Google Enterprise Blog: Ageas keeps agents connected and mobile with Google Apps, plus 1 more

---

Ageas keeps agents connected and mobile with Google Apps Posted: 17 Oct 2013 12:08 PM PDT Posted by Henk ten Bos, Chief Information Officer at Ageas Insurance Company (Asia) Limited Editor's note: Today's blogger is Henk ten Bos, Chief Information Officer at Ageas Insurance Company (Asia) Limited, part of the Ageas Group, with nearly 3,000 agents based in Hong Kong. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say. As one of Hong Kong's largest insurance companies, Ageas recognizes the need to constantly deliver the best services to our clients. To compete effectively in our business, our agents need to be able to respond speedily to customer requests. Our email and communication platform is key to our daily business. As we continued to grow over the years, the our previous email and calendaring solution did not keep up with our business growth. We became aware of the need for a more sophisticated tool. So we began to consider a cloud-based application since the agents wanted a way to share and work on documents easily, on top of the simple email and calendar functions. Henk ten Bos, CIO To make sure we were on the right track, we consulted Master Concept to see how Google Apps would fit in our business. We also had to ensure that Google Apps could be easily integrated into our current environment and would meet our strict security standards. Our agents were enthusiastic about the move, especially since many of them were already using Gmail for their personal needs. This supported us in the decision to transition to Google's cloud solution. The transformation was quick and hassle-free, with no data loss or downtime. In fact, the entire migration process, which took place in under a month, went almost unnoticed by agents. Google Apps for Business has changed the way we work. Our agents are now finding themselves more productive with communication tools such as Gmail and Google Chat. Collaboration has become so much easier as we can now access documents and videos from anywhere and at any time. Concerns about capacity from our own servers are a thing of the past. In fact, we don't even have to worry about adding capacity with growing agent numbers, as Google offers us easy provisioning and scalability. Another major advantage is Google's mobile device management tools. We had been considering a separate solution to manage the growing prevalence of mobile devices that our agents started to use. Now, we don't have to. Google provides us with basic management and security tools, so our agents are free to access their email, calendar and documents through the device of their choice. With all of these capabilities now in our hands, we are certain that we have made the right choice with Google. We are now a more efficient organization and with the constant stream of innovation from Google, we are confident that Google Apps will remain relevant and vital to our business in the years to come. Learn more about the story here.

Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical business saves 75% on IT by moving to Google Apps Posted: 17 Oct 2013 04:51 AM PDT Posted by Mr. Saleh Al-Sagabi, Information Technology Director, Spimaco Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Mr. Saleh Al-Sagabi, Information Technology Director at Spimaco, a Saudi Arabian medical and pharmaceutical business, which develops, manufactures and sells pharmaceutical products and medical appliances. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say. As one of the leading Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical companies, Spimaco works tirelessly to register new products with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the fastest time possible. Previously, this involved a team of a hundred people from across the world creating, accessing and editing thousands of documents individually. This meant staff were spending an hour a week inputting into documents, sending them as attachments for others to edit and merging changes from multiple contributors. Across the organization, this added up to 52,000 hours a year spent on managing different versions of the same document and combining changes from individuals. We'd heard about other large pharmaceutical businesses, Roche and Genentech, moving to the cloud-based communication service Google Apps so we understood its collaborative potential. As an experiment, we decided to offer 50 of our staff access to Google Apps and found that, all of a sudden, teams were no longer wiping out several hours a week on making changes in attachments, sending these to colleagues and merging changes into a single document. They were using Google Docs to work together in the same document simultaneously, seeing each other's changes as they typed and sharing ideas, comments and feedback instantly across multiple countries. This really showed us the potential of Google Apps for teamwork and collaboration. We now have 1,100 people using Google Apps and the benefits are widespread. Through Gmail's search capabilities, finding an email in the labyrinth of folders and attachments has gone from up to ten minutes to seconds, speeding up daily communication. Not only is our information easier to access from anywhere but it is also more secure. Having used Lotus Domino since 1998, we ended up with over four terabytes of confidential data that needed to be managed and protected by our own teams. This was both time-consuming and challenging. Today, by storing everything in Google's data center, we benefit from the cutting edge security Google can offer and, if needed, can remotely wipe accounts or devices. Our employees can also see exactly who has access to a document and whether they can edit it or not - all without complex file sharing processes, which used to take IT at least an hour a day to manage. We'll soon be adding Google Vault to help us further with archiving, e-discovery and improve the information governance capabilities. We've also cut our IT costs by 75% by moving to Google Apps - that's hundreds of thousands of dollars we can spend developing better medical solutions instead. More importantly, we now have a more productive, better connected, more collaborative workforce. As the largest company in Saudi Arabia to make the move to Google Apps, it is great to think we're leading the way for others in our country.

You are subscribed to email updates from Google Enterprise Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610