The Bakersfield Californian keeps Kern County informed with Google Workspace

Company

The Bakersfield Californian is an independent, family-owned newspaper and media company. Originally published in 1866 as The Weekly Courier, it was the county’s first newspaper. Today, The Bakersfield Californian is a recognized innovator in incorporating user-generated content into its media.

Challenge

The Bakersfield Californian had hardware that was at its end of life. The newspaper publisher had been running a “bare bones” setup for both employees and users – each had approximately 18 gigabyte archives of mail per inbox, with the overall size of Exchange storage being 300 gigabytes. The Bakersfield Californian approached SADA for assistance in developing a more cost-effective solution that would provide more inbox space and reduce their administrative overhead.

Solution

Many employees of The Bakersfield Californian were already using Gmail as their personal emailing system, and were familiar with its features. The SADA team and The Bakersfield Californian staff decided that the transition from their former messaging system to Google Workspace would have the least migration impact. The SADA team’s goal for the Google Workspace migration was for it to go as smoothly as possible, to allow The Bakersfield Californian to continue to meet critical deadlines. Additionally, the decision to “go Google” would be cost-efficient for the publication, a persuasive point that prompted employees to be open-minded about the prospect of the move. Another compelling point for The Bakersfield Californian was SADA’s referral via Google. SADA deployed Google Workspace and held numerous training seminars to assist The Bakersfield Californian employees in using it efficiently and to its full advantage.

Results

Following SADA’s assistance with the Google Workspace deployment and follow-up training, The Bakersfield Californian reported their usage of the suite was smooth. The Bakersfield Californian employees now have the option to utilize various functions in Google Workspace to finish their work remotely.

Although The Bakersfield Californian is focused on the benefits of emailing within the Google Workspace, they perceive the convenience and possibility for innovative use within Google Docs. Given the ability to share documents and hold conversations through options within the document itself, Docs is an invaluable tool in a community where heavy collaboration and real-time edits are tantamount to success. Users in the advertising department at The Bakersfield Californian also find Google Workspace very productive. The fact that they are now able to work whenever they’d like, from wherever they wish, makes responding to customers in a timely matter a much simpler task.