More magic in Slides: editable themes and widescreen presentations

Posted by Michael Thomas, Software Engineer, Google Slides

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive blog.)

Presentations give you the ability to bring a story to life in a visually compelling way—whether it’s a pitch for a new product idea, a deck for a history class assignment, or an introduction to your surfing club. Today you can take the magic up a notch with two new features in Slides—widescreen format and editable master slides.

With widescreen presentations, you get a ton of new space to fill with words, charts, tables or even a simple, beautiful image.

Since the majority of monitors and displays are now widescreen, new presentations will be widescreen by default. You can change the size of your slides using the pull down menu in the theme chooser, or by visiting Page setup in the File menu.

Every presentation you make with Slides has a theme that comes with a set of preset colors, font styles and sizes, backgrounds, etc. to give you a consistent look and feel throughout your deck.

One of your top requests has been to customize these presets throughout your presentation. With editable master slides, you can now easily tailor how content appears on every slide by selecting "Edit master" from the Slide menu. For example, you can set all of your header fonts to Alconica, make all of your first level bullets bold, and add a logo in the bottom right corner.

Voila! The thumbnail previews alongside the master show that all of these changes are made instantly across all of the slides in your presentation.

And that’s not all. Each theme consists of a variety of slide layouts, which can also now be individually customized or created from scratch.

We hope that these new ways to customize Slides help you tell better stories, and look forward to seeing the beautiful themes that you come up with. Look out for these updates throughout the course of the day.

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Sanmina reflects on four years of going Google

Posted by Elliot Tally, Senior Director, Sanmina

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is our long-time friend and customer, Elliot Tally, Senior Director of Enterprise Applications, Collaboration & Innovation at Sanmina, a global electronics manufacturer headquartered in San Jose, California with over 47,000 employees. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Since I joined the company over 12 years ago, Sanmina business communications have evolved from an organization into an organism. In the past five years using Google’s tools, I have seen the business transform further from a traditional manufacturing company with change-resistant IT infrastructure, basic collaboration, and a reliance on resource-draining travel for “teamwork,” into a modern company that has embraced the cloud, breathing clean air through more inclusive collaboration, and fostering a flexible and dynamic environment for employees to work effectively where and when they need to.

In 2008, when we first looked at moving to the cloud, we wanted to reduce infrastructure and cut IT costs. We were dealing with a lot of data: 112 Exchange servers across 70 locations. We create 2 Terabytes of email per month, and our Guadalajara campus alone was spending $15,000 a quarter on backups. Plus, we were spending millions of dollars on Microsoft licenses. By choosing Google Apps, we now save about $1.5 million a year, reduced our on premise email infrastructure by more than 90% and have seen a reduction in servers, refocusing of staff, licensing costs and other operating expenditures. We only need two people, instead of six, to support Google Apps for our 21,000 employees who use email.

I knew moving to the cloud would impact our bottom line, what I didn’t realize is how it would influence the culture of our business and the way we get things done. Working across time zones used to involve countless emails, crowded teleconference rooms, and expensive travel. Employees quickly and organically embraced Google Docs to work together without worrying about time zones or physical location. Now we have more than 700,000 Google Docs, 3,200 Google Sites and 4,000 Google Groups spanning all functions of the business. For example, our product engineering teams use Google Sites to track documentation, planning, and product testing for many of their projects, including leveraging the platform for customer collaboration. Using Google+ Hangouts on a daily basis has cut travel costs and we find that employees feel more connected and productive, without the jetlag.

Google Drive has also helped us grow by facilitating the discovery and information sharing process during mergers. We used to manage acquisitions using file attachments for everything from the discovery questionnaires to legal contracts. There were too many attachments to create a record for everything. The draft content was usually shared via email or FTP and version control was a challenge. So when we purchased BreconRidge in 2010 we decided to use a Google Site and Google Docs for the majority of the documentation. The advantages were threefold: active collaboration, inherent version control with synchronization, and ease of sharing. We shared docs internally and with BreconRidge throughout the process to reduce some of the travel requirements, be more transparent, and to facilitate the discovery process and negotiations. The increased collaboration & document control effectiveness resulted in this model becoming the de facto choice for managing subsequent M&A transactions.

Google Apps isn’t the only Google offering helping to streamline our business. In our factories, we’re in the process of replacing thousands of data collection points - spanning each part of the manufacturing line -- with commodity Android tablets. These tablets present a touch-enabled and rich interface for employees, which is readily available on their own mobile devices. Our plant managers appreciate the simplicity of the single interface and the automation; we have dramatically reduced the need for expensive PCs, paper or filing cabinets, and printed work instructions, creating instead a convenient platform for our engineers to target with innovative new apps using technology they already know. The tablets can also send notifications to supervisors and issue quality alerts, allowing for speedier resolution of problems in our plants. We’ve leveraged Google App Engine to host a machine maintenance and calibration system we developed to track equipment and spare parts, and automate the relevant business processes, reducing parts inventory and ensuring easily auditable compliance. Our Printed Circuit Board (PCB) plants even created an interface using the Google Drive API to programmatically create Google Spreadsheets from their PCB engineering design system for sharing with customers as part of the quoting process. We’ve been using the Google Search Appliance since 2009 and added 2 new Google Search Appliances 7.0 this year to index our intranet, our Google Apps content, and a few other internal content stores.

We exceeded our original goals of cutting costs and reducing IT infrastructure by more than we could have conceived of at the time, but the real benefits of “going Google” have emerged over the past four years. It’s much easier to quantify server reduction than the more intangible benefits of using Google Apps: employees working together seamlessly, testing creative solutions without investing in expensive hardware, and in the job satisfaction that I can provide my team by letting them focus on strategic projects. But, it’s exactly these types of activities that have evolved our business culture from a collection of independent teams into an agile multicellular company leading the industry with collaborative communication solutions.

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Rebirth of IT

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google

Yesterday I had the chance to deliver the keynote at the Gartner ITExpo in Orlando. I took this opportunity to reflect on how business technology has evolved in the three years since I last spoke on this stage — and, as part of that, how Google’s commitment to enterprise customers has grown.

In 2010, the suggestion that a company could move all of its employees to the cloud was often met with skepticism. People relied on desktop computers and Exchange servers because that was what they’d used in the workplace for the past two decades. And, the few companies that did embrace the cloud tended to see it as a more cost-effective way to do things they’d always done. But over time, they started to recognize the transformational benefits of working in the cloud.

Today, moving to the cloud is not a questionable proposition — it’s inevitable. This is good news for IT staff, who don’t need to spend time maintaining servers and installing upgrades, and also for employees, since the cloud makes it easy to collaborate and get more stuff done quickly. Sooner than almost anyone thought possible, hundreds of large-scale companies have succeeded in moving their businesses to the cloud, paving the way for millions more to follow. Consider a few recent examples:

• Woolworths is Australia’s largest retailer, with more than 3,000 stores and a staff of 200,000. They moved to Google Apps and Chrome.
• The country of Malaysia adopted Google Apps for 10 million students, teachers and parents, and deployed Chromebooks to schools nationwide.
• And yesterday, Whirlpool — which owns Maytag and KitchenAid — announced that they’re rolling out Google Apps to help 30,000 employees collaborate and innovate more quickly.

These organizations realize that the cloud is not just a cheaper way to maintain the status quo, but also a way to fundamentally transform the way a business is run and how people can get work done together. Inviting 50 people to collaborate on a Google document in real-time is an order of magnitude more efficient than sending attachments back and forth to those same people. More than half of Americans now own smartphones, while PC sales are steadily declining. In their personal lives, employees expect to check email on their phone and join a video call from their tablet, at any time, from wherever they are. Increasingly, people want to bring these habits to the workplace so they can work the way they live.

Companies like Google play a pivotal role in this “consumerization of IT.” More than 425 million people around the world rely on Gmail in their personal lives, and now more than 5 million businesses are using Gmail as part of Google Apps at work. At Google, there are now thousands of employees — a substantial portion of the company — who help us build and support products for these business customers.

The real beneficiaries of this rebirth of IT are not technology companies, but the rest of us — business owners, makers, teachers, students and employees. Having the power of massive data centers and smart mobile devices at our fingertips makes it easier than ever to create, communicate, learn and collaborate.

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Another choice for schools & businesses: introducing the HP Chromebook 11

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome OS, Google

Today we are pleased to announce that schools and businesses now have a wider choice of devices when considering Chromebooks. This morning our partner HP announced the new HP Chromebook 11, made with Google. At $279 with a super bright display, a light but sturdy shell (weighing just over 2 pounds), and a battery life of up to 6 hours, the HP Chromebook 11 is a new option for schools and businesses.

We would like to share some of the positive results schools and businesses see from using Chromebooks and Google Apps. We recently reached over 30 million students and teachers using Google Apps for Education, and Chromebooks can be found in over 5,000 schools around the world. In Fairfield County, a rural district in South Carolina, these tools enable a greater focus on building critical skills, like student collaboration and leadership.

“Chromebooks have significantly impacted the instructional delivery taking place. Student engagement and time-on- task have increased tremendously. As a result, teachers serve as facilitators to help guide students’ critical thinking, collaboration and creation. Teachers also enjoy using Google Drive to provide immediate and targeted feedback on assignments in real time.”
     ---Dr. Claudia Edwards, Deputy Superintendent Academics at Fairfield County Schools

In business, Chromebooks are a great fit for companies that have adopted Google Apps. In addition, Chromebooks are being used as customer kiosks that help drive sales in retail stores, as employee terminals that connect call center agents to customers, and as shared mobile workstations to track production on manufacturing shop floors.

To learn more about the new HP Chromebook 11 and other Chromebooks, visit the education or business websites and fill out the “Contact Sales” form to speak with a member of our team.

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Whirlpool moves to Google Apps to build its “winning workplace”

Editor's note: We spoke with Google Apps customer Mike Heim, CIO of Whirlpool Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Can you tell us about Whirlpool, your business and your decision to move to Google Apps?
Whirlpool is in a very competitive market. We’re the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances with 68,000 employees and 66 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world. We market Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Consul, Bauknecht and other major brand names to consumers in nearly every country around the world. Our products are very different globally, but the design principles and the ability to scale depend on our ability to interact and move at pace.

One of the challenges we face is the need to innovate faster. We believe Google Apps is critical to helping us do that — to collapse geography and take the best of the global ideas and apply them locally. Google Apps is a simple solution in many ways, but the features are actually very sophisticated, enabling us to surround our business processes with the right tools to connect people. It allows us to unleash the talent in the company, without a lot of IT support, which is very helpful. The move to Google Apps isn’t just a change in IT strategy, it’s a shift in our company culture. We need to think, share, and move faster to bring our products to the marketplace.

Can you tell us about your vision for cultural transformation and how the move to Google Apps plays into that?
We are becoming much more of a customer company in terms of how we think and act. We want to move to where the consumer is headed, not where they are today. This isn't always easy because we operate across so many locations internationally. I believe that our future success depends on our ability to build strong relationships and share and work together across the team. We spend lots of time building trust and sharing, so we can stay true to our mission. We believe Google Apps is helping us break down our geographical barriers and work together quickly, from anywhere—keeping us on track to help build what we call, "the winning workplace."

What will make Whirlpool thrive in the years to come?
I think that comes down to product leadership. Great products and great brands create desire in the marketplace. The challenge is being able to sustain the excellence at an increasingly rapid pace. We have global competition and our ability to innovate is critical. We need to focus on bringing products to market sooner and at the level of quality our customers expect. It’s also key for us to accelerate the process of collecting customer insights, so we can provide the best customer service at scale. Creating new ideas is critical to the success of our business in the coming years.

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Signing off from the retail Hangout On Air series

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

If there’s one thing we discovered from our retail Hangout On Air series, it’s that there’s no shortage of innovative new ideas percolating in the retail industry. Retailers are using Google to improve how employees collaborate on projects, speed up customer searches for products, and uncover insights on consumer behavior. Here’s what our interviewees shared with us over the past month:

Improve customer experience and engagement

• Speedway Motors, the world's largest manufacturer of hot-rodding and racing products, relies on Google Search Appliance to help shoppers quickly find parts and accessories. By improving their customer experience, Speedway increased conversions by 45% and search revenue by 116%.

Create a stronger digital presence

• Ocado is using Google App Engine and Google Maps to build a stronger digital presence, including development of a customer-friendly “Where’s My Order?” feature, which uses maps to display the exact location of an order.

Innovate and be more productive

• Ocado is innovating with Google App Engine to let employees build customized dashboards for monitoring business information unique to their jobs.
• Ahold, the global grocery retailer, cut costs by 75% and improved employee productivity by switching to Google Apps – plus, they benefited from a no-headaches implementation.

Use data to drive strategy

• Big Data can help retailers decide on strategic direction: Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software used Google BigQuery to analyze massive data sets and uncover “unexpected insights,” such as predicting how many products will be sold at an event based on variables like the weather.

If you missed any of these Hangouts, good news – you can watch the recorded versions below and discover new ways to build retail businesses that rely on new and collaborative technologies.

How Ocado Innovates with Google

How Speedway Motors revved up its site search with Google Search Appliance

How Google helps retailers turn Big Data into big insights

Learnings from a CIO

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Hangout On Air: Lessons from a retail CIO on moving to the cloud with ease

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise


Change is never easy, but when a business has tens of thousands of employees in locations around the world, bringing in new technology can be very disruptive. In this week’s Hangout On Air for retailers, Christine Atkins, former CIO of global grocery retailer Ahold, explains why moving to the cloud offers the best chance to adopt faster, flexible business solutions without implementation headaches.

Come to the Hangout On Air this Thursday, October 3, at 10 a.m. PT, to hear Atkins talk about her experience guiding Ahold to go Google. Ahold switched from an aging and inflexible legacy system for email and collaboration to Google Apps. As Atkins, now a principal at Atkins & Cameron Consulting LLC, explains, the shift to Google Apps and the cloud led to a 75% decrease in costs, plus a no-hitches implementation and higher productivity. Atkins and Bill Hippenmeyer, director of Google Apps for Business Strategy, will talk about these retail challenges:

• What tools does a distributed workforce need to be successful?
• How do you choose technology that meets the expectations of millennials?
• How do you manage the culture changes that come with technology innovation?

If you missed our previous Hangout On Air with Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software on mining insights from Big Data, you can view it here.

RSVP for the Christine Atkins Hangout On Air, and take part in the Q&A by posting your questions on Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #GoneGoogle.

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