An international food retailer recently switched its 55,000 employees over to Google Apps for Business.
Ahold, which is based in Holland but has 2,900 stores around the world, decided to switch to Google simply because it offered the company the chance to ensure all its IT systems were on one platform. Doing this helps them to work more efficiently and collaborate better.
It’s not hard to realise why Ahold management made the decision to migrate its IT systems to Google’s cloud-based affair. To start with, employees get 25GB of space per email account. Compared to the company’s previous email provision, this storage is huge. What’s more, Google Apps offers many integrated applications and facilities that Ahold believes will ensure the company can grow and develop without worrying about maintaining costly in-house IT infrastructures.
This includes Google video, a very useful facility for global video conferencing.
Moreover, since Ahold is a Dutch outfit, those working at locations that don’t speak Dutch can still communicate easily as there is a facility to translate documents and emails into other languages.
According to the food retailer, there are many other benefits to switching to Google. For instance, there is only one email address book to maintain, which all employees can access if required, since it is stored on the cloud.
Also, the other apps such as calendar allow staff to share and collaborate on specific projects and can easily schedule these projects – video conference times for example – more easily.
Last, but not least, Ahold can now develop proper global strategies as well as standardise procedures, thus making the business more productive.
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