Many businesses are now moving to Google through the help of itGenius. The question left is, why are most staff members hesitant to change and how itGenius were able to help them change their minds? Find out and learn more through this video.
In this video, Peter explains how itGenius helps staff members transition from the Microsoft world to the Google world.
To learn more about our Cloud Support Service, or schedule an IT Systems Check, contact itGenius - the Google Workspace Experts
While working with a lot of businesses, we have noticed that many staff members are still hesitant to switch to Google. Let us help you and your team become more efficient and productive in their work.
Transcription:
Hey, there. Pete Moriarty here. Great to have you with me today. Today's question I'm answering is about helping staff move over to the G Suite and the Google world when maybe they don't want to.
We work with many businesses, helping them make the transition from the Microsoft world, or the Mac Mail world, or cPanel email, or wherever their emails and their stuff is right now, over into the Google ecosystem, and in fact, there are hundreds and hundreds of businesses that we help make this transition every year. We did about 200 migrations last year, and this year I think we've done a couple of acquisitions, so it's more looking like around 400 migrations that we're getting done this year.
When we move employees and staff members over from whatever they've been using right now, whether it's Mac Mail or whether it's from Outlook, and we're asking them to adopt Gmail, we're asking them to adopt the Googley way of doing things, we quite often get a bit of pushback. We get staff who say, “No, I don't want to change,” or, “I don't want to do anything different,” or some staff even say, “You're not going to take Outlook from my cold, dead hands,” right.
That usually comes down to a couple of simple things. Number one, it's hard to change. We acknowledge that, and everything about our business is about helping business owners change and helping business owners be better, have more productive teams. It's really important for you to acknowledge that, yes, it is hard to change sometimes, right, and that needs to be a part of any technological and business transformation initiative. You need to acknowledge, yes, change is hard, and you need to have a plan for that change as well.
Number two, you need to actually train and show people the way, and that's super important. One of the most important things is for a business leader or business owner to actually show the way. Make sure that you are leading the change. Effective change management quite often comes from the leadership team actually showing the way.
Let's talk about more on the practical side of the things, how it actually works if you're scared of moving out of the Microsoft world and into the Google world. Now, we've got more than 1,000 customers under management and more than 15,000 staff members that are completely supported by our business. Now, these are all of the users that are on G Suite, under all of the companies that we manage and look after, and the interesting thing that we've seen is the businesses that move across and make the transition into Google, who have a leadership team who's onboard with the change, who acknowledge the change and they invest in training, and they're ready to try something new, well, they're the ones that are going to be more successful. We haven't had many non-successful.
How do we make that happen? Well, first of all, you want to make sure that you actually invest in training and you force people to actually go through the training. One of the things that we do when we transition a business over to Google is we put them through an online video training program, which is excellent, it's called Genius Academy, and what that does is it forces people to learn how things are different in the Google world and it helps them get comfortable with that as well.
If you've ever learnt something new, let's say you've moved from a Windows computer over to a Mac computer, or maybe you changed from MYOB over to Xero, you would know that sometimes it's just a matter of being shown what's different, for you to then have everything that you need to make the change personally, right? That change is hard, but when you're shown the way, it's quite often … you'll get there in the end. With making the switch from Outlook over to G Suite, or from let's say Mac Mail or from wherever your emails are right now, it's just a matter of being shown the way. That's the most important thing.
We've put thousands of graduates through our online training program, our oldest graduate is 82 years old, so we're very comfortable that we're pretty good at showing people the way at switching over to Gmail. But how do you frame that? How do share that with your staff and how do you share that with your team? They may say, “Well, I don't need to change. I don't want to change. I'm really happy with what I'm doing right now.” The most important thing, as I said, is you want to lead from the top. That's most important.
But secondly is, you want to help frame it correctly. If you're sharing with your team, “Hey, here is a way that you can be more productive. Here is a way that you can save time. Here is a way that the Google ecosystem and the productivity tools that Google have, and the artificial intelligence, and all of the other cool stuff that Google does is going to help you do your job better and have more time to spend on you doing productive work,” then that's probably going to be pretty helpful for your team members.
So what are some of the tools that Google has available that can actually make it a really compelling switch to move from Mac Mail or to move from Outlook? If you've already moved over to the Google ecosystem, if right now you're already in the Google world and you've still got some staff that want to hold onto their Outlook, then these may be some good things to share with them. Number one, Google's use of AI. Really, really super, and it's right across the Google ecosystem. If you look inside of Gmail and the app in your mobile phone, you'll see automatic, auto-composed suggested responses are automatically showing up at the bottom of emails, which means that you can automatically have responses pre-typed for you, based on AI. You can click one button and it's going to respond to those emails automatically. Really cool. I mean, that AI is coming all through the whole Google ecosystem and I'll save that for another video.
Secondly, once you're in the Google ecosystem, the search is absolutely brilliant. The search is so good on both desktop and your mobile as well, that you can search for any email, at any time, and you're always going to find it, even if it's on your mobile. Now, you would have noticed, if you're on iOS, if you're on the Apple ecosystem, and you're using Apple Mail and you've got your business emails connected to your Apple Mail, you can only search back about 30 days before that search starts to run out. Well, if you're using the Gmail app for your business emails, you can search and find absolutely anything. I can search for emails right from 10 years ago when we started the business, and I can find absolutely everything that we need. There are a couple of key features, that are nice little time savers, that you might want to share with your staff if you're having trouble getting them to shake Outlook or getting them to shake Mac Mail.
The obvious question … we get this one all the time, but I need to make it completely obvious … when you make the switch over to Google, if you're not yet on G Suite and you're considering making the switch, yes, you get to keep your existing business email addresses. Yes, your customers and your contractors, they won't see, they won't know that you're using Google in the back end of your business. They will just see emails or calendar invitations or whatever else you're sending. You don't have to switch to a @gmail.com address just to use the Google ecosystem. And if right now you have your business emails forwarded into a personal Gmail account, well then we can fix that for you and switch you over to a business account.
That's the question for today. Thank you very much and if you have any questions yourself, go ahead and ask our team. Well, you're going to ask me. Ask our team, but I'm going to answer it for you. Pop a question down by messaging our business page, petermoriarty.tv, and I'll be very happy to answer. If you need any help or support with G Suite, or if you're considering making the move from the Microsoft world over into the Google world, then just send us a message and have a chat to our team. Until next time, take care.
To learn more about our Cloud Support Service, or schedule an IT Systems Check, contact itGenius - the Google Workspace Experts
