The retail network of clothes transferred 14 thousand employees from Microsoft Office on Google G Suite

In August, 2018 the retail network of sportswear and the Finish Line footwear announced transfer of employees from office software of Microsoft on Google services. The company considers that this migration was painless, and it will improve joint work of personnel.

According to the ComputerWorld edition, transfer more than 14 thousand employees of Finish Line with Microsoft Office on G Suite took two months. Both non-management employees, and heads and sales specialists in one thousand shops in the territory of the USA began to use new software.

According to the vice president for the technology and operational solutions Finish Line Warren Lenard, before interaction of personnel was separate. Many in the company used still every day internal network for an information access, necessary for work.

The retail network of Finish Line sportswear transferred 14 thousand employees from Microsoft Office on Google G Suite

Due to implementation of tools of Google, such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Hangouts Chat and Meet, communication between the leading commands improved, as well as between workers in shops. Only in a year the company saved up in Google Drive storage about 2 million files, and the number of documents, access to which is opened for several employees, approached 100 thousand, Lenard noted.^[1]

Transition to Google services matched deployment in Finish Line of cloud social network for internal use of LumApps which is closely integrated with G Suite packet. This platform became a basis of an informational portal for the staff of Finish Line Connect.

Thanks to connection of G Suite to internal network the volume of electronic correspondence between teams of managers and personnel in shops was reduced by 90%, counted in Finish Line.

Use of Finish Line Connect was enormous: the number of connections was about 2 million, and many people began to use Hangout Meet for conferences and joint work — Warren Lenard told.

According to the analyst of 451 Research Raul Castanon-Martinez, the Finish Line project became a good example of how the companies use cloud applicaions for connection of diverse labor power to digital instruments.

Finish Line is especially interesting to a research because of problems which it faces for interaction between executive and service staff... It is one of the main advantages provided by cloud products for joint work, such as G Suite — the expert considers, having added that the benefit received by Finish Line is relevant for other organizations irrespective of whether employees in one place or in different geographical divisions work.

Warren Lenard remembers that when he came to the company, it did not adjust joint work of employees, as at other retailers. They ineptly worked with e-mail and used it as a warehouse for data storage. They constantly printed documents and extended them prior to a meeting, and after — documents were thrown out. Processes of joint work were difficult and labor-consuming, and the colleagues working together on one document could generate 60 or 70 letters, Lenard complains.

According to him, transition from Microsoft applications to Google was in general simple. Change of mail and the calendar took place "seamlessly", and process of conversion of files of Word to Docs was followed only by small difficulties. It was most difficult to refuse PowerPoint for benefit of Slides, in the course of transition from Excel to Sheets there were also problems with difficult files.

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