Celestica embraces Google Apps to improve global collaboration

Posted by Mary Gendron, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, at Celestica

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Mary Gendron, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, at Celestica, a Toronto-based innovative supply chain solutions company that provides end-to-end product lifecycle solutions from design and manufacturing through to delivery and after-market support.

Our talented global team is dedicated to delivering innovative supply chain solutions to our customers – helping them to stand out in their markets. This requires our employees to work together effectively and increase the sharing of knowledge and ideas across functions and geographies.

After piloting Google Apps, we quickly realized it would enable our global workforce to work more collaboratively, and as a result, we have recently decided to move 19,000 of our employees to Google Apps. Now my team can meet spontaneously using the video chat feature in Gmail or draft our team strategy simultaneously in a Google Doc. That type of collaboration allows us to build on everyone’s ideas to develop better solutions. Also, by sharing a document where all team members have the opportunity to contribute, everyone is invested in the project because we did it together.

Because we’re no longer tied to different time zones or other people’s schedules, we can work together where we want, when we want, and we can all edit a document together in real time. With Google Apps, the stress of compiling edits in time for a meeting or ensuring you are presenting the final version of a deck are gone. Recently, I was working on a strategy document with my team. I could close my laptop in the evening and know that, when I woke up, those in a different time zone or who preferred to work at night would have added their comments and input directly in the document. Overall, we’re accomplishing more together and faster than before.

We’re in the early stages, but I believe Google Apps will help us achieve our objectives faster, more efficiently and with greater success.

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Golf Town tees off collaboration with help from Google Apps

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is John Hur, Director of Information Technology at Golf Town, a destination for everything golf headquartered in Ontario, Canada. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.



At Golf Town, we’re all about the game. From footwear and apparel to clubs, bags and balls, we supply everything golfers need to play their best. Since we opened our doors in 1999, we’ve grown to over 60 stores and over 1000 employees across the U.S. and Canada.

We’ve grown quickly, adding up to seven stores a year, and it became increasingly difficult to keep our employees connected to each other and the company. We needed to give our team a better way to communicate and collaborate across multiple stores so things didn’t start to slip through the cracks. In 2009 we started to look at moving our email, documents and calendar to a better platform. We looked at Microsoft® Exchange and Google Apps, and found that Google Apps was more affordable and provided us with the best set of tools to improve communication and collaboration.

Now that we’ve switched to Google Apps, we’re able to see each other’s availability through Google Calendar and keep each other in sync with group calendars. For example, The marketing team has implemented a calendar that shows which advertisements are running at each store location and their duration. The calendar is shared with floor managers so they can be prepared to answer customer questions and honor any promotions.

Docs also helps regional managers streamline important daily processes. Each day, our regional managers compile sales reports from all of their individual store managers. Instead of compiling attachments sent from each store manager, regional managers can use one Google document to collect information quickly and easily. Plus, since Google Apps is web-based, employees can access this information from their Android mobile devices. This saves hours of time and energy each week, and it’s just one of many processes that are simpler and easier with Google Docs.

For us, Google Apps has been a hole in one. My IT team no longer needs to focus on supporting e-mail because everything is accessible via the web and Gmail is so intuitive. In fact, our support requests for email have gone down by over 95 percent. And, employees are happy because they can get to their information from anywhere and easily collaborate with their co-workers. Google Apps provides the tools that help our growing business run more efficiently. We’re excited to have Google help us prepare for our next 60 stores.

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Edmonton is the first major Canadian city to pick Google Apps

Posted by by Michael Lock, VP Google Enterprise

Earlier in 2012, I became a United States citizen, more than 14 years after moving to the U.S. from my native Canada. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll continue to root for Team Canada when it comes to hockey and Canada will always have a special place in my heart. That’s why I’m particularly proud that the City of Edmonton announced today its plans to move 9,000 city employees to Google Apps. In keeping with its reputation as a forward-thinking local government, Edmonton will become the first major Canadian city to go Google.

Edmonton, the capital city of the province of Alberta, is the northernmost North American city with a metropolitan population over one million. Its decision to move to Google Apps for email, calendar and other collaboration tools supports Edmonton’s strategic plan, which calls for “finding new ways to become even more collaborative, open, responsive and innovative.”

Google Apps will provide a unified communications platform for all municipal employees, bringing email to roughly 3,000 “deskless” city employees for the first time while providing additional tools to help all employees work together. As a result, the City of Edmonton’s employees will have a more inclusive, collaborative work environment while giving the city more value for its technology investments.

While Edmonton may be the first city in Canada to go Google, it’s in great company with other city governments in North America─like Pittsburgh, Orlando and Zapopan, Mexico─that have already made the move. And personally, I’m grateful to Edmonton for giving me a good reason to visit Canada later this year to check on their progress!

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Admiral Pest Control switches to Google Apps to eliminate communication bugs

Posted by: Jeff Jones, Vice President, Admiral Pest Control

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blogger is Jeff Jones, Vice President of Admiral Pest Control, a pest control and extermination business with two locations in Los Angeles and Orange County, California.

Admiral Pest Control is a fourth generation family-owned business. The company was started by my grandfather in 1947, and with every generation there have been new ideas on how to run more efficiently. We handle everything from termite inspections, to pigeon control for residences and businesses throughout the Long Beach area. With a team of 40 people, we’re big enough to accommodate the needs of our clients, but small enough to have a personal relationship with them too.

For many years, we had a Microsoft Exchange server and when it came time to upgrade, we realized we needed a change. The price to upgrade was costly and we had experienced frequent outages. So, we decided to switch to Google Apps for Business which offered a far more reliable and cost-effective way for our employees to communicate from their desks or the field.

Our staff spends a lot of time at customer locations and can now easily check their email and schedules from their mobile phones. They can see where their next customer visit is or whether there’s been a cancellation without making a trip back to the office.

We’ve also improved how we communicate with our customers using Google Forms. We embedded a form on our website where customers can fill in their contact information and describe the problem they’re experiencing. Incoming inquiries are centralized in a single spreadsheet that gets updated in real time as a form is submitted. We’re able to better manage requests and reply quickly, and our customers appreciate that we make it so easy to contact us. Customers can also provide feedback on our services through a separate form on the website.

Google Apps has helped us to better communicate as a team and better communicate with our customers at a price that fits our family business. We’re excited to have Google take us into the next 65 years.

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Visualize U.S. demographics using Google Maps API for Business

Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API

In April 2010, 89 million U.S. households returned a census form in which they answered ten basic questions. Once collected, aggregated, and published, the 2010 U.S. census provided rich insights into the makeup and distribution of the U.S. population. However the resulting demographics, which cover all 50 states, over 3,000 counties, over 70,000 census tracts, and over 200,000 block groups, are extremely challenging to obtain and visualize on a map.

Today we are making U.S. demographics visualization accessible and easy for our Google Maps API for Business customers with the launch of the new Demographics Layer in Maps API v3. The Demographics Layer enables Google Maps API for Business developers to add visualization of U.S. demographics provided by Nielsen to their Maps API applications.

Developers can select from 34 statistics to display on the map at state, county, census tract or block group granularity, including:

• population
• age
• race
• marital status
• housing status

Data is available for 2010 and 2011, in addition to projected data for 2015 and 2016.

Google Maps API for Business applications using the Demographics Layer can control how the data is styled, such as defining color thresholds or gradients, and also define style rules based on expressions across statistics that are evaluated in real time. For example, by defining a gradient style based on the expression “population / area” you can visualize population density on the map.



The Demographics Layer is now available to all Google Maps API for Business customers for use in internal applications. For more information on how to add the Demographics Layer to your applications please see the documentation. If you are not an existing Google Maps API for Business customer and are interested in using the Demographics Layer, please contact the sales team by filling in this form.

We hope the Demographics Layer provides your business with the intelligence you need to put your own data into context, and empowers you to make smarter business decisions going forward.

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Build better maps with Analytics for Google Maps API for Business

Posted by Daniel Schramm, Associate Product Manager Intern, Google Maps API

Every day people rely on maps to help them make purchasing decisions. Location matters for everything from choosing a restaurant for dinner, to picking the perfect home. It’s important to understand how users view and interact with this information so you can create a map experience tailored specifically to your customers’ needs. Today we make this possible with the release of Analytics for Google Maps API for Business:



Just as Google Analytics shows you how visitors interact with your website, Analytics for Google Maps API for Business provides detailed information on how customers interact with maps on your website. Do customers have to pan and zoom to find what they need? How often is 45 degree imagery used? Should you consider using a different map type? Now this information is at your fingertips.

Analytics for Google Maps API for Business delivers reports for map interactions, services, the Places, and Street View. Make changes to your map and immediately see how these enhance user behavior, allowing you to quickly customize your map to the needs of your customers.

Analytics for Google Maps is a feature included with your license of Google Maps API for Business. You can enable Analytics for Google Maps API for Business for your maps with the click of a button in the Google Enterprise Support Portal. All information recorded is anonymized and aggregated to protect the privacy of users.

For more information on how to enable and access Analytics for Maps API for Business, please see the Maps API for Business Developer Guide. If you need further assistance, or have ideas for additional features you would love to see in Analytics for Maps API for Business, please contact the Google Enterprise Support team.

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Introducing Jargon-Bot for Google Apps: translating business jargon into plain English

Posted by Adam Swidler, Google Apps Product Manager

Think back to your first day of work. Do you remember that blank look of sheer confusion you had throughout the day? Your coworker approached, “Hi! Great to meet you, welcome aboard! Can you calendar me in for a 1:1 to talk about our c-level action plan for the all hands?” That’s when you learned it only got worse if you smiled in acknowledgement. Even after you’ve been at a company for years, business jargon continues to invade your day and ruin productivity. When your boss asks, “Can we take a step back for a second?” what he really means is, “Wow, you have completely gone in the wrong direction.” These kind of interactions are not only annoying, but studies from the Foundation of Office Language show that such interactions also significantly reduce productivity and morale amongst employees.

Our engineers have worked tirelessly for the past two years to fight this epidemic that has plagued efficiency in the business world. Today, we are launching a new alpha feature in Google Apps for Business, Jargon-Bot. Jargon-Bot will automatically detect business jargon or business speak and provide you with real-time translation in plain English. Yes, simple, plain English. Jargon-Bot has been integrated across the entire suite of Google Apps so that next time you are on an IM chat with your manager, it will help you recognize and say no to unrealistic expectations. When you receive an e-mail from your supplier, Jargon-Bot won’t let you get ripped off by demystifying the fine print. And even when you’re on a Google+ Hangout with your accounting team, jargon-bot will be by your side, so you don’t break your e-reader when you have to help “close the books.”



We’ve been alpha testing Jargon-Bot internally for the past 6 months, and the results have been dramatic: a 10X increase in employee productivity, a 35.4% increase in worker productivity, and IM conversations that are 90% shorter. Best of all, meetings which are normally an hour long, now average just 17 minutes because people actually understand each other.

Turn on Jargon-Bot today and avoid making a fool of yourself.

P.S. Happy April Fool's Day

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