Project Description
Aquent Staffing manages 45 offices and 700+ Employees with G Suite
With documents now largely web-based and no longer attached to emails, the proverbial “one version of truth” has been found
Background
Challenges
Still, Aquent identified several tactical issues with their infrastructure they would need to overcome, as well.
“Our client system population was a mixture of Macs and PCs with email clients that created significant support issues,” explained Larry Bolick, Chief Information Officer. “Local file servers created security and maintenance headaches, and enterprise licensing agreements were scheduled for renewal.”
Solution
Aquent initiated a three-phase approach to the migration, spanning five organizations sequentially. The initial pilot phase occurred in the first half of 2009, and was followed by a documents migration phase in the second half of that year. The final phase, which included mail migration, took place in the first half of 2010.
“Our migration predated our relationship with Dito, but Dito has since assisted us very ably in several areas, including new user training, intranet migration, G Suite deployment, and soon Postini migration and two-factor authentication deployment,” Bolick said.
Results
Google Sites serve as a magnet for staff members to store and share information with others in a convenient, easy-to-find way. The ability for anyone to create a simple website has unleashed a wave of creativity in how Google Sites is used internally. Plus, meetings are scheduled more efficiently across different offices and time zones, and real-time document collaboration by multiple editors is now the norm.
“With documents now largely web-based and no longer attached to emails, the proverbial “one version of truth” has been found,” Bolick said. “No longer do we search for the particular version of a document that one of us attached to an email a few months ago.”
From a technical perspective, support issues associated with client-side email systems and stores have disappeared at Aquent. And, the ability for individuals to control their own spam filters and archives has greatly reduced those demands on the Aquent support team.
Financially, the pay-as-you-go, pro-rated model for accounts has obviated the need to forecast license counts far into the future, while substituting reasonable annual fees for large, complicated, enterprise agreements and payments. Consequently, annual costs to Aquent were reduced by 60%, compared to the enterprise licensing agreement previously in place.
G Suite has helped to enable the organizational agility that Aquent sought as a strategic goal. As a result, Aquent staff members now are as comfortable working with their counterparts across time zones — and continents — as they previously were working with co-workers across the aisle.
“G Suite has helped Aquent reinforce in our own minds our scope and scale as a global enterprise,” Bolick said.
