Remploy Changes Company Culture with Google Apps (and Backs it Up Too)

Remploy is the UK’s leading provider of specialist employment services for disabled and disadvantaged people. With a network of more than 60 branches in England, Wales and Scotland, Remploy provides candidates with tailored services, including one-to-one support with job searching.

The IT department at Remploy recently went through a massive change when they made the decision to switch from their Microsoft Exchange infrastructure to the cloud-based Google Apps for Work. While cutting costs was a critical reason for the switch, changing the corporate culture was actually a major factor in the decision to go with Google Apps for Work.

“The main reason we opted for Google was that if we kept Microsoft everyone would do things in exactly the same way and there would be no change of behaviour,” said Lenka Sherry-Sole, Business Manager for IS, and Project Manager for the Google Apps for Work deployment. “We talk a lot at Remploy about our culture and how we work together and how we want to be open and honest and transparent across the organization, and we felt the collaboration features within the Google Apps environment, and the culture that we had and wanted to aspire to fit this – it wasn’t just about email, it was the collaboration features that sold it to us.”

After a year of running on Google Apps for Work, Remploy upgraded to Google Drive for Work, which gave them access to additional security features, admin controls and unlimited storage for each user.

According to Ronnie Main, Service Operations Manager at Remploy, “Users historically only had 100MB each, then when we moved to Google Apps this increased to 30GB, and users still managed to exceed this, so we decided to go unlimited. Along with the additional functionality for searching within the admin console, and increased security, it seemed like a natural progression.”

Remploy also implemented Datto’s Backupify product as part of its Google Apps deployment to securely backup their data. Main explains, “Moving to Backupify was always going to be part of the project plan, as Google wasn’t in a position to offer a backup solution, and we can’t afford to lose any data.”

After evaluating two Google Apps backup products, Backupify was the clear winner for Remploy, as it offered more flexibility within the admin console and because of its Google-like search capabilities.

Main adds, “Because Google is so vast, it can be quite easy to misplace data. For example, I don’t need a folder structure anymore because of the powerful Google search engine built into Google Drive. If there is an instance where someone misplaces a file, or transfers ownership to someone else, within Backupify we can find that file, find out what’s happened to it, and restore it. It’s never failed on us yet. The IT team loves the functionality and speed, and the customer support we get from Backupify is great.”

Implementing Google Apps and Backupify has had a very positive impact on Remploy. Lenka Sherry-Sole explains, “Thanks to Google, we’re in a great place, and Google helps us to be as good as we can be and to do the things we want to do in the future. It was a people project, it wasn’t about just changing our email platform, we were changing the culture.”

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