SADA helps McClatchy enable real-time collaboration with Google Workspace

To thrive in a landscape with 24/7 news cycles and social media, McClatchy, a publishing company that operates 30 daily newspapers, was looking to arm its reporters and editors with tools to not only collaborate in real time, but also to spark a cultural change throughout the organization that aligned with its digital-first mission.

To transform into a cohesive enterprise, the company selected Google Workspace for its availability, flexible pricing, simple and highly secure manageability, and real-time collaboration. To help McClatchy make the move to Google Workspace, Google recommended SADA, a Google Cloud Premier Partner and 2018 Google Cloud Global Partner of the Year. “SADA did the implementation planning and a lot of the integration,” says Terry Geiger, Vice President of Technology Operations for McClatchy. “We still use SADA services and solutions to help manage our environment. They’ve been a wonderful partner for us.”

McClatchy started the Google journey by moving users to Gmail, Contacts, and Calendar to replace its legacy email, contacts, and calendaring solution. “As soon as people began using Gmail, Contacts, and Calendar, they started using Google Docs extensively, too,” says Terry. “It just happened organically and really took off.” McClatchy’s team also works in Sheets for tracking articles in production; Slides for training and other presentations; Sites to create internal information-sharing sites; Forms for conducting internal surveys; and Hangouts and Hangouts Meet for collaborating virtually.

Results

McClatchy has realized numerous benefits from the migration to Google Workspace including:

Saving time and money

• With Google Workspace, McClatchy avoids spending mid-six figures on hardware and software refreshes, and it only pays for what is consumed.
• With Google Docs, some of McClatchy’s reporters have cut the time spent writing by over 65 percent. Reporters get feedback and edits faster, too.
• Real-time collaboration enables the news team to post breaking stories as quickly as possible which helps McClatchy’s bottom line, given the importance of site traffic to advertisers.
• Hangouts Meet has decreased travel expenses and phone bills and has led to more effective collaboration.

Enhancing employee satisfaction

• Due to familiarity with Google Workspace, new employees get up to speed much faster than the previous legacy productivity suite:

“More students today use Google Workspace, so when they come to work for us after graduation, they don’t need training on the tools. They just start working and collaborating. You can’t put a dollar figure on how valuable that is.”

Terry Geiger, Vice President of Technology Operations, McClatchy

Enabling eDiscovery and enhancing security

• McClatchy utilizes Google Vault for reliable documentation archiving and eDiscovery.
• Other security features of Google Workspace, such as spam and phishing protections, have helped protect the organization from threats such as ransomware and spoofing.

Source: Google Customer Story

To learn more, check out the video below to hear four of SADA’s M&E clients, including McClatchy, discuss why they are embracing Google Workspace to transform secured sharing of digital content and collaboration between globally distributed teams.