Does your business need to switch to remote work urgently to deal with COVID-19? Are you wondering how you are going to manage your staff, support your clients and carry on work with everyone working remotely? 

Here at GippsTech, we use Google’s GSuite set of productivity apps to help team members collaborate, connect with our clients, and store and share files securely across the team. By using GSuite, we shifted to 100% remote work a week ago, and we want to help other businesses to do the same. We’ve put together this guide on GSuite tools, since we believe this is the best set of services to help teams collaborate remotely, and can also help you talk through your specific situation in a free consultation by videoconference.

What is GSuite?

GSuite is Google’s collection of intelligent apps which help to streamline your business.  GSuite offers a monthly subscription package which begins at just $8.40 per user per month.  This platform is entirely web based, which means you won’t chew into your harddrive storage with downloads, software or documents. At the same time, it offers offline syncing of files, so if your internet is spotty, you won’t even notice if it drops out while you’re working on a document.

GSuite’s apps and tools include email, drive storage, calendar, collaborative documents and spreadsheets, and videoconferencing. This set of software helps you to connect with your staff and team, and work together as if you were face to face in an office. It’s simple to share documents and workflows, work together on a document with your colleagues, view each other’s calendars and continue important conversations. 

If safety and security is a concern to you, GSuite offers the highest security on the market; having been built on top of the Google Cloud platform. (It is trusted by some of the biggest companies in the world!) It offers standard security features such as 2-factor authentication and remote management of business data,. If you have any concerns about security of your information when using GSuite, we can discuss with you in a free consultation.

One of the greatest benefits of using GSuite for your business is that you or your staff are likely already familiar with Gmail or Google Drive, which can assist in making your transition to remote work even easier.

Collaboration Tools

GSuite enables you to stay connected to both your team and your clients through it’s range of apps.

• Gmail

Gmail enables you to have professional email addresses with your business domain name (eg. yourname@companyname.com.au) which can be managed for just yourself, or multiple staff. Having professional email addresses set up for your business helps your team convey a more professional brand compared to using Outlook or Hotmail email addresses, so if you don’t have professional company emails set up yet, contact us about setting up GSuite for you. 

This smart emailing system includes productivity processes which ensures you will never miss an important email. You can snooze emails for later, schedule replies for tomorrow so your clients and staff don’t have to know you’re working late, or use the “undo” button to cancel sending an email if you hit “send” by accident. You can also set up canned responses for questions you get frequently, such as questions about your business operating hours or whether customers can buy online while your office is shut down. This can dramatically speed up your email management processes and free up time for more important work.

• Calendar

Google Calendar helps to keep you and your team organised with important meetings, deadlines and reminders. Calendars can be made accessible to everyone within your company, which makes it easier to schedule meeting times and appointments. Your calendar will also integrate with other GSuite tools such as Hangout Meets and Gmail, which makes it easy to find the links to video conferences or other meetings. Calendar also uses Google’s artificial intelligence technology to automatically detect event bookings in your email and add them to calendar so you don’t have to remember to manually add that webinar you signed up for!

• Google Hangouts Meet

Hangouts Meet is the videoconferencing and calls application of GSuite. It enables you to meet virtually with both staff and clients, and you can join Hangouts directly via your calendar or email invite with one click. Videoconferences can host up to 25 members, and let you share your screen with team members or clients to give a presentation or demonstrate a tool or process.

• Google Hangouts Chat 

Hangouts Chat is a dedicated channel for your staff and team for one on one or group chats. GSuite documents and worksheets can be integrated into Chat so that they can be reviewed and lead to greater productivity among your staff. 

Productivity tools

GSuite can be used to help your team collaborate and get work done efficiently at a distance, and allows documents to be reviewed, commented on, edited and discussed by your team before submitting or sending to clients.

• Google Drive 

Drive is a secure online file storage system where all of your documents, spreadsheets and images can be stored for your business. Storage is all online, but files can be automatically synced offline to your computer, and it can be accessed anywhere, at any time. The beauty of Drive is it has an incredible search functionality, and folders can easily be shared or assigned to other members of your team for viewing or editing. Storing files in Drive is much more secure than just storing files on your computer, since if your laptop is damaged, lost, stolen or hacked, all files are automatically backed up and stored in the cloud. All GippsTech team members store their work in Drive, so if someone’s laptop dies, we don’t lose any data, they can just get a new laptop and be up and running again in less than a day! Files are also automatically synced between computers and to your phone - no more emailing files to yourself!

• Docs and Sheets 

Docs and Sheets are Google's version of Microsoft Word or Excel. The benefits of these though, is that they can be edited and commented on collaboratively in real time - you can actually see your colleague typing in the same document. They are also all automatically stored online in Drive, and are thus synced automatically between your desktop, laptop and phone. If you are working with a third party, the links to the files can be shared and you can both edit and update the file as you see fit. No more emailing copies of files to yourself or your colleagues - everyone just works on the same file, regardless of which computer you’re connecting from!

Docs and Sheets also have a task assignment functionality, so you can ask a client or colleague to fill in certain sections of a document, or to review and approve your work directly from the document. Also while the documents are all stored in the cloud and can be accessed from multiple devices, they can also be automatically synced offline to your computer, so if your connection drops out temporarily, you can just keep working and won’t even notice the difference.

• Google forms 

Google Forms provide your business with an easy and simple way to gain customer feedback or gather data from clients. This allows you to gather information quickly and efficiently, and it is saved directly to Drive in the form of a spreadsheet for analysis. Forms are quick and easy to set up, and let you get up and running with client feedback surveys, appointment booking forms or customer enquiry forms in just a few minutes.

• Admin 

The admin console allows you, as a business owner, to manage everything in one place. This enables you to add new users, reset passwords, configure security settings and track usage of your services. You can also locate or erase any mobile devices containing your business data, so if your staff members have sensitive information on their phones, you have a way to erase it if the phone is lost or stolen.

GSuite offers a fantastic collection of applications and tools which can assist in your transition to remote work, and help ease your peace of mind in knowing that your staff are remaining productive while at home. 

If you’d like to get your team set up with GSuite collaboration tools so they can be more productive while working remotely, you can either sign up yourself on the GSuite page, or if you need support with this, you can contact us and we can help you get set up today.

Given that GSuite is complex, and can be overwhelming or confusing for new users, our team at GippsTech have also developed a training workshop to help our clients and their team members make the most of GSuite.

This workshop will help you and your staff learn to use the GSuite tools, set up GSuite on your mobile devices and laptops, gain an understanding and practice using each of the main apps, and learn some tips and tricks that will save you time and improve the productivity of your team. It will also cover some basics of cybersecurity, such as protecting your GSuite account and email from hackers, and why your files are actually safer in the cloud than they are on your computer. As a bonus, we’ll also show you how to get your business set up on Google Maps and how to manage your listing going forward.

Contact us if you’d like help with setting up GSuite for your business, or if you’d like to sign up your team for a training workshop to help you make the most of your remote collaboration tools. We can help you get your questions answered so that you can leave feeling confident and empowered to transition to remote working, without interrupting your productivity, efficiency or quality of your work.