In 1984, Mario Maio set up a small business manufacturing electrical transformers in his Johannesburg garage. Over the next two decades, the ACDC Dynamics company he created came to dominate manufacturing, import, and distribution in South Africa’s electrical goods sector. Then, in 2007, Mario’s son, Ricardo Maio, founded a retail arm to the business, ACDC Express. Today ACDC Express is South Africa’s largest electrical retail franchise, with 29 franchise stores across the country. Eight of those franchises joined in 2017 alone, and ACDC Express is experiencing quarter-on-quarter growth of 28% per year.

Rapid expansion increases the demands on the ACDC Express central administration, which provides each franchise with IT support and a full suite of marketing, operational, and bookkeeping functions. So when email server downtime became a frequent problem, Ricardo and his team chose G Suite to transform the way the franchise worked.

“We lost revenue when our email servers went down. When I researched Google’s SLA of 99.9% uptime and experimented with G Suite on my private Gmail account, I could see the difference this technology could create.”

Ricardo Maio, CEO, ACDC Express

“On consecutive occasions, our entire email server went down,” says Ricardo Maio, CEO at ACDC Express. “It would take more than one or two days to bring it back up. We had already highlighted software cost overhead as a potential thing to reduce, so when that happened several times within a short period, we knew it was time to make a change.”

Building a better franchise

Franchise businesses undergoing rapid expansion must respond quickly to the demands of new stores. At ACDC Express, 33 staff run the national franchise, delivering core services and support to 29 franchises across the country. Key tasks, such as updating the operations manual, were hampered by a reliance on paper forms and mail services, while email servers experienced repeat failures, which compromised communication. By implementing new, cloud-based productivity tools, ACDC Express looked to cut down on slow and expensive practises, and deliver an agile, reliable online communications platform.

To do that, ACDC Express migrated its franchise to G Suite with Opennetworks. “We lost revenue when our email servers went down,” says Ricardo. “When I researched Google’s SLA of 99.9% uptime and experimented with G Suite on my private Gmail account, I could see the difference this technology could create.”

Since moving to Gmail, ACDC Express reports that the problem of email server downtime “is no longer existent for us,” while with Google Drive, versioning problems have been resolved. Using surveys on Google Forms, ACDC Express quickly and easily collects data from stores and customers—whether they are in stores or on the road—and populates Google Sheets with the information.

“Our operations manual is a binding document, and it’s a living document that gets regularly updated. In the past, we would struggle to track which franchise had which version. With Google Drive, we can be sure that everyone is looking at the right one.”

Ricardo Maio, CEO, ACDC Express

With Google Data Studio, the managing team then consolidates that data on dashboards, creating snapshots of performance, complete with averages and simple comparisons, which make it easy to spot issues and outliers in need of attention. Individual businesses that do require help are then contacted over Google Hangouts Meet to assess what they need, part of a culture of sharing expertise, which Ricardo sees as key to the franchise mode.

“As a franchise, sharing knowledge is as important as maintaining control,” he says. “If there’s a new procedure or system that worked in one store, we can immediately update our manuals and documentation so that everyone has access to it. That’s been fantastic.”

“Our operations manual is a binding document, and it’s a living document, which gets regularly updated,” says Ricardo. “In the past, we would struggle to track which franchise had which version, and every time we had to make a change we would print out a version and send it to stores through an unreliable postal service. With Google Drive, we can be sure that everyone is looking at the right one.”

Remote training, rapid migration

Rolling out new IT tools across a franchise is often expensive, demanding extensive travel and numerous training sessions, which often repeat the same material. Instead, ACDC Express set up training on Google Hangouts that staff could drop into at their convenience, creating a cost-effective training schedule, which meant individual stores could plan their own learning process.

“When we moved to G Suite, we did it all at once, with every employee changing at the same time. We took a band-aid approach, switching to the new tools as rapidly as possible. After six months of training, there have been no reported problems with G Suite at all.”

Ricardo Maio, CEO, ACDC Express

“The whole benefit of franchising is that you can learn from your peers,” says Ricardo. “When we moved to G Suite, we did it all at once, with every employee changing at the same time. We took a band-aid approach, switching to the new tools as rapidly as possible. After six months of training, there have been no reported problems with G Suite at all.”

More mobile, more reliable

Today, ACDC Express operates 240 Google accounts, and information from the franchises’ marketing systems, research, operations, and accounting is fed back automatically to Google Sheets and Google Dashboard at the headquarters in Edenvale, Gauteng. By Ricardo’s estimation, the administrative team is now so effective with G Suite tools, it can achieve twice as much as it could without them.

Now, ACDC Express is looking to use Google Chromebooks in a new web-based point-of-sale system, and considering moving its ERP onto Google Cloud Platform for greater stability, in another project with Opennetworks.

“We’ve developed an in-house point of sale system that’s web-based and can use a functional touchscreen,” adds Ricardo. “We’re looking at rolling that out with Google Chromebooks. We really like how straightforward and simple the Google Chrome devices are, and because we’ve taken a lot of infrastructure into the cloud, we no longer actually need physical machines on our counters. We can work anywhere. That’s something that applies from our head office right down to our smallest franchise store.”

More than a decade ago we introduced secure, easy-to-use business collaboration and productivity apps (now known as G Suite), and we envisioned a new way of working in the cloud. And although we always knew the value of cloud-based collaboration, it is more important than ever at a time like this. 

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen Google Meet—G Suite’s video conferencing solution—help millions of people stay connected, whether it’s colleagues working at home, companies livestreaming to global employees, doctors caring for patients, banks providing loans, retailers and restaurants helping the elderly place orders for home delivery or curbside pickup, social services conducting welfare checks, governments serving citizens, or schools staying in session. 

In the first week of April Earlier this week, we surpassed a new milestone, with more than 2 million new users connecting on Google Meet every day, and they’re spending over 2 billion minutes together—that’s more than 3,800 years of secure meetings in a single day. We’re humbled by the huge responsibility that comes with this growth, and we’re determined to continue doing our part to help.

Here’s a little more on what that means.

Meet, and all of G Suite, runs on Google’s secure, resilient global infrastructure, which helps us reliably manage our capacity to keep our services up and running. With Meet, organizations around the world can take advantage of the same secure-by-design infrastructure, built-in protection, and global network that Google uses to secure your information and safeguard your privacy. You can learn more in our Google Meet security blog post.

Last month, we made advanced Google Meet video-conferencing capabilities available at no cost to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers. We’ve now extended that availability to September 30, 2020 to ensure businesses, organizations, institutions, and educators continue to be supported during this time.

Earlier this year, G Suite also hit another important milestone, surpassing six million paying businesses and organizations. We’re acutely aware of our responsibility to these teams as they support their own constituents, patients, students, and customers during this pandemic. Here are a few stories they’ve shared.

Cambridge Health Alliance, a health system with 140,000 patients in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston’s Metro North region, has relied on G Suite to support its staff and caregivers. “We didn’t realize how integral G Suite had become to our daily work until dealing with a pandemic where consistent communication with our CHA staff was of utmost importance,” said James LaPlante, Sr. Director, Technology and Biomedical Services. “With one click, staff have been able to connect from their Gmail, Calendar, or from Meet-enabled conference rooms across three hospitals, 15 health centers, or from home.” 

In the UK, Hackney Council is using G Suite, Meet and Chromebooks to keep its team of 4,000 staff connected and to make sure that essential services can still be delivered for its citizens.

In Peru, the Judiciary branch is using Meet to continue operating during the nation-wide quarantine. Through video conferences they are carrying out both internal meetings and also hearings. By doing this, attorneys, lawyers and judiciary clerks don’t have to physically attend court, keeping the virus from spreading, while maintaining the administration of justice in the country.

Korean Air has transformed its internal business system with G Suite since July 2019, creating a positive company culture. Employees communicate effectively with G Suite in a variety of ways, including chat, voice, and video, which reduces decision-making time. Korean Air recently opened a ‘Google G Suite Meeting Room’ within the company to further enhance its cloud-native communication capabilities and accelerate mobile-based collaboration.

German manufacturing company KAESER Compressors adopted G Suite in 2018, which allowed them to transition 4,000 employees to working from home smoothly, with minimal disruption. They are using G Suite to connect with customers and job applicants.

When their news anchor voluntarily self-quarantined after suspecting he had been in contact with a person with COVID-19 during a convention, Milenio Televisión, a Mexican television cable news channel, had to figure out how to keep their show on the air. They chose Meet for its security, and high quality image and sound. Milenio Televisión is now broadcasting multiple shows through Meet and has been using the tool to have video conferences with correspondents in other countries. 

To help its staff cope with the impact of COVID-19, Italian bank Credem (Credito Emiliano S.p.A.) relied on G Suite, in particular Drive, Docs, and Meet, to seamlessly adapt to a collaborative work-from-home environment. It’s also helping them maintain business continuity, relying on Meet to continue to meet one-on-one with customers. 

In the Philippines, the Department of ICT (DICT) is responsible for the planning and development of information and communications technology. As a result of COVID-19, the department has been continuously seeking ways to improve its programs and services to help quarantined workers and citizens, including use of GovMail, which is built on G Suite, Google Chat, and Google Meet. “The migration to cloud-based GovMail which started last year has proven to be particularly useful for remote government operations in this time. Coordination between government agencies is more organized, resulting in faster responses benefitting their constituents,” said  Emmanuel Rey Caintic, DICT Assistant Secretary for Digital Philippines.

Kärcher, a German company known for its wide range of cleaning products, had initially planned to roll out G Suite to its workforce by 2021. In response to the pandemic, Kärcher rapidly accelerated their rollout, deploying G Suite to its entire 14,000 workforce in only five days. As of the end of March, Kärcher’s number of weekly active Meet and Chat users has grown by 20X.

Salesforce’s CRM solution brings companies and customers together, and they turned to G Suite to bring their own teams together. “With Salesforce employees working from home given COVID-19, innovative solutions like Meet are even more critical for effective virtual collaboration,” said Andy White, VP, Platform Engineering Salesforce. “Even with 2x our daily video calls—50,000 every workday—Google Cloud’s scale and support keep our teams reliably and seamlessly connected.”

The team at Shopify, a leading global commerce company, is relying on Meet to help them keep their workforce connected. “Even with the demand surges seen around the world, recently we had a 20 person meeting livestream to 4,000 people and there were no issues,” said Garth Pyper, Director of Technical Infrastructure. “Google Meet is our primary means of video conferencing across 5,000 people at Shopify, and we are grateful for the security, reliability, and flexibility it provides.”

With the global move to a fully remote workforce during COVID-19, software company Xero has embraced G Suite to help them make a smooth transition. “Google Meet is vital in keeping our teams socially connected, and Docs, Gmail and the full G Suite family of apps has the team’s productivity and collaboration working as if we were in the office. The reliability and performance of G Suite has allowed the IT team to focus on other challenges we face with a remote workforce.”

In Singapore, NTUC Fairprice Co-Operative, the largest supermarket chain of the island nation, has experienced a surge of 400%+ increase in capacity needs as customers urgently prepare for COVID-19 with in store and online purchases of all the necessities. With the help of G Suite, NTUC was able to handle this increased demand even as they transitioned the vast majority of their workforce to remote work.

Schnucks, a family-owned supermarket retailer with 100 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin, was able to think outside the box to keep their business running and employees safe and connected. “We are running our Helpdesk 24/7 on Google Meet so that both our corporate and in-store employees can join in and get questions answered quickly. Our transportation department is able to practice social distancing by using a Google Meet ‘hotline’ as the WFH dispatch platform.” 

Meet had long been the standard collaboration tool for TELUS International, which provides customer experience solutions for global brands. “The Meet platform has helped us maintain and foster our caring culture as we transitioned from an on-site workforce to a work from home model,” said Michael Ringman, Chief Information Officer. “Whether through real-time collaboration, live meetings or a little stress relief with some virtual happy hours, our team’s ability to reliably connect ‘face-to-face’ through Google Meet has been integral to keeping us engaged despite the distance between us.”

These are just a few of the many stories we’ve heard. We’ll continue to support all our users to stay connected in the cloud. Read more on how Google Cloud is supporting businesses and communities here.

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.