When your business is rapidly adding new employees, expanding to new countries, and always focused on staying ahead of the competition, you have to take a hard look at the tools that are slowing you down—and swap them out for better ones that can keep pace with the company. We’re expanding YoungCapital in Germany, which means more offices, more people, and more technology to make the business run smoothly. 

As we scale, Google Cloud tools like Chromebooks and G Suite help us grow our business efficiently. They free us up from sluggish, time-intensive technology that’s hard to maintain and repair, and give us the freedom to work together in faster, smarter ways.

Free from hours of device setup. Some months, there are as many as 40 new employees starting at YoungCapital—and as we continue to expand that number will continue to rise, especially now that we’ve opened three new offices in Germany. With our old Windows desktops, setting up new computers could take up to an hour per employee (which can add up to about 40 hours a month for IT). Today, using Chrome Enterprise tools, it takes about five minutes to get an Acer Spin or Pixelbook ready to hand off to a new hire—saving us more than three months per year of device setup time.

Free from VPNs. Our previous Windows machines required a complicated virtual private network (VPN) for accessing corporate files outside of the office. Using a VPN was complicated for our employees because the software wasn’t intuitive; if an employee had trouble signing into the VPN while at home or traveling, they could not log in and work as quickly as they needed to. With Chromebooks, all you need is an online connection to sign into G Suite to access files and work from anywhere. 

From our perspective, Chromebooks are resistant to threats like ransomware and phishing attacks, giving us confidence that our data can stay secure. With Chrome Enterprise Upgrade, our IT admins can strengthen security even further: for example, by enabling advanced security features that help block vulnerabilities, locking down lost or stolen devices right away, and setting device security policies in the cloud so devices everywhere are safer. 

Free from infrastructure. We used to have to invest in servers, and then add more time and money to keep them running. Now we don’t have to run the business on infrastructure or hire people to maintain it—we can just use Google’s cloud. NextNovate is helping us make the most of Google Cloud Platform, like integrating some of our proprietary applications with G Suite and building our own add-ons. For example, we created a button for Gmail that connects to our job candidate database; when candidates email us, we can click on the button and see their profiles and work experience. 

Free from multiple passwords and logins. Chrome Browser and G Suite with single sign-provider SAML are the portal to all the productivity apps our employees need. Once people log in to G Suite, they don’t have to remember a bunch of other user names and passwords. The IT team loves it too, because we don’t have to spend hours zeroing out passwords and creating new ones.

Free to manage cross-country devices easily in the cloud. Our four-person IT support team, which keeps our systems humming, hasn’t grown, even though we’ve doubled the number of employees. When we were on Windows devices, we fielded roughly 1,800 IT support requests every month. Now we get about 1,300 requests a month, from a much bigger employee base. This translates to nearly 30% fewer requests for our lean support team, which reduces their workload significantly even though we have roughly 20% more employees—all made possible with Chrome Enterprise. 

Being free of slow, high-maintenance technology doesn’t just make the IT department happy—people are actually changing how they work. They no longer send files to each other by email or struggle to keep track of versions; they store everything in Google Drive and work together in Google Docs on a single document at the same time. And instead of traveling to other offices, connecting with each other in video conferences on Hangouts Meet has become a completely natural way to do business.

With Chromebooks and G Suite, we’re ready for anything: more new markets, more employees, and more-flexible ways to work together and shake up the staffing industry.

For far too long, managing employee expenses has been a time-consuming process that requires manual data entry and reconciliation to bridge the gap between business bank accounts and ERP systems. In the absence of an integrated workflow, finance teams use multiple systems to manage credit card and cash payments, and finding receipts. In most cases, they also lack real-time visibility into company spending.

The complexity grows exponentially as businesses expand, especially into new regions. Extra administration required to manage new bank accounts, card issuers, and local accounting systems impedes decision making and negatively impacts revenues and growth. Businesses of all sizes struggle with this, but it can be especially challenging for medium to large enterprises.

Payhawk set out to help businesses overcome these challenges when we founded the company in 2018. We combine VISA company cards, reimbursable expenses, and accounts payable into a single product. Our customers can automate manual processes, maximize efficiency, and accelerate business expansion.

Setting up our first cloud cluster in less than a week

To support growth and attract investment we were keen to launch our solution on a scalable, future-proof IT architecture that didn’t require extensive technical support. This is where Google Cloud made a big impression, especially the user interface and documentation which massively reduces the resources required to set up clusters and put them into production.

I’m a CTO, not a DevOps specialist, but in less than a week I was able to set up a secure, reliable operating infrastructure. This enabled us to fast-track our application development and we were able to issue our first card in just eight months. Our Google Cloud partner, Cloud Office also gave us valuable assistance, guiding us through the deployment process and advising on Google Cloud’s extensive range of solutions.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) played a critical role, accelerating the deployment and management of our cloud native applications. We use Cloud SQL as our database while other important tools include Cloud Memorystore, Vision AI, Cloud Storage and Artifact Registry for our wider data storage and application needs. With Firebase we’ve been able to build a notification system for mobile devices.

Another incentive is that most other cloud solutions require add-on services to build and keep your product live. With Google Cloud, all the services that Payhawk needs including logging, metrics, monitoring of resources, and utilization of CPU memory come as standard.

For instance, I was really impressed by Google Cloud’s operations suite, which includes Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring. If there are any anomalies in our cloud architecture, we can track and resolve them with minimal disruption to our operations. This also removes the need to invest in an additional observability solution.

Reliability that builds customer trust

Google Cloud also supports Payhawk’s mission to put customers at the center of our organization. Thanks to Google Cloud error reporting and tracking and Google Cloud single sign on, Payhawk’s engineering team can anticipate customer issues and correct them in less than one hour. Trust is everything, and Google Cloud gives us the tools to boost customer satisfaction and build long-term relationships.

As a young business, managing costs is also a priority. The Google for Startups Cloud Program, which includes credits for Google software and tools, enabled us to push the business forward without having to worry about financing our infrastructure, especially in the first year. This gave us breathing room to work through funding, application development, and the onboarding of our first customers.

In addition, Google Cloud gives us confidence that we can grow the business fast. In most months we have seen more than 10% growth — in some cases it’s been 20%. In the first half of 2022, the business doubled in size, but Google Cloud gave us the flexibility to scale our infrastructure, adding storage, memory, and processing power as we onboarded new customers. The pricing model is also generous so that we can grow our revenues while keeping control of operational expenditure.

Since launch we have acquired a valuable mix of customers from startups to large businesses that want to reduce the costs of their expenses programs and increase employee satisfaction. They include ATU, a German automobile servicing company, which has successfully digitized its entire procurement process, and Discordia, a Bulgarian logistics business with 10,000 trucks, which has issued Payhawk cards to all its drivers.

Looking to the future, it’s no exaggeration to say that Google Cloud is a foundation of our business and has given investors confidence in our operations. From a first seeding round of €3 million, early this year we closed a Series B extension of $100 million. This gives us a valuation of $1bn and makes Payhawk the first ever Bulgarian unicorn.

We now operate in 32 countries in Europe and the US, and plan to double our team by the end of the year. It feels like we’ve come a long way since we first started using Google Cloud, and I’m thrilled that we have Google Cloud as a global technology partner supporting our mission to transform expense management and financial operations worldwide.

If you want to learn more about how Google Cloud can help your startup, visit our page here to get more information about our program, and sign up for our communications to get a look at our community activities, digital events, special offers, and more.

“Talk about tough times, right?”

That’s how Dan Stuart, Senior Vice President of IT Services at Southwire Company, refers to the months following a December 2019 ransomware event, and the COVID crisis that began in spring of 2020. Those events hit just as the company was preparing for an overhaul of their SAP environment. This comprehensive plan included three key elements. First, the company wanted to upgrade their SAP ECC environment to take advantage of the latest functionality available for this critical ERP system. Second, Southwire aimed to deploy SAP Business Warehouse on SAP HANA to accelerate vital reporting for all business users. Third, the company wanted to upgrade to the latest version of SAP Process Orchestration—an essential component that touches key manufacturing interfaces in all Southwire facilities. 

Southwire had looked at multiple options for the upgrades, including remaining entirely on-premises, colocation, and full cloud migration. “Going to the cloud seemed a lot more compelling,” says Joe Schleupner, Southwire’s Senior Director of PMO & ITS planning and implementation. “We were going to the cloud eventually, so why take these intermediary steps? Let’s just get it done.”

After looking at several options, Southwire decided to migrate to Google Cloud. “We wanted to be on a platform for SAP that was flexible, scalable, and secure; that we could count on to get up and running quickly,” says Stuart. “We chose Google Cloud not only for those reasons, but also because we recognize that Google has other assets that we may be able to take advantage of down the line, such as technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).” 

More stability, less worry

As one of the leading manufacturers of wire and cable used in the transmission and distribution of electricity, Southwire aids the delivery of power to millions of people worldwide. They have more than 30 manufacturing facilities across the United States running 24/7. Any downtime directly affects productivity and revenue. With help from Google Cloud and their implementation partner NIMBL, Southwire completed the SAP migration to Google Cloud over a planned maintenance weekend on July 4th.

The migration itself, while complex, went quickly and smoothly. “Just moving to the cloud was quite a feat because we were dealing with so much data, but in total the SAP system was down for only ~16 hours,” says Schleupner.

“As a project manager, I always felt that Google Cloud had my back” Schleupner says. The Process Orchestration (PO) migration was of particular concern, considering that it controlled all of Southwire’s manufacturing interfaces across the entire company. “Every critical piece of information that goes from SAP down to the manufacturing system goes through that system,” says Schleupner.

Even after migrating, Southwire discovered that making changes to the system was fast, easy, and resulted in no downtime. Normally, certain types of changes would have involved taking down SAP for at least an hour.

The Southwire team also appreciates the fact that the modern cloud architecture means spending less time on routine infrastructure maintenance. “It’s one less thing for me to worry about,” Stuart says, “I can focus on the business side of the house and move the technology and responsibilities to what we do within the Google Cloud Platform.”

What comes next?

While the cloud migration will increase stability, uptime, performance, and security, there is much more to come. Southwire is currently working on a disaster recovery implementation for their SAP environment on Google Cloud. Stuart and Schleupner are excited about where Google Cloud can further take Southwire. They are considering an SAP Hybris e-commerce implementation as well as connected factory and/or factory automation initiatives that can take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

To Stuart and Schleupner, the migration of Southwire’s SAP environment to Google Cloud, as important as it was, really represents the first step in the company’s tech evolution. Now that much of the heavy lifting is complete, Southwire’s digital transformation can begin in earnest. “There’s no shortage of areas where I think Google Cloud will come into play,” Stuart says, “and we intend to look at these things with an open mind to understand how we can leverage current investments to take our organization where we want to go.”

Learn more about Southwire’s SAP on Google Cloud deployment and how Google Cloud can transform the way you work with your SAP enterprise applications. Visit cloud.google.com/solutions/sap.