What exactly is Google G Suite?
Google offers a service called G Suite that is particularly useful to small businesses. While it is
similar to Microsoft Office Suite in that it has a word processor, Google Docs, an email provider,
Gmail, and presentation and spreadsheet applications roughly functionally equivalent to
Powerpoint and Excel, G Suite offers much more in the way of collaboration tools.
This is because it is on the cloud, and can therefore be accessed online with all real-time document changes being saved automatically.
Many people have likely experienced at one point or another the heavy feeling of panic when
working on an important assignment and Microsoft Word (or worse, the computer itself) crashes
without warning. With G Suite, however, gone are the days when files disappear simply
because of system malfunctions. Even in the event of natural disasters that can destroy external
hard drives and backup disks, every document created or uploaded with G Suite is completely
unscathed.
For small business owners looking to use cloud services for the first time, G Suite may be the
ideal one to start with. This is in part because Google is used almost universally, at the very
least as a search engine and email provider. It is already ubiquitous and familiar, so onboarding
users to G Suite would take much less time than for cloud services that employees would need
to learn how to use from scratch. Additionally, because it is so compatible with Word, Excel, and
Powerpoint, files are easily convertible between Google and Microsoft. More and more schools
also use Google’s online applications, so there is a good chance that summer interns and young
hirees straight out of college would already know how to make the most of G Suite for
Businesses.
Collaboration takes on new meaning in G Suite.
While other cloud services allow only one user at a time to make edits, in G Suite it is possible to have every employee in a company updating the same document at once. Hovering the cursor over each color on the page reveals the identity of the collaborator, and a chat bar also lets users swap ideas before making visible changes. For even clearer communication, G Suite offers Hangouts which is like Skype for Business, with no limit on how many employees can join a video call.
When you first sign up for G Suite, you will be asked to answer a series of basic questions
about your business. These include the number of employees, whether your business has a
domain, and of course, contact information. After everything is confirmed, you will be able to
immediately get started on sending out business emails and adding all the users you need. If
there are tools you are less familiar with, you can always consult Google’s cleanly organized
resources page for answers. However, if you have more specific questions you should utilize
outsourced IT services which are only a phone call away if you have a managed services provider, and can walk you through more complicated features.
According to a 2017 Techcrunch article, at least three million businesses are using G Suite now.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai attributes this milestone to businesses looking for a collaborative
cloud service that is above all, highly secure. But before committing to any product, it is
necessary to consider its downsides as well.
G Suite may not be right for your business because while its tools are generally easy-to-use, they are individually not as powerful as standalone applications. For example, Microsoft Excel can enable you to analyze large amounts of data using commands that are lacking in Google Spreadsheet. The presentations tool that G Suite provides is also much more simplified than Powerpoint, or user-interactive software like Prezi. In fact, some may view G Suite tools as being too simple, the trade-off of Google trying to accomplish too much all at once. However, it never hurts to take advantage of a free trial.
Who knows, you may find that after 14 days of G Suite, running your business takes tremendously
less effort.