Case study: apree health migrates to Google Workspace with SADA’s help
SADA unifies two legacy companies on one productivity and collaboration platform, improving communication, cooperation, and security.
The DFM IT team evaluated three different platforms for the new corporate email system, ultimately selecting Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendars and Hangouts.
Digital First Media has a leading local news audience share in each of its primary markets and its content monetization platforms serve clients on both a national and local scale.
A company which has grown through acquisition, DFM has also acquired many systems along the way, including multiple email platforms. The reality of this splintered IT environment became clear when a new CEO joined the company and was unable to easily send an email to all employees. Dealing with multiple communications tools was making it tough to integrate new employees and companies into the DFM family. It was also a significant burden on IT to manage multiple platforms.
The DFM IT team evaluated three different platforms for the new corporate email system, ultimately selecting Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendars and Hangouts. Factors which went into the decision included Google’s ease of use and collaboration benefits, says Bob Kinney, VP of Information Technology for DFM’s Western region.
“We had all these business units and properties that didn’t work together across the country,” Kinney says. “People couldn’t share calendars or contacts and we knew that for sales and revenue departments, this was extremely important.”
Bob Kinney, VP of Information Technology, DFM (West)
Google Docs would also be beneficial for collaboration amongst all employees. During employee feedback sessions, the company surmised that roughly 50% of its people were already using Google for personal communications. The decision to go Google was further supplemented by an excellent reference from the State of Colorado, which had recently transitioned to Google Docs.
SADA Systems, a Google Cloud Premier Partner and an expert implementation partner for Google Cloud solutions, came on board to help DFM migrate to Google Workspace. The SADA team provided a comprehensive Transformation Lab to provide guidance on reengineering and improving of business processes with Google Cloud. The DFM implementation team headed by Eric Monsma, Director of IT Operations for DFM incorporated SADA’s change management framework.
This involves identifying employees to serve as Google Guides, subject matter expert resources for employees during the transition. Monsma, in concert with SADA’s change management team, led demos and trainings at all of the company’s offices around the country.
“Identifying our Google Guides was critical to the success of our rollout. These guides received a more in-depth training with DFM IT and SADA. It gave them the necessary tools and ideas on streamlining business processes. They were ambassadors for IT and promoted the Google tools to their individual departments,”
Eric Monsma, Director of IT Operations, DFM
Other change management best practices included Lunch and Learn events; the creation of an internal website to house training videos, FAQs and other materials; and staggered communications prior to migration to help employees prepare for the Go Live date.
“The Lunch and Learns sessions we held had great attendance and sparked good, creative dialogue between different departments. We all learned about Google Workspace together. We showed everyone how easily the tools worked in conjunction with each other. A daily reminder went out to employees starting two weeks prior to launch and made it a very smooth transition at Go Live. Creating an internal training Google site proved to be beneficial for employees to reference at their leisure and employees could dive deeper into one particular tool that they may not have fully grasped in the live sessions as these resources were set up as self-paced trainings with exercise files to go through the motions as users found time,” Monsma says.
Yet, there are always challenges during a major project; SADA worked closely with DFM’s team to address situations unique to the company. “We are a company of journalists, so changing people’s email and telling them that they cannot share files publicly for security reasons was bound to create a good deal of pushback,” Kinney says. “Some people were scared to death that they would lose years of notes and interviews or that their contacts wouldn’t transfer over.”
While the change management team assured employees that those scenarios wouldn’t occur, they did need to address the need for employees to share documents with people outside of the company. The solution involved deploying Google Workspace Business and two-factor authentication, which allowed for an improved level of controls for the enterprise to further secure access to documents as well as having unlimited storage capacity.
Working with SADA, DFM successfully transitioned all 5,000 employees, as well as partners and service providers, to Google, constituting 6,100 user accounts. Employees are benefiting from a single, online email system to more easily connect with anyone in the company, share contacts and schedule meetings from any device.
Other outcomes of the migration include:
“Moving everyone to the Google Cloud allows us to be nimble and do acquisitions and onboarding faster and more easily, along with divesting papers when needed. SADA has been an instrumental partner for us, both from technical expertise and change management. They are available whenever we need them for consultative and support services, and we have a great working relationship with their team.”
Bob Kinney, VP of Information Technology, DFM (West)
Moving everyone to the Google Cloud allows us to be nimble and do acquisitions and onboarding faster and more easily, along with divesting papers when needed. SADA has been an instrumental partner for us, both from technical expertise and change management."
— Bob Kinney, VP of Information Technology, DFM (Western region)
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