One of the largest real estate franchises, Keller Williams, moves to Google business apps for its 93000 agents.
The realty is transitioning its agents to Internet-based Google email, calendar, storage and collaboration software. Ensuring that agents could access their work and collaborate from any device was a big factor in the move (pun intended).
Google Apps for Business works across platforms and devices, which is essential to Keller Williams agents, who are independent, small-business owners who choose their own devices and need to be able to work anytime, anywhere.
“Google Apps for Business is the latest step in ensuring that our associates remain at the forefront of innovation.” – CEO Mark Willis
“We spent a lot of time identifying the best technology products and the best technology partners to provide our associates with an intuitive, customizable suite of offerings that will boost productivity, increase collaboration and enhance the consumer experience.” – Executive Director of Technology Jason Tang.
What makes Google Apps for Business different? (according to Google)
- A cloud pioneer. Google is recognized as a trusted name and an industry leader in reliable cloud infrastructure.
- Built for the cloud. Google Apps was designed as an entirely cloud-based service from the ground up, so IT departments don’t need to spend time and money maintaining any desktop components.
- A complete package. The suite includes file storage and sharing with Google Drive, real-time collaboration with Google Docs, video meetings with Hangouts and professional email with Gmail, all for one single price.
- Consistency and comfort. Google Apps users enjoy the same experience across different devices, operating systems and browsers, and many employees already use Google products at home.
- Offline support. Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs let users view, edit and create content when they’re not on the Internet, syncing automatically when they reconnect.
Why pay for Google Apps for Business when Google offers similar products for free and Ads still show up?
- With Google Apps for Business, you’ll receive a number of additional business-grade services not included in the free consumer product, including: professional email at your domain, additional storage across Gmail and Drive, 24/7 phone and email support, 99.9% guaranteed uptime, interoperability with Microsoft Outlook, enhanced security features, and full administration of all user accounts.
Below is from “Google Apps for Business the Good, the Bad and the Ugly” at entrepreneur.com
In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not Bill Gates’ world any more. Sure, Microsoft remains the dominant office software provider, with 450 million deployed users, according to data from the company. But its rival, Google, has broken Microsoft’s lock on office software products.
More than 2 million firms and 25 million users now handle their e-mail, documents and other office tasks using Google’s web-based professional office suite, Google Apps.
- And for good reason. Google’s office tools offer a mind-boggling array of cloud-based productivity options to even the smallest firms: Essentially everything you do at work is now available anywhere, anytime, from any online connection.
- Better yet, it’s all free for the standard version–or $50 per year per user for the Premier version, which includes additional storage and high-quality, unlimited support.
- And Google is just getting started, quietly overhauling Apps, dramatically changing the user interface and upgrading the core code of the software. The new Apps supports development by third parties though the Google Apps Marketplace.
If you don’t have good web access, you are better off working with traditional word processors like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. But if you use the internet and your firm is not Google Apps-savvy right at this very second, you are making a mistake.
via Keller Williams brings Google’s cloud software to its 93,000 agents | Inman News.