MediaAgility was acquired by Persistent in May 2022 and its capabilities form the foundation for Persistent’s Google Business Unit. As a Google Cloud Partner and a strategic IT Transformation services provider, the Google Business Unit is focused on delivering transformational services with cloud-native solutions that enable businesses to stay relevant and benefit from the public cloud platform capabilities.
Google Apps for Business has provided us with so much more productivity than we could ever have asked for. In a mobile and dynamic work environment such as ours, being able to work on the go means that work is not disrupted when we are out for meetings. The result is a much more productive day for each of us
Pardeep Thind, IT manager of Snapdeal
Background
Established in 2010, Snapdeal.com (Snapdeal) is currently India’s largest online marketplace. With over 20 million members, over 500 product categories and more than 20,000 sellers, Snapdeal delivers to over 4,000 cities and towns in India.
Challenges
Snapdeal’s search for a new mail solution began when employees found that their limited email storage size was hindering business efficiency. Employees were wasting valuable time clearing e-mails to keep within the 10GBs allocated to each staff.
At the time, Snapdeal was managing two email domains for different purposes, Snapdeal.com and Jasperindia.com. As customers, partners and vendors were already very familiar with the Snapdeal brand, moving to snapdeal.com made sense. Management would be saved the trouble of constantly switching between two domains that were in fact managed by different service providers.
Pardeep Thind, IT manager of Snapdeal says, “Snapdeal has carved such a strong brand identity by itself that people were associating more with Snapdeal than Jasper. Having a single domain would be good for users, vendors and partners.”
As the business grew, management began looking for a new solution to provide employees with a better email experience. They immediately set their sights on Google Apps for Business and seized the Google migration as an opportunity to unify all operations under Snapdeal. They also saw increased collaboration as a clear benefit of the new Google environment.
Thind commented on their approach: “We first implemented the free edition of Google Apps across the organisation and were satisfied with the results. When the trial period expired, we gave Yahoo and Microsoft Office a try for comparison’s sake.”
Within months, it was obvious that Google was the best solution.
“Given the dynamic, fast-moving nature of the online retail industry, we needed a reliable mail solution, with ample storage, to cater to high email volumes. Google was the only solution that could give us 30GBs of storage space, along with the reliability and performance we expect,” said Thind. “The bonus for us was Google’s collaboration features, which we now can’t operate without,” Thind continued.
Solution
Snapdeal engaged MediaAgility, a Premier Google Enterprise Partner, and worked together on a proof-of-concept. Tests were conducted based on a stringent list of criteria that included stability, security and ease of use. The results exceeded expectations.
Snapdeal.com builds more valuable customer relationships with Google Apps. “We have more than 1,100 email IDs in the systems. A typical migration process, which requires data transfer and synchronization across the different domain environments, is often complicated and tedious. However, migration onto Google was seamless and non-disruptive to our operations.”
Google’s dedicated IT support team provided technical support to the in-house team. Thind said, “It is reassuring to know that Google has a 24/7 service team we can reach out to whenever we want to escalate any unresolved issues.”
The implementation process began with senior management, followed by the rest of the company. The entire migration process was completed in only four weeks.
Results
Snapdeal has a young and internet-savvy workforce who is already familiar with Google’s intuitive interface. The switch to Google Apps for Business was seamless and its impact was felt immediately across the various departments. For example, sales consultants in the call centre welcomed the immediate boost in email storage. They no longer needed to worry if they missed emails due to mailbox limits and could now shift their focus to building more valuable customer relationships.
Collaboration features such as Google Chat and Hangouts, which comes with the solution, provided an additional channel for employees to interact and collaborate. Employees could now conduct group discussions within their own teams and across departments. The simultaneous editing function in Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets meant that several people could collaborate on the same document, thus expediting reviews. For the first time, employees also have visibility into one another’s schedule through Google Calendar. Planning meetings is now much simpler, and deadlines are more visible to team members.
“If you walked into our office any of the days, you will feel a positive energy. There is constant buzz as employees engage in idea exchanges and team discussions. Google Apps has certainly provided us with a singular communications and collaboration platform for increased productivity and efficiency.”
IT system administrators also experienced greater flexibility, with more granular controls over accounts. System performance is easily monitored through the analytics features in Google Apps, providing Snapdeal with detailed audit reports of their IT environment.
Thind said, “The insights we gathered from Google Apps has enabled us to produce security logs and reports that enhanced IT efficiency. This also enabled faster and better decision-making for management.”
“Thanks to Google, Snapdeal now presents a unified front to our customers, vendors and partners. This is important for us in establishing a strong brand identity in the coming years,” Thind concluded.
This story was originally published on Google Cloud.
