Google has always taken a proactive approach to competition. But with Google’s latest announcement, it is clear the company will even do the nearly unthinkable to keep its competitive advantage – pay customers to switch. In addition, customers are finding there is more to love about Google than just its network performance and smart technology. Find out how Google will reward your business for switching to Google’s enterprise-grade suite of apps.
What about your company’s existing enterprise agreement?
If you follow the ongoing competition between the biggest wireless networks, you will notice Sprint’s fingerprints all over Google’s offer to buy out existing enterprise agreements for companies who want to make the switch to Google Apps.
As an alternative, Google will permit companies with existing enterprise agreements to switch to using its suite of professional grade Google Apps for free until the existing contract runs out. This, of course, is a nearly risk-free offer. If you opt in and then find out that Google apps isn’t to your liking, you haven’t messed with your existing enterprise contract at all.
But any strategy that works to deliver new customers is worth lifting – and clearly Google is not above using this tactic to attract new customers of its own. Google is now throwing in financial help with Google apps deployment costs as well.
Why make the switch to Google Apps?
Google states in its official press release and on its website that businesses who choose to switch from their existing enterprise agreement to Google Apps stand to save up to 70 per cent on their future enterprise costs.
Currently, Google’s suite of apps offers the following functionality:
- Gmail (email)
- Google Hangouts (for both video calls and voice calls)
- Google Drive (cloud storage)
- Google Docs (collaborative word processing, spreadsheets and presentations)
- Google Webs (website creator tool)
- Google Calendar (collaborative and shareable calendar)
Perhaps most pertinently, Google states that switching to Google Apps for Work saves the average team-based employee up to two hours of productive time per week. This works out to two full work weeks saved per employee (over 12 months) and a return on investment of 300+ per cent (over 36 months).
Google’s focus
In the intensely competitive world of enterprise-level business productivity solutions, the focus has increasingly shifted to mobile devices. With newer company programs like BYOD (bring your own device), companies are spending less in upgrading their own in-house devices and shifting that expense to their employees.
The millennial workforce today has no problem using free or nearly free software in place of the enterprise version. The effective is amplified when you consider the technically savvy rising workforce. Think of the next entry-level IT hire your organization will make, chances are that it will be a millennial. He or she has used free versions of network monitoring software and made due. In other words, they embrace small and open-sourced tools because they’ve already made due with less.
But in the switch, companies are also finding themselves increasingly in need of mobile-friendly apps and tools that can effortlessly make the leap from yesterday’s desktop-bound worker to today’s globally mobile professional. As well, since many of today’s young professionals are already well acquainted with Google’s suite of apps through their years in the educational system, and many already use Google’s apps on their mobile devices, the training (or re-training) time will make less of any impact upon worker productivity than a switch to any other enterprise-level apps suite.
Google Apps for Work is currently only available for businesses and customers in the United States and Canada. Google has not yet announced a similar program for its international users, but states such a program is coming soon.
