Sponsored by Google Workspace
Last week, I shared with you my post about the advantages of Google Workspace https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/advantages-google-workspace-nicolas-babin/ This was based on the recently published Workspace Handbook by Google. I invited you to download it: https://bit.ly/3O81XYO
This week, I would like to comment on the IDC White Paper about the business value of Google Workspace. You can download it here: bit.ly/3O8Zo8W
If you are not familiar with IDC, they are a premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets. They help clients plan, market, sell and succeed in the global marketplace. They create actionable market intelligence and influential content marketing programs that yield measurable results. I regularly find their content to be of great value for my clients in the digital information space.
One of today’s main challenges for all companies is to optimize their workforce with a fluid and flexible hybrid work model. With this in mind, IDC looked at the Google Workspace suite of products, interviewed organizations using it and published this detailed report on understanding the impact on how employees work and generate value. They not only concluded that Google Workspace is a robust and highly functional collaboration platform but also that all employees using Workspace will benefit from enhanced collaboration and communication with colleagues and customers, unified workflows and strong text, voice, video and audio functionalities. Basically, Workspace will allow employees to work more effectively and efficiently.
When you embark on a digital transformation journey, you know that you will shake up your organization. All your strategy needs to be focused on getting your employees on board, help them understand why the changes are needed and deliver results that will be seen as concrete and efficient for all. Employees, through change management leadership and training, will be thrilled to see different ways and tools which will help them work and deliver better results.
I have seen in my career many leaders and employees that don’t understand why they need to change their current ways of working. However, once they implemented new tools, the benefits became clear.
What impressed me the most in the IDC Business Value White Paper were their key results:
- 14% daily productivity gain for all Google Workspace users
- 412% 3 year Return on Investment
- 11 month payback period
Concretely, employees saw an increase of 36% of their time freed up for more creative and innovative work and a decrease of 24% of their time devoted to mundane work. For example, many employees want to spend less time on day-to-day activities such as meetings, emails and searching for information. Implementing Workspace will help increase their value, self-esteem and overall satisfaction in their jobs. This is the essence of a successful digital transformation project. Tools are used to augment humans and to allow them to be at their best for tasks they enjoy doing. Organizations will see an increase in engagement, productivity and loyalty.
When I start a digital transformation project, I always begin with an audit of the existing solutions, ways of working and overall employee satisfaction. Over 99% of my client’s employees suggest that they could be much more productive if some of their daily tasks could be done with automated tools and if they could work seamlessly from either home or office. I have over 35 years’ experience and in the last 10 years this request has become recurrent. Since the pandemic, the balance between employees’ needs/wishes and organizations has leveled up. Both entities now speak the same language and share the same needs. Implementing Google Workspace as a companywide strategy means that people now can collaborate in real-time from wherever they are.
In the past 3 years we have seen a shift from only working in the office to primarily working from home. Now we see more and more companies searching for the right approach and solutions to optimize their operations and find a proper hybrid work model. Most organizations require intelligent digital workspaces, collaborative platforms and unified workflows. This is what Google Workspace will provide. The suite of products will be the foundation of a new, productive, efficient and collaborative way of working while ensuring a level of security second to none. Google Workspace includes people centered collaboration tools bringing emails, chat, files, meetings and your apps into a unique experience powered by Google AI. It allows safe connections, safe collaborations and an increase of creativity. Finally, Google Workspace supports encryption at-rest and in-transit, as well as automatic protections against sophisticated phishing attacks and emerging malware threats. It is based on the most secure and clean cloud infrastructure. I am impressed by the level of sophistication you can find in Google Workspace.
I encourage you to download the IDC Business Value White Paper, sponsored by Google Workspace, The Business Value of Google Workspace ( doc #US49146722, June 2022) so you will better understand their research methodology and the numerous key performance indicators they have calculated: bit.ly/3O8Zo8W