and ensuring easily auditable compliance. Our Printed Circuit Board (PCB) plants even created an interface using the Google Drive API to programmatically create Google Spreadsheets from their PCB engineering design system for sharing with customers as part of the quoting process. We’ve been using the Google Search Appliance since 2009 and added 2 new Google Search Appliances 7.0 this year to index our intranet, our Google Apps content, and a few other internal content stores.

We exceeded our original goals of cutting costs and reducing IT infrastructure by more than we could have conceived of at the time, but the real benefits of “going Google” have emerged over the past four years. It’s much easier to quantify server reduction than the more intangible benefits of using Google Apps: employees working together seamlessly, testing creative solutions without investing in expensive hardware, and increasing job satisfaction since teams can focus on strategic projects. It’s exactly these types of activities that have evolved our business culture from a collection of independent teams into an agile multicellular company leading the industry with collaborative communication solutions.

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Dan Shearer, Director of Safety of SeaPort Airlines Inc., a regional commuter airline operating flights to 21 destinations across 9 states. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Planes are a way of life in the rugged inlets of Southeast Alaska. While cars and roads rule the terrain in the lower 48 states, flying is often the easiest way to get around the mountains, moose and water that dominate the North. SeaPort Airlines Inc. was born in these rugged outdoors -- we’ve been flying short routes in and around Juneau, Alaska since 1982, back when the company went by Wings of Alaska -- and have since added commuter routes in Oregon, Southern California and six states in the Midwest and South. Altogether, our staff of approximately 225 is spread out across the country and operates a fleet of 20 planes.

You can’t underestimate the importance of communication in the aviation world. Everyone has to be on the same page at all times, so we can accurately communicate weather reports, passenger lists, flight times and other critical information. For years, we did this on paper, by emailing attached spreadsheets or using an outside file-sharing service. While we were meticulous in our method, there was always the risk of grabbing an out-of-date document with incorrect details. We implemented two or three different hosted email systems over a four year period, but none of them lived up to our expectations; we faced ongoing problems with outages, lost emails and not enough storage.

We knew we needed a more stable and collaborative platform. With help from Google Apps Reseller ViWo, we switched to Google Apps in January. ViWo was instrumental in getting us up and running. They showed us the best way to roll out and set up Apps to our 225 employees, pointed out tools for transferring data and helped with ad hoc technical support.

With Google Apps, we got a reliable email system with built-in collaboration tools that all our employees can access with a single login. Best of all, it was easy to use. It took me just a few hours one night to create a Google Sheet that’s become the main way we track our departure and arrival status and performance to make sure our flights are running on time and scheduled efficiently. Dozens of agents can update the master Sheet at the same time without us worrying about losing any data or getting a detail wrong. Sheets even translates time zones and lets us easily process monthly reports. We also use Google Docs for internal information like reservation instructions and contracts. We can update these details instantly for the whole company, without printing off hundreds of new pieces of paper.

In the past, IT was best described as reactive, and our technology problems took valuable time and energy away from our primary focus: delivering customers and their baggage safely and on-time to their destinations. Google Apps is changing that. Now, it’s simply a matter of people getting more comfortable with using the system. Just like flying in Alaska, IT managers know they’re going to run into pockets of turbulence. Google Apps ensures that at least our email and collaboration experience is a smooth ride.

Posted by Tyler Carr, Production Manager, Leon Speakers

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Tyler Carr, Production Manager at Leon Speakers. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan and specializes in high-performance, on-wall loudspeakers. Find more info about Chromebooks and see what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Fifteen years ago, a few art and music graduates from the University of Michigan founded Leon Speakers because of their passion for art and audio, technology and design. Leon Speakers now has roughly 40 employees and we meticulously handcraft a full range of high-fidelity, elegant loudspeakers.

We devote the majority of our time to building great audio experiences, and so we have spent less time optimizing our processes. Although we had developed a custom software platform to manage orders, we were still using paper notes and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for much of our information exchange. Our production technicians on the floor created manual checklists to track projects and, at night, I’d print out dozens of updated lists for the next day’s tasks. Even though we were able to produce custom speakers for hundreds of customers at breakneck speeds, for a cutting-edge audio company, our processes were pretty laborious and inefficient. And, as a rapidly growing company (it's our third year on the Inc. 500|5000 List), I knew we had to transform our approach to the manufacturing process.

We decided to make a leap into the future, rather than taking a few small steps. Our requirements were specialized. We’re an assembly manufacturing shop – there is a lot of wood being cut and dust everywhere – and we have skilled craftsmen who may not have a lot of computer training. We knew that from a productivity standpoint, Google Apps would fit our needs. We would no longer have to pay constant licensing costs and wait for upgrades. Instead, we would get continual innovation and have virtually no upkeep. Google Drive would also be a great way to store and share our large 3D design files, which we typically create in CAD programs like SolidWorks. Plus, I could put the entire build schedule on a shared spreadsheet that could be updated in real time by all of my employees.

Then came the question of devices. We looked at Panasonic Toughbooks and several other hardware options, but couldn’t justify the upfront costs and ongoing maintenance expense. Then we found Chromebooks. They were the perfect way for us to inexpensively deploy fast and easy-to-use laptops on the floor. We bought dozens of Chromebooks for our employees to share. It was a third of what we would pay for buying everyone an individual laptop due to the easy sharability factor.

The startup, resume and processing speed of Chromebooks has been phenomenal. It’s very easy for technicians to view their tasks and get their jobs done faster by accessing their lists and tasks in Google Drive. The Chromebook Management Console allows us to push out our corporate websites and apps to the Chromebook app launcher, making it a no-brainer for anyone on staff to pull up job-relevant information. Not to mention the savings in paper and printing costs: everything is now virtual, and if I need to change something based on a customer request, it’s as easy as hitting Enter.

As a production manager, I don't want to spend my time managing IT. Because Google Apps and Chromebooks are so easy to manage, I can spend less time as an IT administrator and more time doing what I love.

Posted by Suresh K L, Chief Information Officer at Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Suresh K L, Chief Information Officer at Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited, a Ghanaian bank serving 450,000 customers across 45 branches. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Established in 2006, Fidelity Bank Ghana is the sixth largest commercial bank in Ghana—employing 1,200 people and serving 450,000 customers across the country. As the banking industry in west Africa continues to evolve, we’re seeing growth due to our aim to provide customers with a faster, simpler banking solution so they can focus on building their businesses and living their lives. We decided to move to Google Apps in March of 2013 because of the guaranteed uptime, high security, low operating costs, and the opportunity for better collaboration among our employees.

Our legacy email system would be down for countless hours—wasting time, decreasing performance, and compromising security. As a result of the unresolvable server outages before switching, employees started using their personal email addresses for official communication, which was against company policy. Our old system operated at 30 to 40 percent more downtime than Google Apps and I personally was losing about six hours a week from downtime.

Since Google Apps is cloud-based and updates automatically, we’re now saving 30 percent in operating costs per year versus our previous environment. The legacy email system required frequent costly upgrades and hardware maintenance. And, like many banks, the security of our account holders’ information is very important to us so we were impressed by the SAS 70 security certification for Google Apps Vault and we were comfortable with making the switch.

Employee collaboration from any device, regardless of location, was a big driver in our move to Google Apps. Many of our employees don’t have desk phones, so Hangouts—with the instant chat feature—have really helped the team stay connected. I’ve seen employees with 12 different chats open at once! Hangouts have reduced the number of meetings we have, allowing different stakeholders to collaborate without having a formal meeting. Before moving to Google Apps, we had major issues trying to access our email during trips abroad. We returned home with hundreds of emails and spent days just reading through them. With Google Apps accessible from anywhere, we can check our email inbox from virtually any device, boosting productivity and time savings.

Google Drive is helping our employees be more productive, and the transition was seamless. Since each user has 30GB of space, there’s plenty of room to have all of our documents and we can access our Docs, Sheets, and Slides from anywhere. We use Drive as our intranet—uploading everything from HR policies to compliance documents. We’re also creating microsites to serve as collaborative hubs for individual departments. For example, we have Google Sheets shared across branches and teams to manage our sales activity, our private and executive banking sales activity, our future business pipeline reports and collating weekly operational reports. Company-wide, we can attribute about 15 percent of time savings directly to Google Apps, but some individuals are saving even more time. Our head of ATM card management is now saving two days per week using Google Forms. Previously, she received 44 separate email attachments each week from various branches that she had to manually input into a master document. Now, those updates are collected using an automated Google Form that auto-populates the master Google Sheet.

Overall, I love seeing all the innovative ways in which employees are proactively using Google Apps to be more efficient and productive. We continue to explore new opportunities to leverage Google Apps to make employee collaboration and productivity better.