Category Archives: Google for Work Blog

Work is going Google

Announcing our free 60-day trial of Chrome device management for Google Apps customers

Posted by Matt Drasner and Matt Blumberg, Product Managers, Chrome OS Team

Google Apps customers, it’s now easier than ever to set up Chrome device management to manage employee Chrome devices directly from your Admin console. If you’re still deciding whether Chrome device management is the best option for your business, you can also visit the Admin console to start a 60-day free trial of Chrome device management on up to 10 devices.1
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With Chrome device management, you can manage and configure more than 200 features, policies and settings for your Chrome device fleet (and you can buy devices from our Chrome Store). These settings provide added security for your employee and business data, tools for improved employee productivity and time savings with easier device management.

As an administrator, Chrome device management lets you easily configure Chrome features for users, set up Chrome devices to access specific Wi-Fi networks and VPNs, automatically install Chrome extensions and apps and more. You can apply each setting to specific sets of users and devices, or to everyone in the organization. For example, you can configure a device to automatically connect to a specific network or restrict devices from it.

You can also manage public session devices where multiple users can share the same Chrome device without the need to sign in with a username and password. Public session configurations are ideal on Chrome devices used for kiosks, loaner devices, shared computers or any other purpose in which users don't sign in.

For more details and instructions, check out the Help Center article about Chrome device management trials and subscriptions.

1 The trial is only available for customers in the U.S. and Canada and currently only available if you haven’t already purchased a Chrome device management license. It applies to annual Chrome device management licenses, so is not applicable for Education customers.

Flexibility meets efficiency for award-winning arts centre Vooruit, thanks to Google Apps

Posted by Wim Roose, Head of IT at Vooruit

Editor's note: Today we hear from Wim Roose, Head of IT at Vooruit, Belgium’s most culturally significant arts centre, as he describes how Google Apps has given it the freedom to develop and grow while remaining true to its values. With 80 members of staff, hundreds of artists and countless partners to manage each year, communication and collaboration has become key to running the centre efficiently without losing the essential spirit of the organisation.
Vooruit is a unique place, not least because of its rich history and visionary objectives and aims. Can you tell us a little about its history and vision?

Vooruit was originally designed and built in 1914 as a festival and arts centre. It had a ballroom, a cinema and a theatre, as well as exhibition spaces and venues for debates and meetings. It quickly became the epicentre of the Ghent-based labor movement, and the building itself became a symbol of the socialist movement in the interwar period. Even the name Vooruit itself means “cooperative.” Although it was abandoned and fell into disrepair, it was regenerated in the early 1980s by a group of friends who wanted to re-establish its significance and honour its history, and that’s what we still do today.

We welcome around 300,000 visitors a year and host up to 600 events annually, meaning there’s something for everyone. We’re incredibly aware of the role we’re playing in Vooruit’s continuing history to provide arts services to the public, which is why we were determined to find a 21st Century IT solution that would allow us to work in the spirit of creativity, collaboration and cooperation that shaped the original Vooruit.

Tell us why you chose Google Apps to help deliver Vooruit’s objectives.

Google Apps was an intuitive choice. As an IT guy, I love the openness of the Google ecosystem. We wanted to find a way of working that suited the company’s ethos rather than working against it, something that would allow us to work freely and collaboratively instead of having to conform.

We also needed something that would support our organic growth and help us meet the efficiency needs of the modern world, and Google’s cloud-based apps do just that. Our building may be historic but the way we work needs to be as efficient and modern as any business operating today. In fact, our investment in a digital office was necessary as well as logical — if we’re to continue to work with the government and other organisations to deliver public arts and culture services, we need to be compatible with their way of working, but without compromising our own values. Google Apps make that possible.

Can you explain how you use Google Apps to increase efficiencies?

As opposed to working in the limiting and closed building automation system we largely relied on before, the Google ecosystem allows us to integrate everything into one interface, and for me that’s a giant step forward.

Gmail was the starting point for our digital revolution, and underpins how we work. We’ve migrated all 100 members of our staff from Outlook to Gmail, and we now send and receive up to 12,000 emails each month. Many of us now use Google Keep to create our “to do” lists, which means we can work collaboratively on projects with ease. The continuous updates to each project list allow us to work together with maximum efficiency, meaning no more duplication of effort or jobs left undone, as we all share access to the same real-time information. Gmail also allows us to track communications more effectively, and we can now communicate with each other — and artists and external partners — much more easily.

You’ve said that Vooruit is all about collaboration and cooperation — how does Google Apps help support this?

Google Drive has also been an integral part of our digital solution, and we now have around 25,000 files stored in the cloud, including Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. It’s been fundamental in terms of allowing access to information freely and easily. The planning of exhibitions and projects is a core part of what we do, but our existing planning software had limited document storage capacity. We now use Drive next to the planning software, which not only acts as a file server, but also a new way of communicating via the files themselves. We can upload all the relevant information for any one project in one place, which can be accessed wherever we are thanks to the cloud storage, meaning it’s much easier to work together.

The use of Google Docs has also revolutionised our way of working with others. We were at a point where some people were working in the cloud and some were saving documents locally, so all our assets were everywhere but nowhere at the same time. It was a mess — we couldn’t find anything when we needed it. Now we have single documents stored in one place, annotated with comments that allow us to communicate with project managers, contractors, suppliers and building guards. The fact that colleagues and partners can all access the same Google Docs and update information simultaneously has made us instantly more efficient and collaborative.

What about communicating outside the core Vooruit team? How has Google Apps helped Vooruit to integrate with the wider world?

We’re already ahead of the communications curve by using Hangouts instead of arranging meetings in person. Our aim is to reduce our environmental impact as an organisation, and not driving 100km to a meeting with an external partner can really contribute towards meeting our green targets. Daily meetings with artists and cultural organisations from across the world are also now possible without leaving our desks, broadening our reach and our potential, as well as saving us time and money.

What does the future hold for Vooruit in terms of IT?

Google Apps is key in helping us create a modern way of working that will grow with us, providing us with the flexibility to be creative as well as the efficiencies we need to succeed commercially. We’re constantly evolving while remaining true to our philosophy and we needed the fundamental change that would enable our organisation to be ready for the future and appeal to new recruits, artists and partners. Google’s cloud-based solutions have helped us prove that, as an arts organisation, we’re as willing and prepared to work digitally as any other industry, without having to compromise Vooruit’s original creative or collaborative values in the digital age.

The business of connection: How Osmose links the front office to the field

Posted by Ben Flock, Director of Operations Support, Osmose

Editor's note: Today we hear from Ben Flock, director of operations support at Osmose, which provides inspection, maintenance and rehabilitation services and products to electric and telecommunications utilities. Read how Osmose provides its field workers with connectivity using Chromebooks.

In business, as in life, connection breeds success. When you feel connected to your team, your network, your customer, your family, relationships are stronger and everybody wins.

Osmose is in the business of connecting people. We do the work that ensures your utilities are up and running so when you open your laptop, you can connect to the internet, and when you pick up a landline telephone, you get a dial tone. We offer reliable service by maintaining the poles on which utility and electric lines are strung. This means our crews spend most of their time away from the office, and we rely on Chromebooks to keep them connected in the field.

Foremen are our first line of management and key to our operations. In the past, foremen had little connectivity and limited technology when working on a job site. They used paper and pen to collect data and complete administrative tasks. When they worked remotely they often missed important family events, such as childrens’ ball games or recitals. This made it hard for us to attract and retain staff. The problem compounded as we grew: we've tripled our number of field crews since 2006. Each crew has on average three people in it: a foreman plus two other field workers.

To connect our teams and provide greater mobility, we replaced paper with Chromebooks. The devices combine the best features of tablets and laptops: they’re light, easy to use and have keyboards. Chromebooks are tough and sturdy, and well-suited for field work, including some models which have waterproof keyboards and rubberized edges so they can withstand rough weather and hard treatment in the field. They provide our crews with the capabilities they need at a price that has allowed us to provide one for each field crew at a relatively low cost.

Chromebooks play a central role in our employees’ work from the day they start at Osmose. All onboarding forms are completed online, eliminating the vast majority of our paperwork. Every crew member is issued a Chromebook during their eight-week training period, which makes the process faster and more convenient because they can refer to it for information any time they want.

Our foremen use Chromebooks on a daily basis and see the most significant benefits. They’re able to send data from the field, communicate with the main office and access safety information with the touch of a button. They can easily complete administrative tasks without carrying heavy binders. And it’s now possible for our crews to enjoy a better work-life balance because they can work from anywhere and their colleagues and family can reach them at any time via email or Google Hangouts video calls.

We’re now expanding how we use Chrome devices. We’ve introduced Chromebox for meetings in our conference rooms and our training environments. Some of our vice presidents are also using Chromebooks for everyday computing because of their portability and convenience. These devices are helping to fuel our growth and accomplish our mission to help people stay connected.

Georgia creates a faster, friendlier driver’s license experience with help from Chrome

Posted by Jeff Smith, CIO, Georgia Department of Driver Services

Editor's note: This week, we’re sharing two stories from Georgia state government agencies that have gone Google. Today we hear from Jeff Smith, CIO of Georgia Department of Driver Services, which provides secure driver and identity credentials to 3.5 million customers each year. See how Georgia Department of Driver Services saved hundreds of thousands of dollars, reduced wait times by 80% and improved customer service and experience with help from Chromeboxes.


Think about the last time you got a new driver’s license. What was the experience like? I’d bet it involved take-a-number tickets, long lines and outdated computers. Recently, the Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) decided to change the image in our offices across the state.

In the years following the 2008 recession, the economy suffered and people feared losing their jobs. As a result, tax revenue was affected and Georgia government agencies faced 10 percent budget cuts across the board. Our management team came up with a creative solution — what if, instead of resorting to layoffs, furloughs or salary reductions, we could cut costs in other ways? Switching to Chromeboxes was one of the ways we saved money to meet the required budget cuts.

We submitted a formal proposal to the state technical authority to use Chromeboxes in our offices, and they gave us the green light once they understood it would be a secure solution. Chrome’s rigorous security settings and features mean we don’t have to worry about a customer data breach. The simple fact that devices store no data and reset automatically at the end of each session makes Chrome a secure solution for our locations.

Since we started using Chromeboxes in 2013, we’ve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and expanded our use of Chrome to create a better customer experience. We designed our central Atlanta customer service center to look more like a mobile retail store than a traditional government office. Instead of sitting behind a reception counter, employees greet customers on the floor and help them fill out applications online at high standing tables. Our staff interacts more personally with patrons and can serve them faster, too — the average wait time in remodeled offices equipped with Chromeboxes has dropped by 80% from 30 minutes to six.
Chromeboxes are so intuitive that patrons of any age, background or technical ability can use them with ease. Some of our patrons know English as a second language, while others, like my dad, have trouble using computers. But it seems that anyone, including my dad, can use Chrome. Patrons also take the written portion of their driving test using these devices. Or, if a customer forgets their required identification documents, they can even use the device to access and securely print a water bill or bank records.

We’ve modernized our office and are now more customer-centric by switching to Chrome. While getting a new driver’s license or ID may never be a thrilling errand, we can now make it an easier and more friendly experience for every customer who walks through our doors.

What you love about Google Search — now for Drive

Posted by Josh Smith, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive Blog)

Innovation is critical for business success, so we're constantly trying to build tools that enable our customers to do more. Starting today, you can use Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other new and improved features in Drive search on web to find files easier and faster. You'll also see a couple of highly-requested Google Docs features that have been added based on your feedback (thank you!).

Search faster and with ease

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a fancy way of saying “search like you talk.” You can type things like “find my budget spreadsheet from last December” or “show me presentations from Anissa.” Drive will understand what you mean and give you the option to click for those specific search results. Drive NLP will get better with each query — so keep on searching. ;)

Get help with speling — er, spelling


When you're trying to find a doc fast, it's easy for typos to slip into your search. Drive now has a new autocorrect feature that suggests corrections to misspelled search terms — which can really help when your brain is moving faster than your fingers.



Enjoy other updates based on your feedback

We’ve also added a few small but mighty features in Google Docs to help you create your best work:
  • You can now easily split your document into multiple columns in Docs. Just choose “Columns” in the “Format” drop-down menu when you need more formatting options to get your point across.
  • We know that work happens in all types of file formats. So, when you open, convert and edit non-Google files in Docs, Sheets and Slides, we’ll now save a copy for you. Just view or download the non-Google source file in its original format directly from Revision History in Docs, Sheets and Slides on the web.
These features are available globally and will roll out gradually starting today. As always, tell us what you think about these new features on Google+ and Twitter. We’re listening.



With Chromebooks and Google Apps, Georgia Department of Community Supervision switches to “virtual offices”

Posted by Phil Sellers, CIO of Georgia Department of Community Supervision

Editor's note: This week, we’re sharing two stories from Georgia state government agencies that have gone Google. Today we hear from Phil Sellers, CIO of Georgia Department of Community Supervision, which oversees 200,000 probationers and 25,000 parolees across the state. See how Georgia Department of Community Supervision has saved millions of dollars and switched to virtual offices with Google Apps for Work and Google Chromebooks.


The mission of the Georgia Department of Community Supervision (DCS) is to protect and serve our citizens by effectively supervising offenders. As CIO, it’s my job to make sure our busy officers have the technology they need to serve the community.
Last year, the Department of Community Supervision went through a big transition. The state merged three different departments into the DCS, which added over 100 new offices to our existing 50. Because our staff spends most of their time driving around conducting community supervision visits, they’re rarely in the office. This means dozens of offices sat empty each day and we were wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on rent each year. As a state government agency, efficient spending is always a top priority, so we knew we needed a change.

We decided to try something that had never been done in Georgia state government history: eliminate the majority of our offices entirely and allow hundreds of our 2,100 staff members to work remotely instead. Our existing desktop computers and office applications didn’t have the features to support remote workers, so we started looking into alternatives. I was familiar with Google’s cost-cutting, collaborative and mobile-friendly features, so my team led the switch to Google Apps for Work and Google Chromebooks.
We’ve since saved millions of dollars on rent, enterprise licensing contracts, hardware, IT support costs and employee productivity. We no longer have dedicated IT services for routine storage and email support, and our small IT staff of 35 doesn’t need to roll out patches and antivirus software. If an officer closes her Chromebook or loses power, she doesn’t have to worry about trying to recover lost data. If we need to replace a device, it’s inexpensive and fast to get someone back up and running.

We’ve also reduced security concerns, which is crucial for a government agency. Officers used to store their data on laptops, so if their device was lost or stolen, they’d lose sensitive information about parolees and probationers. With Chromebooks, we store everything in the cloud and can easily wipe and replace a device if needed. Officers use a 2-step authentication to enter our systems, which adds another layer of security.

Chromebooks and Google Apps played a key role in making the switch to “virtual offices” a success. 95% of the devices in the field are Chromebooks and Android phones, so officers working remotely can easily access the apps they need and share information with their colleagues using Google Docs, Google Drive and Google Hangouts. Because officers can work from anywhere, they can design their own schedules, helping them better manage their work-life balance and be more effective at visiting the offenders under their supervision. Since we’ve adopted the policy, officers are more productive, and sick leave and employee turnover have decreased.
Every technology we build, buy or deploy should help officers do their jobs better. That means encouraging chiefs to get out of the office and ride along with their officers and giving IT staff the freedom to develop new applications without having to worry about maintaining devices or troubleshooting storage and email. Since working in the cloud with Google, the Department of Community Supervision has been able to provide our officers with the tools they need to serve the communities that depend on them.

Scheels thrives in brick-and-mortar retailing by offering top-notch customer service using Chrome

Posted by Josh Diemert, Lead Systems Administrator, Scheels

Editor's note: Today we speak with Josh Diemert, lead systems administrator for Scheels, a 26-location sporting-goods chain with stores in 11 states.


Scheels, an employee-owned, privately held business with more than 6,000 employees, has a long history of adapting to changing times. Founded in 1902 as a small hardware and general merchandise store in Sabin, Minnesota, it added sporting goods in 1954, athletic clothing in 1972, and eventually grew into an all-sports chain. In this interview, we see how the company continues to adapt today, using Chrome to deliver better service to its customers with expert advice.

Why is technology important to Scheels?

We aim to understand our customers and give them personal attention and local information. We’ve taken the in-store experience to a new level by leveraging technology to make shopping fun, while at the same time empowering our sales team to deliver a better quality of service.

How has Chrome helped?

Chrome has dramatically improved our digital signage. We use Chromebits to power digital signs in key parts of the business, like our fishing shops. The signs display information on nearby river conditions and advice on the latest equipment and local fishing techniques. They’re incredibly popular features that have helped build customer loyalty.

Given the success of our digital signage, it made sense to use Chrome for our in-store kiosks. The kiosks allow customers to order items that aren’t available in their local store. It’s the best of both worlds: hands-on advice from a local professional and access to the large inventory of an online retailer.

Our sales team also uses Chromebooks to streamline the customer workflow. Some purchases require background checks and a lot of paperwork, but Chromebooks makes it easy and more efficient to fill out the required forms. The technology also puts the right information at our employees’ fingertips, helping them provide better on-the-spot advice to our customers.

How did you get started with Chrome?

About three years ago we transitioned to Google Apps with the help of Google Apps Premier Partner Agosto. We purchased our licensing through them. They also gave us guidance on migrating our data out of Lotus Notes and into Google Apps, and showed us the benefits of Chromebooks over the legacy machines we were using. When we saw the difference, we decided to try Chrome for digital signage, kiosks and our sales staff.

What other kinds of benefits have you gotten from Chrome?

Before Chrome, it was a pain to get digital signs working — it could take a week or more to set up our legacy hardware. With Chromebits, it takes ten minutes to set up a digital sign, and we can manage them all from one location. This saves valuable time for our IT department.

We’ve also saved money. We were considering Windows laptops for our sales associates, but by choosing Chromebooks we’re saving $200 per laptop.

Overall, the biggest benefit has been giving our customers the attention they deserve, whether by offering local information, access to a larger range of products through our in-store kiosks, or making the customer workflow process easy with Chromebooks. We pride ourselves on being experts on everything we sell. With Chrome, our experts can spend more time with our customers and show them the personalized customer support that helps them choose exactly the right camping gear for a first family camping trip or the mountain bike that’s exactly the right height and weight. We’re such big believers in Chrome, we now turn to it as the first option for any new challenge.

Pushing the boundary of Enterprise Security with Verified Access

Posted by Saswat Panigrahi, Senior Product Manager, Chrome for Work

With security breaches that pose threats to businesses and their customers on the rise, CIOs are demanding more from their vendors when it comes to the security of their systems and devices. Advanced security is a mainstay of every Chrome device, regardless of price or type, and today we’re taking the next major step in bringing greater security to the enterprise with Verified Access for Chrome OS devices.

Verified Access is the means by which a network service, such as a VPN gateway, a sensitive server, an Enterprise certificate authority (CA) or an Enterprise Wi-Fi access point can get a hardware-backed cryptographic guarantee of the identity of the device and user that’s trying to access it. Verified Access ensures that their state is unmodified and policy compliant. This matters because most businesses, particularly large enterprises, have policies and requirements in place that allow network and data access only to enterprise-managed and verified devices, but many of the current solutions rely primarily on heuristic client side checks. But, a bad actor that can compromise your Operating System can probably also fake the signals being checked for.

Verified Access addresses this core challenge by leveraging the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) present in every Chrome OS device to enable enterprise network services to cryptographically confirm the identity and status of verified boot and enterprise policy using a Google server-side API.
When integrating with an enterprise CA, for instance, hardware-protected device certificates can be distributed only to managed, verified devices. For years, Google has been using Verified Access to enhance security by ensuring the veracity and policy compliance of Chrome devices before allowing access to resources, and now we're making it available externally. Duo Security and Ruckus Wireless have already integrated with our Verified Access API.

Duo Security, a trusted access provider, now uses Verified Access internally to reliably assess the security of Chromebooks. Michael Hanley, Director of Security at Duo Security says “Given that many other security properties that are essentially native to the security model and architecture of Chrome OS, Verified Access gives us a reliable way of measuring foundational, hardware-backed security properties of Chromebooks before they access our services. It’s a high-assurance way for us to clear Chromebooks for access internally and be certain that only our users and our devices are passed through to sensitive services and data. It’s a great step toward even stronger endpoint security posture for our company and our customers.”

Ruckus Wireless has integrated its security management platform, Cloudpath ES, with the Verified Access API to securely differentiate between IT-owned and user-owned Chromebooks. The capability is available today in Cloudpath ES version 4.3. Kevin Koster, Chief Architect at Ruckus Wireless says, “The Verified Access API allows us to be cryptographically certain that a Chromebook is IT-owned before issuing it a certificate or allowing it to join the wireless network as an IT-owned device. Combined with Chromebook’s existing security features, Cloudpath creates a secure environment that is transparent to the end-user and the administrator. Over the last several months, we have been successful in deploying the solution in both education and high-security environments, including a global retail chain.”

Identity, network and security providers, we also invite you to integrate with the Verified Access API. Administrators, here’s how you can deploy it.

In other security news, we’ve brought Smartcard Authentication support to Chrome Device, the required way of authenticating for employees in many security sensitive organizations. With the newly launched Citrix Receiver for Chrome 2.1, users can now authenticate to virtualized Citrix apps using smartcards, and with SSO, login just once to their Chromebooks and be authenticated across Citrix and virtualized Windows apps.

Later this month we’re planning on reviewing the key security features of Chrome OS and a deep dive on how to integrate with and benefit from Verified Access in your organization. Sign up here for more details.

How Jtel used Chrome to reinvent the call center

Posted by Lewis Graham, Chief Executive Officer, Jtel

Editor's note: Today we hear from Lewis Graham, Chief Executive Officer of Jtel, which provides call center technologies for telecommunications companies and enterprises. Read how Jtel is transforming the call center industry using Chrome, which has added efficiency, time savings and ROI (45% increase for Jtel customers).

Think about the last time you needed to get in touch with a business. How did you contact them? You may have picked up the phone, but it’s just as likely you sent an email or a text message, tagged the company in a post on social media or visited the website to chat with a customer service rep. Today, there are dozens of ways for people to communicate with businesses. Companies who embrace this fact are rewarded with more engaged customers.

Jtel set out to reinvent the call center so businesses can handle all the ways people get in touch with them. Based on our 25 years of experience providing call center technology for telecommunications firms and enterprises, we’ve built a new multi-channel call center platform using Chromebooks and WebRTC. WebRTC is an open source project for real-time browser-based communications that was developed by Google. The Chrome and WebRTC solution eliminates telephones while letting agents handle email, chat and voice calls. Rather than switching between a phone and computer, the agent uses just one device.

Chrome has improved our call centers on three important fronts: call center teams work more efficiently, their calls are more effective and they save time. Chrome devices are easy to configure and manage, and they’re highly reliable — particularly important because call centers are notoriously difficult to install. Chrome and WebRTC have dramatically reduced the time required to set up a new call center: it takes four hours to set up a center with 200 to 300 Chromebooks, compared to the four days it takes to set up a traditional call center of similar size.

Chrome saves our customers money as well. In a traditional call center, each agent needs a PC and a telephone. There are also high deployment costs for each agent because of the complexity of the systems. Between hardware and implementation, it adds up to almost $1,300 per agent. Chrome and RTC save a huge chunk of that — about $800 per agent. By our calculations, that leads to a 45 percent increase in ROI for our customers.

Chromebooks with WebRTC also transform the way companies interact with their customers. It lets agents connect with customers in multiple ways, not just by phone. And it allows companies to integrate their call centers with their CRM systems so they can create self-service modules for their customers. This empowers customers to resolve issues on their own.

Companies need to to be able to help customers, however they choose to get in touch. Today, that’s through phone calls, emails, text messages and live chat. As these channels keep evolving, we will, too, thanks to Chrome and our partnership with Google. Chrome is helping us build the future of communications.

How Elsa State Bank made a road map to the future with Android for Work and Google Apps

Posted by Jaime Hinojosa, Information Technology Officer, Elsa State Bank

Editor's note: Today we hear from Jaime Hinojosa, Information Technology Officer at Elsa State Bank, which has served Texans since 1945. Learn how Elsa State Bank overhauled its IT department to provide its workforce with the tools to be more mobile and productive.

Elsa State Bank's 20,000 customers across South Texas depend on our expertise in commercial, consumer and agricultural finance. We’re always looking for ways to better serve our customers and grow our customer base. As an IT officer, I introduce, evolve and maintain the technology that helps our 100 employees acquire more customers. Security, durability and affordability are top of mind when I’m researching a new solution.

In 2010, we looked to modernize our IT solutions. Our employees wanted greater flexibility to pursue customer leads outside of the office. At the time, our employees were using laptops and smartphones that didn’t have the security, functionality or mobile management we needed. I started researching other solutions and discovered Google Apps for Work, Google Mobile Device Management (Google MDM) and Android devices. I believed these solutions would help us achieve our goal of giving our team greater mobility with tools that not only advanced productivity but that also offered the security, central management and cost efficiency we required — I was right.

Today we use Google MDM to manage 40 Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Samsung Note tablets. These Android devices help us save time and money. One example: We used to print and ship 300-page binders for board meetings, which was wasteful and inefficient, but now, board members use Android tablets during meetings to view and share annual reports and quarterly earnings presentations.

Our employees are already benefitting from greater mobility at work. Lenders now commonly travel to construction sites to meet with customers, receive progress updates and pursue more loan opportunities. Loan officers who work away from the office can receive reminders about upcoming client meetings on their Android smartphone, locate and reach their destination using Google Maps and retrieve relevant customer documents from the cloud with Google Drive.

The security of Google Apps was essential to our purchasing decision. Since commercial institutions can be targeted by cybercriminals, protecting our customer data is especially important. Our centrally-managed Android devices help us save time and money without compromising security, and IT administrators benefit from capabilities like mobile device management. Remote administration also helps us save time and money from a pure logistics standpoint — we don’t have to be on site to solve individual problems that arise.

Before we adopted Google Apps for Work and Google MDM, our employees were clamoring for tools that allowed them to work from anywhere and better serve our customers. The integration of Google Apps and Google MDM, supported by Android devices, has vastly improved what our employees can accomplish each day. These tools have helped keep Elsa State Bank competitive amid a rapidly evolving work environment.