Ethel Austin moves from Lotus Notes to Google Apps for Business

Originally founded in 1934 Ethel Austin is a British clothing retailer with a UK-wide network of more than 60 stores. This year they saw an opportunity to revolutionise their I.T systems and dramatically cut costs.

With over 200 company mail boxes Ethel Austin was operating from a Lotus Notes platform. Martin Draper, Head of I.T said “Lotus Notes had become restrictive, space was at a premium and users felt functionality was way behind the modern offerings.” They looked at upgrading their present software and other mail servers such as Microsoft Exchange. They found that this could be too costly and the need to upgrade would present itself again soon enough. Ethel Austin needed a mail server that would allow users to work from home and to have access when roaming. Having looked at many options, Google Apps for Business offered a simple solution to all their requirements.

Here at Cloud Technology Solutions we’re working with many organisation, large and small, to help them move to the cloud. Cloud Technology Solutions worked with many of the employees at Ethel Austin to make sure they got the most out of their Google Apps experience. Cloud Technology Solutions worked hands on with Head Office developing ways they could better communicate with their staff through Google Apps. Our technical team worked with HR developing documents they could use within their company.

Google Docs was one of the main attractions for Ethel Austin. Google Docs allowed Ethel Austin users to collaborate on a document, viewing and editing it real time. Thanks to Cloud Technology Solutions, their head office are now using Google Doc throughout the business creating a more collaborative environment. This has helped to decrease bandwidth and avoided confusion over several versions of one document. Ethel Austin used Google Docs to create online forms and distribute them quickly to all of their stores. They gave each of the 62 retail sites their own Gmail account from which they communicate with Head Office daily. Head Office publishes one document sharing it between all stores this gave head office the ability to extract the necessary answers from the forms speedily. Now each store updates a single Google spreadsheet that is shared in real-time with head office, reducing the amount of time HR staff spend managing and collating staff rotas. Originally forms such as Health and Safety sheets and attendance sheets would all be sent via the post this proved to be very costly and time consuming these are now sent virtually cutting postage down dramatically and getting same day responses.

The move to Google Apps for business dramatically reduced I.T costs. A single Google mail box costs 20% of an upgrade cost from their previous email software. Google Apps is constantly updating under the surface with no add on costs or annual stings. Ethel Austin have had no down time since the move and found their employees reacted positively with it