Ladies and Gentlemen, members of the Financial Leadership Team,
In response to your recent inquiry pertaining to the functionality, usability and accessibility of Google Docs and Google Drive as well as its impact on the resources of our business, please see the analysis below. As requested, I will explain what additional features and functions of Google Docs will make this a more valuable business tool.
Our users have been utilizing the Microsoft Office Application package and we are now facing a decision whether to upgrade the software or make a chance to Google Docs. The estimate cost per license of Office Professional 2013 is $399.99 per single installation that includes Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/). As you are aware, our users do not utilize all of these applications. As informed by Microsoft sales representative, we can obtain a corporate discount based on the number of licenses purchased as well as one year support and training materials included in the price. We have also been offered Office 365 option that contains all of the above applications as well as 20GB SkyDrive storage, 60 minutes of Skype calls per month per user and automatic updates. The cost of the additional features will be calculated when we provide the exact number of potential licenses needed. At the current size of our division’s workforce (12,000 people) we are looking at an approximate expense of $5 million.
Google Docs usability and functionality is very similar to the one of Microsoft Office applications and therefore I anticipate minimal to no learning curve associated with the implementation. Hence, you can expect virtually no disruptions to the timing of our current projects and processes. As a matter of fact, I can assure you that our productivity will improve with the implementation of the collaborative work space. The application will fully support the flexibility we offer to our employees. We will no longer be limited to the Windows and Mac OS platforms supported by Microsoft as Google Docs works just as well on them as on Linux, Unix and other. System requirements are also much more flexible with Google Docs. The estimated cost of Google Apps for Business with Vault, advanced security and e-discovery features will cost us $10 per user per month (http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html), or approximately $1.5 million. This represents an estimated savings of $3.5 million that we can invest in growing our business, should we favor this option. Key features of this package would include 25 GB of inbox size, 5 GB of custom email address memory per user, unlimited number of users, video chat, calendar, document editing, business controls, 24/7 support, business-critical data archiving, data retrieval for investigation, company-wide data discovery and export. I have reviewed the security features of associated with the options and I am convinced that they are robust enough to support our needs (please see the above referenced link for the details).
There are a few reasons why I am convinced that Google Docs would suit our business structure better than Microsoft Office. We have a highly decentralized workforce that often needs to collaborate on creating documents while working on projects. It is my opinion that our marketing and sales teams would greatly benefit from the transition. Google Docs file sharing and collaboration will enable them to work more effectively and efficiently on the assigned project eliminating the need for multiple versions and thereby making the process much less convoluted. The accessibility issues we have lately been dealing with will also be minimized with the use of that application. Our employees will no longer need to connect to our network since the only requirement of Google Docs is an Internet access. We will also minimize the risk of data security as our employees will no longer need to use storage devices such as flash drives (you may recall the recent Legal exposure we faced when one of our sales representatives lost a USB port with confidential customer information).
Another feature that will aid our employees is the autosave embedded in all Google Docs that saves any changes made to a document instantly. Power outages or application crashes will no longer sabotage our work. We will also have additional flexibility with the ability to save documents in any format when downloading them without the need of additional application to do that.
To summarize my research and further substantiate my recommendation I would like to highlight the impact of the decision to utilize Google Docs and Google Drive from the value framework perspective. It is my opinion that the teams will benefit from time compression and be able to work more efficiently, by accelerating business processes, and effectively, by reducing the information float. They will also become more innovative, which will attribute to creating service excellence to our customers. By implementing Google Drive and Google Docs we will also overcome the obstacle of geographical distance between our teams by recapturing scale, ensuring global control and penetration of new markets that will become more feasible with elimination of connectivity issues. We will also be equipped with tools that will ease relationship building with our customers. We will no longer rely on intermediaries and replication of scarce knowledge. We will be able to share information with our customers more efficiently and effectively considering that they already utilize the applications we are contemplating on implementing. Last but not least, please consider the capital savings we will achieve with this option. We could allocate those savings to grow our business and ensure that we build a sustainable competitive advantage that will differentiate our company in the marketplace.
Thank you for the time to consider my recommendation. Should you have any additional questions or require and further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Best regards,
MKO
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