Are you brand new to running a business and feel that your email system is too cluttered or disorganized to properly keep track of conversations with your clients. Maybe you can’t make an effective group calendar to get everyone on the same page.
Whatever your concerns are, Google has come up with a solution—as they normally do—to help you organize your business into an effective communicating and file-storing team. We here at Cobalt Digital Marketing want to share what we’ve learned using this product.
What is G-Suite?
As you may have guessed, G-Suite is Google’s service suite for several different apps that can improve the way you run your business. It wasn’t always known by this name, however. Before it was called the surprisingly mediocre, Google Apps.
G-Suite has become the backbone of communication, record-keeping, brainstorming, planning, and storing for Cobalt Digital Marketing.
That’s right. We aren’t just Google Partners. We’re Google customers, too.
The Innovative G-Suites Apps and Features
There are a number of Google-developed apps that have proven to be invaluable tools to businesses all over the world. These innovative G-Suite apps and features include:
Gmail
Over the years, Gmail has grown its user base to now just over 1.2 billion. According to a report by Litmus, 24 percent of its market share is based on open rates—a measurement of how many people on an email marketing list open or view a particular email campaign—leaving Gmail in second place among popular email clients today.
Of course, Gmail can be used as a personal email address, but with G-Suite, your employees can have their own email accounts with your business domain right in their email address (e.g. joe.smiff@thebusiness.com).
This alone lends your business the appearance of credibility, legitimacy, and authenticity that could take years to procure in a brick-and-mortar.
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a go-to for many businesses and for good reason. It helps you schedule calls with clients, set up due dates for projects, set up reminders for important dates, and helps keep your schedule neatly organized.
What’s truly impressive about G-Suite’s Google Calendar is its ability to create multiple calendars for your employees. This works wonders when you are trying to coordinate business-related events with your team.
Let’s say that you want to start setting up monthly meetings to address how well the business is doing, answer any questions, or address areas that need improvement. With Google Calendar, you can create a group calendar that has this scheduled and is accessible to all of your employees.
Simple. Innovative.
Google Drive
Google Drive is the Cadillac of file-storage. It allows you to store, access, and share your files from one convenient, secure place. Better yet, you can access these same functions from any device.
Basic plans that G-Suite has for this revolutionary file-storage service come with 30GB of storage for every employee. In regards to G-Suite’s Business, Enterprise, and Teams editions, however, they come with unlimited storage, giving you all the space you need to store huge amounts files.
But storage isn’t what makes Google Drive popular. Users love its search function. Can’t remember the particular file name you are looking for? Remember anything about the content within it? Try typing that into the search bar and you’ll quickly be able to pull up that specific file. It’s no shocker that the world’s best search engine has a really good search function in its other applications.
As a bonus, the paid version of Google Drive gives your employees twice the amount of storage that would come in a personal Gmail account, plus 24/7 support, advanced reporting, and sharing controls.
That is where the meat of the value is when you get G-Suite.
Google Docs and Sheets
These apps are pretty standard tools. They allow you to create and edit text documents and spreadsheets straight from the browser.
It doesn’t stop there, though. With Google Docs and Google Sheets, you have the ability to import Microsoft Word, Excel, and PDF files. You can also export to common third-party formats, making it easier to send out documents to other individuals or companies without having to install or purchase additional software.
What makes Google Docs and Sheets truly valuable for your business, however, is two-fold:
- Real-Time Editing – This feature allows teams to collaborate on a single file all in real-time. Edit, add ideas, make comments, and work on a document all-at-once.
- Unlimited Versions of Your Documents – Previous versions of the document are kept indefinitely and do not count toward your storage. This is great if you want to go back to view changes that were made or undo mistakes.
Google Keep
This is probably Google’s best-kept secret. Google Keep has a lot of similarities to Evernote, but it incorporates into G-Suite in an unsurpassed manner.
It can be the perfect place to jot down frequently asked questions from your customers, create to-do lists, write down notes, and set reminders for anything you need. It all syncs across your devices so that what you need is there when you need it. Google Keep gives you the ability to share this information with your teammates. When done, you can archive it.
And don’t worry, Google search is available in Google Keep too, making it easy to find what you are looking for in a jiffy.
G-Suite Admin Console
Simply put, the G-Suite Admin Console is the driver’s seat that gives you, the business owner, the ability to manage everything from one convenient location.
That means you can:
- Add new users and groups
- Manage devices
- Configure security settings
- Add new custom domains for your business
- Enable other usable, fun features for your employees (e.g. Inbox by Google)
While all of these features are available in G-Suite, you must also subscribe to the right tier to unlock and use them. For instance, if you do not have the business or enterprise version of G-Suite, you may not have access to Google Cloud Search.
Honorable Mentions
G-Suite also has a whole other host of apps that you can use that are comparable to other alternatives currently out there but add the benefit of being incorporated into Google. Those are:
- Google Hangouts Chat – Google’s answer to Slack.
- Google Hangouts Meet – Make video and conference calls with the ability to join meetings directly from your Google Calendar.
- Google Slides – Google’s answer to Microsoft Powerpoint.
- Mobile Management – Gives the admin the ability to wipe G-Suite data off of a device. Usually, this occurs when a device is lost or stolen.
There are additional apps that are only accessible through business and enterprise editions like:
- Google Cloud Search – Gives your company the ability to search across content from Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Calendar.
- Vault – Essentially another form of backup. It gives you the ability to manage, retain, search, and export your company’s email, Google Drive file content, and on-the-record chats.
The Benefits of Using G-Suite
With all the benefits stated up top, what more could there be regarding G-Suite? Well…
- G-Suite apps are familiar, easy to use, and compatible – Chances are high that your employees are using at least one of the services currently (e.g. Gmail). It also makes the transition for new employees easier as they have some knowledge with at least one of the apps.
- G-Suite has the best compatibility on mobile devices – This is a big one as more and more mobile optimization is taking place and more shopping is happening online because of mobile devices.
- G-Suite doesn’t take breaks – G-Suite offers a 99.9 percent service level agreement, meaning no scheduled downtime or maintenance windows for the majority of the time. Of course, there may be some exceptions, but downtime with G-Suite is really, really rare.
- G-Suite is affordable – There may be cheaper alternatives out there, but they don’t offer nearly as much as G-Suite does. That said, it is still affordable, even at a yearly rate that can save you up to 20 percent. Of course, what you spend depends on what tier you subscribe to:
- G-Suite Basic – $5 per user, per month. This is the basic level of service with the features listed above.
- G-Suite Business – $10 per user, per month. This is the second tier that includes all the previous apps plus Google Cloud Search, Vault, eDiscovery, and Audit reports.
- G-Suite Enterprise – $25 per user, per month. This is the top tier service that includes everything plus data loss prevention, hosted S/MIME for Gmail, Gmail third-party archiving, Enterprise-grade security, and Gmail log analysis.
- G-Suite is Secure – It is built on top of the Google Cloud Platform, so when they say security, they mean business. If it wasn’t so secure, companies like HP, Verizon, Whirlpool, and Salesforce wouldn’t trust or use it. Google has always said that they lead with a “security-first” mindset, and it shows:
- G-Suite Admin – Gives the admin the ability to set how data is protected, view reports, and even control mobile devices.
- Encryption (TLS) – This provides email encryption in transit.
- Assessments, Audits, and Certs – G-Suite does several independent third-party audits frequently.
- Privacy – Google doesn’t own your data in G-Suite and therefore cannot collect, scan, or use it for advertising purposes. G-Suite also doesn’t contain ads. Google wants to make it perfectly clear that you own your own data.
- Data Retention – G-Suite gives you the ability to archive, retain, search, and export your data.
- Transparency – Google provides transparency reports frequently to keep you informed.
With benefits like these, it’s no wonder that G-Suite is growing in popularity among businesses looking to make a strong web presence. Speaking of which…
If you are looking to switch over to G-Suite, contact the experts that know a thing or three about it.
For more information on how G-Suite can benefit your business, or if you are looking to set up your custom Cobalt Formula, contact us at (866) 224-5705 today.
