Snapdeal.com Builds Valuable Customer Relationships with Google Apps for Work
Google Apps for Business has provided us with so much more productivity than we could ever have asked for. In a mobile and dynamic work environment such as ours, being able to work on the go means that work is not disrupted when we are out for meetings. The result is a much more productive day for each of us.“ —Pardeep Thind, IT manager of Snapdeal ( This story was originally published on Google Cloud. )
Snapdeal Background
Snapdeal.com was established in 2010, is currently the India’s largest online marketplace. With over 20 million active user base, over 500 product categories and more than 20,000 sellers, Snapdeal delivers to over 4,000 cities and towns in India.
Challenges
Snapdeal’s search for a new business mail hosting solution began when employees found that their limited email box storage size was affecting business efficiency. Employees were wasting valuable time clearing old and not important emails to keep within the 10GBs allocated to each employee.
At the time, Snapdeal was managing two different domains for email for different purposes, Snapdeal.com and Jasperindia.com. Because customers, partners and vendors were already familiar with the Snapdeal brand, so moving to snapdeal.com made sense. Management would be saved the trouble of constantly switching between two domains that were in fact managed by different service providers.
“Snapdeal has carved such a strong brand identity by itself that people were associating more with Snapdeal than Jasper. Having a single domain would be good for users, vendors and partners.“ Says, Pardeep Thind, IT manager of Snapdeal
As the business grew, management began looking for a new cloud based email hosting solution to provide employees with a better email experience. They immediately set their sights on Google Apps for Business and seized the Google migration as an opportunity to unify all operations under Snapdeal.com domain. They also saw increased collaboration as a clear benefit of the new Google cloud environment.
Thind commented on their approach: “We first implemented the free edition of Google Apps across the organisation and were satisfied with the results. When the trial period expired, we gave Yahoo and Microsoft Office 365 a try for comparison’s sake.”
Within months, it was obvious that Google apps for work was the best solution.
“Given the dynamic, fast-moving nature of the online retail industry, we needed a reliable mail solution, with ample storage, to cater to high email volumes. Google was the only solution that could give us 30GBs of storage space, along with the reliability and performance we expect,” said Thind. “The bonus for us was Google’s collaboration features, which we now can’t operate without,” Thind continued.
Solution
Snapdeal engaged with a Premier Google Apps for work Partner, and worked together on a proof-of-concept. Tests were conducted based on a stringent list of criteria that included stability, security and ease of use. The results exceeded expectations.
Snapdeal.com builds more valuable customer relationships with Google Apps for work. “We have more than 1,100 email IDs in the systems. A typical migration process, which requires data transfer and synchronization across the different domain environments, is often complicated and tedious. However, migration onto Google was seamless and non-disruptive to our operations.”
Google’s dedicated IT support team provided technical support to the in-house team. Thind said, “It is reassuring to know that Google has a 24/7 service team we can reach out to whenever we want to escalate any unresolved issues.”
The implementation process began with senior management, followed by the rest of the company. The entire migration process was completed in only four weeks.
Results
Snapdeal has a young and internet-savvy workforce who is already familiar with Google’s intuitive interface. The switch to Google Apps for Business was seamless and its impact was felt immediately across the various departments. For example, sales consultants in the call centre welcomed the immediate boost in email storage. They no longer needed to worry if they missed emails due to mailbox limits and could now shift their focus to building more valuable customer relationships.
Collaboration features such as Google Chat and Hangouts, which comes with the solution, provided an additional channel for employees to interact and collaborate. Employees could now conduct group discussions within their own teams and across departments. The simultaneous editing function in Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets meant that several people could collaborate on the same document, thus expediting reviews. For the first time, employees also have visibility into one another’s schedule through Google Calendar. Planning meetings is now much simpler, and deadlines are more visible to team members.
“If you walked into our office any of the days, you will feel a positive energy. There is constant buzz as employees engage in idea exchanges and team discussions. Google Apps for work has certainly provided us with a singular communications and collaboration platform for increased productivity and efficiency.”
IT system administrators also experienced greater flexibility, with more granular controls over accounts. System performance is easily monitored through the analytics features in Google Apps for work, providing Snapdeal with detailed audit reports of their IT environment.
Thind said, “The insights we gathered from Google Apps has enabled us to produce security logs and reports that enhanced IT efficiency. This also enabled faster and better decision-making for management.”
“Thanks to Google, Snapdeal now presents a unified front to our customers, vendors and partners. This is important for us in establishing a strong brand identity in the coming years,” Thind concluded.
Google Apps for Work vs. Microsoft Office 365, a Comparison of cloud tools
While Google apps for Work and Microsoft Office 365 offer many similar business productivity services and choosing between the two can be confusing for CTOs. But This comparison between office 365 & Google Apps for Work eases that burden.
CTOs and IT managers may have different choices when it comes to cloud-based business productivity tools for email, documents, calendar and file-sharing. And the first two options that come to mind are Google Apps for Work and Office 365 cloud solutions by microsoft.
Google Apps suite offers Gmail, Hangouts, Drive and Calendar, Sheets while the latter comes Microsoft Office apps, such as Word, Excel, Skype for business, Outlook and PowerPoint. Both the options have unique strengths and weaknesses, and each is best-suited for specific types of businesses and users.
Google Apps for Work Pricing Vs. Office 365 Pricing
Google apps for work starts at Rs. 1500 per user per year while Office 365 starts at Rs. 2700 per user per year. Microsoft requires a full-year commitment for its enterprise plans, while Google apps for work business suite is available on a month-to-month basis.
Digitrock’s Special Price :
Google Apps for Work : Rs. 1200 per user per year
Microsoft Office 365 : Rs. 2350 per user per year
Space Comparison
Every Office 365 user gets 1TB of cloud storage, while Google apps for work basic plan provides considerably less space which is 30GB of online storage per user. However, Google provides unlimited storage for accounts with at least five users on its $10 per month or $120 per year (plus tax) plans.
Google also gets high preference for its simplicity and easy to use UI, because it offers two relatively straightforward plans.
Microsoft offers six total plans making it bit more confusing : three for small and medium-size businesses and three for large enterprises that range in price from $5 to $20 per month, with a yearly commitment.
Pricing is an important determining factor, but equally important for CTOs are the feature sets, security and user experiences of both the cloud platforms. The ideal cloud-based business productivity platform is secure, stable and simple for employees to learn and use. Cost is one of the many concerns IT managers must consider when investing in cloud-based business productivity platforms.
Eric Schlissel, CEO of IT consultancy GeekTek IT Services, says his company uses Google apps for Work, but more often than not he recommends Office 365 cloud solutions to clients because they are already heavily dependent and invested in Microsoft Outlook. Many business owners are reluctant to change the way their offices work.
“We tend to recommend Google apps for Work to clients with a younger and more tech-savvy workforce,” Schlissel says. “CIOs should look at how their employees use technology and work outwards from there.”
According to CIO Shawn Wiora, at Creative Solutions in Healthcare, a company that owns and operates assisted-living facilities, the IT department uses Google apps for Work while the rest of the company relies on Microsoft Office 365.
“In many ways, Google apps for Work is a low-cost equivalent of Office 365 by Microsoft, and it’s a great fit for startups and small businesses that need to limit costs while achieving ‘good enough’ status,” Wiora says. “However, the cost savings come with a number of nuances that limit its fit for enterprise customers.”
Wiora says there are at least four problems with Google apps for Work that can add up to a major burden for businesses. He cites “shared calendar issues, an inability to transfer Excel formulas directly into Google Spreadsheets, compatibility issues and vertical-specific decisions like Google’s past refusal to sign a HIPAA BAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Business Associate] agreement for the healthcare industry.” Google removed the barrier for organizations that need to comply with HIPAA in late 2013.
In Wiora’s experience, Google apps for work suite keeps up with Office 365 by Microsoft about 90 percent of the time. It’s that other 10 percent that “makes Google apps for Work a poor substitute for medium and large enterprises that expect to simply pick up in Google where they leave off with Microsoft.”
BetterCloud, a company that provides security and management services for Google Apps for work and Office 365, also uses both Google and Microsoft’s cloud solutions offers, according to Tim Burke, BetterCloud’s IT director.
The company primarily uses Google apps for Work as the sole platform for its corporate calendar and conference room reservation system, but it also provides Office 365 cloud suite accounts to users who work on its Microsoft-related products.
“We’ve looked into many solutions for coexistence between the two platforms (especially for calendar and contacts), but there’s nothing mature yet that allows Google Apps for work and Office 365 to ‘play together’ well on a single domain,” Burke says.
Both cloud based productivity platforms are enterprise class, with almost identical offerings, according to Burke, who says Google apps for work is becoming more “enterprise” every day.
“Many people don’t realize Google has been in this market for over six years at this point, and Google Apps for work is used by some of the largest organizations in the world,” Burke says. Google’s strengths also include a deeply integrated infrastructure and a simple licensing structure, he says.
Office 365 by Microsoft provides a continuity with legacy solutions that makes it easier to keep everyone happy with the applications they’ve been using for many years, or perhaps decades, but it’s also evolving. “Office 365 is based on Microsoft’s legacy products and is becoming more ‘cloud-enabled’ and easy to manage,” Burke says.
Google Apps for Work vs. Microsoft Office 365: One size does NOT fit all
Many others familiar with Office 365 and Google apps for Work take a much less neutral stance than Wiora and Burke; both companies have dedicated users and evangelists.
Martin Milanov, a digital marketing specialist at Fair Point, a corporate travel management firm based in Germany, writes that he “will scream to the ends of hell if they take away my Excel and make me use the, let’s face it, subpar Excel wannabe that is Google Sheets.”
Kristin Bassett, corporate marketing manager at AppNeta, an application performance management provider, says her company recently switched from Microsoft cloud solutions to Google apps for work to get all employees on the same email system. The firm chose to migrate its entire staff to Google apps for Work because it preferred Gmail to Outlook and considered email its highest-priority tool.
Many of the engineers working for AppNeta had requested corporate access to Gmail, according to Bassett, and the switch improved the company’s ability to hire and retain engineers, who are core to its business.
Regardless of platform, it’s about preparation
Both Burke and Wiora encourage CIOs to gain a deep understanding of their users’ needs and company goals before deciding on Google apps for Work or Office 365.
“We’ve worked with thousands of customers across both platforms, and the most successful deployments involved a highly democratic approach where they set up small pilot groups, talked to managers in different departments, discussed pros and cons for both platforms, and generally took the time to make sure they were making the best decision for their users and not for their IT department or existing infrastructure,” says Burke.
For some CTOs, a hybrid approach will work best, according to Wiora. However, using both platforms can also lead to more work and potential problems for IT. “Each new service increases complexity for end users exponentially rather than linearly, so reducing confusion from having information in so many places will be critical for anyone using a hybrid approach,” says Wiora.
Above all, CTOs shouldn’t delay the necessary research and piloting, and they should try to make a decision as quickly as possible, according to Burke. “Whether your organization chooses Google Apps for work or Office 365, you’re getting a cloud office platform that’s going to fundamentally change the way your business operates if it’s correctly implemented and thoroughly adopted,” he says.
Source : cio.com
