This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable
regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small
business.
Google Apps for business has a number of
benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially
places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere,
any time, from any Internet connection.
At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even
adding the free versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can keep your employees
coordinated.
For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a
guide to how the software can benefit your small business.
Gmail
The many advanced features of Gmail really make it a
leap forward in the web-based e-mail space, and a lot of these are ideal for business.
If you’re not ready to take the full plunge into the paid Google Apps suite, you can still
configure Gmail to function as your business e-mail client through your existing domain name by
following the steps outlined in my post, “How to Set Up Gmail as Your Business E-mail Client.”
The first big advantage of Gmail, like all the apps discussed here, is that it functions
in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about downloading messages to multiple
locations or syncing various devices. Your inbox will look the same from any web or mobile
connection. And with 25 gigs of e-mail storage per user (with a paid apps account), it’s
unlikely you’ll ever have to clean your inbox or delete old messages.
Gmail works a bit differently than traditional desktop clients and webmail services in that
conversations are “threaded.” This means that e-mails with the same
or related subject lines are grouped together in a thread so you can see all the messages sent
and received on a topic in one place. When a new message is received, the entire thread is bumped
to the top of your inbox, making tracking complex and multi-party conversations easy.
Gmail also has a chat feature built right into the interface that lets you send
a quick update or discuss a project with an employee if you’re not in the same office.
Chats are also stored in Gmail so that you can search and refer to them later.
Google search, the asset that started it all for the company, is of course built
right into Gmail, which makes finding information from e-mail conversations (even very old ones)
extremely efficient.
Additionally, Gmail Labs offers some extra settings for your inbox that can be extremely valuable
for business use:
-
Signature Tweaks puts your e-mail signature before the quoted text in a reply
the way that Outlook would.
-
Default ‘Reply to All’ allows you to reply to group e-mails with
one click, instead of from a drop-down menu.
-
Forgotten Attachment Detector will notify you if you’ve mentioned an
attachment in an e-mail, but forgotten to add one.
-
Undo Send gives you a few seconds after sending a message to click
“undo” in case you forgot something, or sent it to the wrong party by mistake.
-
Title Tweaks is a great feature that puts your unread message count first in
the title of the inbox web page. If you have many windows open while you’re working,
you’ll still be able to see when new messages arrive.
Google
Docs
Google Docs is a web-based suite for word processing, presentation building (similar to
PowerPoint), spreadsheets, and web forms. All the work is done in a web browser, and all the data
is saved in the cloud.
The software can be a bit quirky at times, which may frustrate users of more stable products like
Microsoft Office, but the payoff in online storage, shareability, and collaboration options may
be worth the adjustment for many small businesses.
Because the data is online, streamlined document sharing and collaboration are
big perks with Google Docs. Any file you’re working on can be shared with individual team
members, or the entire group within the apps system. You can also set permissions for specific
users to view and edit documents. And, multiple users can simultaneously view and edit documents,
which can be useful for real-time collaborative projects or presentations during conference
calls. You can also grant permission for those outside your office network to view and edit
documents, which can be especially useful for sharing information and presentations with clients
or colleagues.
As you create and share documents, your Google Docs dashboard may start to get a little messy. Be
sure to create folders to keep your work organized just as you would on your
desktop. You can also share entire folders if you need to collaborate on multiple documents
related to the same project.
Calendar
Google Calendar provides an efficient and intuitive way to keep appointments and events synced
across your entire business. With calendar sharing and permissions (similar to
those in Docs), you can add other employees’ calendars to your own, and vice versa, in
order to see and manage the big picture of your team’s time.
For example, if an executive has an assistant, their calendars may be shared so that the
assistant could manage his boss’s appointments remotely from his own account. It’s
also a smart tool for coordinating meetings, calls, and shift staffing for multiple employees to
avoid scheduling conflicts. Sharing multiple calendars with one “master calendar”
creates a color-coded scheduling table for the coordinator that updates automatically when users
make changes or additions.
The Calendar app can also be used to create events through Gmail. By adding your
employees’ e-mail addresses to an event, they will receive an invitation to respond.
Responding ‘yes’ automatically adds a shared event to your calendar that each invitee
can view and add notes to. It’s a smart way to coordinate meetings and keep everyone in the
loop.
Google
Sites
Google Sites is a drag-and-drop web development tool that you can use within your
business’s apps to create online information hubs for employees. The
websites you create exist within your Google Apps domain, can be public or private, and
permissions for employees to add, change, and contribute information can be set from the main
account.
Beyond simply being a WYSIWYG web editor, Sites makes it easy to integrate data from
other Google Apps into dynamic pages that team members can use to collaborate on
projects. Integrating spreadsheets or data charts from Docs, a deadline schedule from Calendar,
and team-specific messages from Gmail could essentially create a one-stop project dashboard full
of dynamically updating information.
Sites here can be purely functional or informational, or with the aid of some built-in templates
or a good designer, a full-fledged dynamic public website for your business that
team members have easy access to.
Google
Groups
Google Groups have long been public forums where users across the web gather to discuss specific
interests or get technical support. Groups for business brings that same functionality into your
private internal network.
E-mail can sometimes be cumbersome when coordinating a team. When you need a central space to
collect ideas and share documents (but you’re not interested in building a web page in
Sites), Groups offers a solution.
Employees can create discussion groups on their own and subscribe, either by
e-mail or via a Groups dashboard, which lists new posts like a news reader.
Rather than e-mails going out to individual inboxes, a group thread remains visible to all of
your subscribed team members, and users can go back to it for reference, to add more information,
and even share docs and calendars.
Using Groups for business discussions and project management creates a communal and
searchable database of information that employees can go back to whenever needed.
Google Apps
Marketplace
Google’s recently launched Google Apps
Marketplace allows developers of other business web apps to integrate their offerings with
Google and sell software directly to Google Apps users. The marketplace currently has over 50
partners, including Intuit, Zoho, and Aviary. This additional space for third-party software
means that Apps users will have even more options to tailor their suite for specific business
purposes.
Smart Integration Across the Board
While each app has worthwhile features, perhaps one of the best advantages is the way that they
all integrate with one another. Documents and appointments can be easily shared via e-mail, and
your inbox can be used as a portal for productivity via embeddable widgets, chat, and other
notifications.
If your small business is ready for a web-based, collaboration-minded IT solution, Google Apps is
certainly a cost-effective way to go, and you can investigate the free versions simply by signing
up for a Gmail account to determine if the suite is right for your workflow.
More business resources from Mashable:
- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping
Tabs on Your Industry
- 4 Elements of a Successful
Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a
Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media
ROI
- HOW TO: Use Social
Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, CostinT
Tags: business, gmail, Google,
google apps, Google Calendar, google docs, google labs, List, Lists,
productivity, small business
I didn’t have the same 
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
