The SeriouslySimpleMarketing team is located all around the world. We found ourselves a secret that I’ve used to improve our team collaboration online–Google Apps for Work.
Take a look at what you currently have to run your business–maybe you have a small team, where everyone is using their personal email addresses. Maybe they are all organizing themselves in different ways. Some might even be storing important files on their personal computer (where no one else can reach them).
Keeping track of all these can be confusing and overwhelming; and instead of spending time actually working with your team, you end up tracking files, organizing calendars, updating documents, which Google Apps for Work can simplify.
Collaboration means keeping in touch with everyone and the great thing about using Google Apps for Work is that you have the power and infrastructure of Google behind you. Here’s how we use it:
Connecting with Anyone, Anywhere
This platform offers multiple ways for you to keep in touch, but let’s start with email. Using Google Apps for Work basically means your office server is powered and backed by Google. So you can expect close to zero downtime, you can easily keep in touch with clients all over the world and you can access it anywhere, anytime.
They also have Google Hangouts included, which allows you to have video conferencing or share screens with everyone, it’s almost like having the team together in one room. For real time communication, Hangouts also offers a chat function that allows you to send instant messages to your team members.
Personalize It!
A cool feature of purchasing Google Apps for Work is how it gives that much added of professionalism to your emails as well. Instead of getting a free email domain (think “yourname.yourcompanyname@gmail.com” or “yourname-youcompanyname@yahoo.com”), you get to customize your email address and really give your business a professional image. (Think “yourname@yourcompany.com”)
Cloud Collaboration
One of the greatest features that Google has introduced is its real-time, cloud-based platforms that replace Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Google was one of the first ones to offer online editing of documents, spreadsheets and slides and they just get better and better every year.
This especially useful if you’re working with a team who isn’t located in a central office, where you can easily go through all your “paperwork” in real time and work on editing together.
It helps eliminate the back and forth between your team by allowing everyone to view a particular document all at the same time, which means there isn’t a thousand copies of the same file. You have a main file that you can work on and it makes it so much easier to keep track of all the changes.
Mark Your Calendars
One of the biggest hassles of running an online business is making sure that everyone is on the same page. Not just when it comes to production, but the logistics behind it as well.
The calendar feature on Google Apps for Work is designed so that you can view everyone in your team’s schedules in a single page; but you can also easily turn certain section on and off to create a customized view, depending on what you need.
For example, we keep a general staff calendar where everyone in the team plots their schedules in and we can easily see when everyone is available for a general meeting.
It’s all easily accessible as well, whether you’re using a laptop, updating on your tablet or checking on your calendar on your phone.
Massive Storage
The goal of Google Apps for Work is to create centralized access for all relevant files that you need to run your business efficiently. That includes storage.
This is one of the biggest perks of this platform—it gives you a lot of storage to start with–30GB, which can be easily increased if you think you need more. Placing everything on the cloud also means team members can easily access files that they need when they need it so that time won’t get wasted tracking documents down.
In Conclusion…
Now, all this talk about accessibility brings another important question to mind: security. What happens when the Google servers are down? Are your sensitive business documents actually safe on the cloud?
Again, remember that using Google Apps for Work basically means you have the power and resources of Google behind you. And while no one can guarantee 100%, they are pretty confident about promising 99.9% reliability. So on the off chance that it does experience some downtime, housing your documents in numerous data servers means you can still have access to it. Adding and removing people who can access the different features is also simple and easy.
Check to see if you’re using numerous Google products to run your business and if your are, Google Apps for Work might be worth checking out. If you know others who are looking for ways to improve team collaboration with online tools, be sure to share this post to them.
If you have any more questions, you can leave them at the comment section below and I’ll be sure to get back to you.
– Mercer
