Project management can be chaotic. Managing multiple teams in different locations takes that chaos up a few notches. It isn't uncommon to lose track of who's been assigned what task or how much they've completed. A lot of time gets wasted trying to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Lucky for us, Google offers a one-fits-all solution, regardless of what kind of project you have.

WHAT IS GOOGLE WORKSPACE?

Simply put, Google Workspace is all of Google's finest programs bundled up together to help teams and businesses collaborate more effectively while boosting productivity. You probably already use some of these programs individually. Gmail and Google Docs are great examples that we use often. Google Workspace takes these simple tools and weaves them into a complex and efficient set of tools. Used correctly, Google Workspace can save businesses and organizations time and money while increasing productivity.

What's in this package?

Google Workspace offers 17 apps and programs to help streamline an organization's processes. The team at Google Workspace have classified these into four groups based on what they do:

FOR CONNECTION

These programs are designed to help groups or individuals in a team or organization communicate effectively. These include Gmail, Calendar, Google+, Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet, and Hangouts Meet Hardware.

FOR CREATION

Google designed these to get your thoughts out of your head and into a form that everyone can read and understand. They include Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites, Keep, Forms, and Jamboboard.

FOR ACCESS

These allow teams and organizations to store and share data within an organization, with individuals or with teams. They are Drive and Google Clouds Search.

FOR CONTROL

While being able to share files within a team can be helpful, it can quickly turn ugly if shared with the wrong people. These programs give administrators the ability to manage access to all a team's data stored in Google Workspace. Project managers can easily add or remove users to give or deny access as the need arises. These are Admin, Vault, and Mobile.     

Ways Google Workspace Makes Project Management Easier

BY KEEPING TRACK OF PROGRESS IN PROJECTS

Using Google Sheets, project managers can develop elaborate project plans, and Gantt charts to keep up with their projects. If team members or employees have access to Sheets, they can update their progress as they go along and add notes when needed. Members of the team can then see in real-time, irrespective of their physical location, the overall progress of a project without a long series of emails.

CASE STUDY

Virgin Active is a high-end health club with over 35 locations in Italy. As you can imagine, trying to provide customers with the same quality in all 35 locations was a challenge. Collaboration and communication between their head office and the local clubs wasn’t as seamless as it could be. If employees in a club had suggestions they wanted to share with the people in charge, it would go through at least four layers of management first.

Since their migration to Google Workspace, Virgin Active has been able to get rid of most of their redundant emails and has made it possible for employees to communicate with higher management through live editing features in Google Docs and Sheets.

BY SIMPLIFYING COMMUNICATION WITHIN A TEAM OR PROJECT

Through Google Groups mail lists, communication within a team can be handled in one place. Using a single email, you'll be able to share updates or resources to entire teams that are part of your group. Do you have someone new joining the team? All you have to do is add them to the group and they'll have instant access to all previously shared information and resources. Alternatively, if you remove anyone from the group, they lose access to any information relating to the group.

CASE STUDY

The Buffalo Tours story highlights how a simple tool like Gmail has had a huge impact on their operations. They help vacationers make travel arrangements and confirm information. While they have managed their own servers and had an email service, it was riddled with problems that made their work difficult. Emails would get accidentally deleted and end up losing them about 5% of their business. Bringing new employees into the system was a nightmare.

Since they took on Google Workspace, they have saved 17% percent of the amount they spent on running their own servers. Gmail's amazing spam filter has reduced the loss of client leads to zero while also making it easier to bring new employees onboard.  

BY ENABLING YOU TO MANAGE TEAM SCHEDULES

Shared schedules on Google Calendars are a great way to keep team members informed of scheduled meetings, upcoming deadlines, planned breaks, training sessions, etc. Layering your team's calendars together gives you a sense of who is available when urgent tasks come up.

BY ENABLING YOU TO SECURELY SHARE INFORMATION

Google Drive provides secure storage for all your documents, videos, and other files. Drive also gives project managers the ability to provide access to this stored data to members of a team at any time. More advanced settings in Drive allow project managers levels of access to certain files, which is useful when handling sensitive information.

BY ORGANIZING YOUR EMAILS BASED ON PRIORITY

When dealing with multiple tasks at a time, the real challenge is focusing on priority tasks first before dealing with everything else. Gmail's priority inbox helps you figure out what is urgent and what isn’t. It automatically sorts your messages into categories you chose thus saving you the time of having to do it manually.

BY FACILITATING COLLABORATION TO CREATE IMPACTFUL PRESENTATIONS

Google Slides is a great tool to create presentations that bring your message home. You don't have to do it alone. Team members with access can help put together an impact-full presentation remotely. Are some of your teams in different locations? Google Hangouts allows you to share these slide presentations while holding your virtual meeting at the same time.

BY MAKING IT EASY TO CREATE A PROJECT WEBSITE

Most of the features we have mentioned so far help you and your team members keep up with the details of your project, b what about the world? Google Sites help you set up a one-stop shop for all the information about your project. You can upload videos, files, documents, milestones, calendars, and more. Integrate Google Forms to conduct surveys about what people think about your project so far. It doesn't have to be for the whole world to see. You can restrict access to the site, so it's just for project members.

BY FACILITATING COLLABORATION ON THE CREATION OF PROJECT DOCUMENTS

With Google Docs, teams in different physical locations can create project proposals, reports, or other documents as though they were in the same building. It comes with chat tools where the team can discuss various aspects of a task. Project managers can assign various sections of a document to different members allowing them to work in sync. Members with access can also edit already existing documents in real time or leave feedback and suggestions on various sections of a document.

CASE STUDY

The Canada Games Council is a non-governing body that manages the development of the Canada Games as they move from one city to the next every two years. This biannual move means having to deal with new staff, volunteers, logistics, venues, and programs. They were forced to sift through hundreds of thousands of physical documents to try and design processes and infrastructure with each new game.

Since adopting Google Workspace, it takes about 60% of the time it took to bring new staff up to speed on new developments or changes in strategy. Google Workspace's collaborative tools have also reduced time spent on operational planning by 50%. Most importantly, cities save as much as $2 million that they spent on trying to design processes and infrastructure from scratch every two years.

BY PREPARING TEAMS FOR MEETINGS AND ENABLING VIDEO MEETINGS

Do you have a scheduled meeting coming up? Google calendars is a great way to let everyone on your team know. It allows you to send out invites. You can attach documents such as notes, slides, agendas, and reports as well. This gives your team members to your meetings prepared. It's also a great way to keep track of what has been discussed in previous meetings.

Google hangouts is a great tool to hold both planned and impromptu meetings with teams, especially when in different locations. There's no need to look for space or wait for boardrooms. Hangouts work on your computer and on mobile devices for convenience.  

CONCLUSION

Project management doesn't have to be a source of constant headaches. Google Workspace's features are a great way to enhance creativity through collaboration, save time with real-time communication, and increase productivity by automating the process of tracking progress in projects.

A Google Workspace trusted partner since 2014. More than 750 plus clients have migrated to the Google Workspace platform, and we continue to support them.