Is Google Ready to Handle Your Business? (Part 1 of 2)
Every bit a large fan of online, Spider web 2.0 applications, I've long followed Google'southward e'er-increasing stable of spider web-based services, from Google Docs to Google Voice to Google Reader. Their big and growing collection of online applications and services make it increasingly possible to consider running the bulk of your concern using free (or low-price) Google applications. Even big businesses have gotten in to the deed, with mega-corporations like GE giving Google'southward Google Apps for Business suite a whirl. And with recent additions to the Google stable such every bit Postini, an email security and discoverability service, a lot of concerns well-nigh security and compliance are finally starting to be addressed.
Though I don't really run a business any bigger than myself, I recently took a await at Google'due south offerings and how they could be used in a small-scale- to medium-sized business concern setting. Here nosotros'll look at some of the basic tasks businesses need to reach — advice, productivity, and promotion — and how Google'southward services, both those in their Google Apps bundle and among their standalone services, can help businesses get the task done – and where Google just doesn't seem to make the marker.
Communication
1 of the core functions of any business organization is communication, both among its employees and with clients, vendors, and the media. Google Apps combines electronic mail, chat, calendaring, document creation and editing, and collaboration tools in 1 suite. Other services include Google Voice (formerly Grand Fundamental), a phone forwarding and voicemail service that also offers cheap outgoing calls.
Among these services, Gmail is easily the strongest. Equally office of Google Apps, businesses tin can quickly set upwardly @yourdomain.com email addresses, each with its ain online mailbox. Gmail'southward integration with Google'due south powerful search technology makes accessing archived information easy, and full Pop and IMAP access ways yous can admission electronic mail through the desktop client of your choice, including Outlook.
Online users of Gmail also accept access to a variety of features from Google Labs (accessible from the upper right-mitt corner in Gmail), such every bit the ability to save and re-utilise average text. The online interface also includes a simple task managing director, which is shared with Google Calendar, allowing dated tasks to be placed direct onto your agenda without leaving Gmail. Gmail's contact management is fairly weak, with goose egg similar customer relations management (although Salesforce.com users can take reward of Salesforce for Google Apps, which integrates with Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, and Google Talk.).
Postini, a newer Google acquisition, provides dominion-based security and electronic mail archiving and discoverability for businesses that demand to assure HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, or simply need a loftier level of security on both inbound and outbound messages. Some of Postini's services are integrated with Google Apps Premier; others must be purchased separately. All of Postini's features are available as well to not-Gmail users by routing your email through Google's servers.
Google Talk is not the most popular IM system out there, simply it offers more than enough power for inter-office communication. The service can exist accessed through a dedicated client, a popular-upwards client within Gmail, or third-political party clients like Digsby or Pidgin. Voice and video capabilities are decent, but lack the ability to cross over to standard phones like Skype or other VoIP systems.
Google Voice replaces traditional voice mail service and forwarding services, giving users a unmarried phone number that tin exist forwarded to 1, some, or all of the user's other telephone numbers – or dissimilar combinations of phones based on user-created rules. Messages can exist picked up through traditional voice mail, or sound files can be sent via email. Unfortunately Google Phonation does not offer a business-level service that would allow it to replace a PBX system. Too, at the moment, it is non fully open to the public and requires an invite to sign up.
For keeping on top of industry news, world events, blogs, Twitter searches, and even information and updates within your organization, the free Google Reader offers maybe the best RSS reader on the market. Since nigh apps in the Google suite (as well as other online applications and services) offer a stream of updates via RSS, Reader tin hands go the "hub" of your business. To keep tabs on how your business is being discussed on the web, add in feeds from Google Alerts, which allows you to create searches confronting Google'south web, news, blog, or video search engines, as well as within Google Groups or across all five with a "comprehensive" search. All of them let you know when a particular term shows upward in the top 10 (top twenty for Web, summit fifty for Google Groups) search results on that term. Google alerts are ideal for tracking how your business organization or products are beingness written nigh on the Web – prepare them up for your company and brand names, every bit well as for general searches in your field to keep track of your competition. (Google Alerts tin also be sent by electronic mail).
For communication amongst project groups, try setting up a individual listing on Google Groups, a free email listing management organisation. Groups can be public or available only to the people you add together directly, allowing communication both within your organisation and with your public. Similar all Google products, the ability to search your archives using Google's search engine is the strongest point of the service, which is otherwise comparable to other mailing list services like Yahoo Groups.
In part two of this post, I'll discuss Google's offerings for productivity and promotion. To be honest, though, Google's offerings in communication are their strong betoken; their productivity applications, while useful, tend to be far more express than similar offerings, even their online contest. I'll close with a short assessment of where Google'southward services may or may not be appropriate choices for minor- and medium-sized businesses. See you then!
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/is-google-ready-to-handle-your-business-part-1-of-2.html
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