Change Management for Google Apps

This post is part of Google Apps Admin Awareness Month, our month-long series where we spotlight a different tip for Google Apps administrators every day in July. Have a tip to share with your peers or have you always wondered how to do something in Google Apps? Let us know on Twitter @bettercloud.

Change Management for Google Apps
If your organization recently moved to Google Apps, staff training is probably a good idea to ensure users are taking full advantage of the suite’s broad functionality. Change management needs differ depending on the size of your organization and how comfortable your employees are with Google’s products.

Change Management Resources

The Google Gooru
Google Gooru, run by BetterCloud, is a video tutorial and help site solely focused on Google Apps, including Gmail training and Google Docs training. The “Gooru” comes out with a few videos and articles per week depending on the number of Google Apps updates released during that time. The videos usually last around one minute and each highlights one very specific action in or aspect of Google Apps. The to-the-point videos make it easier for viewers to later replicate the action on their own.

The Google Gooru covers topics like Spreadsheets, Admin Tasks, Calendar and even Google Drive, plus videos are broken down by level of difficulty for easy navigation. You can sign up for a weekly Gooru newsletter, detailing the latest updates to Google Apps, keeping you and your users abreast of any and all platform changes. And if you see a topic the Gooru hasn’t yet covered, he gladly takes video tutorial requests and questions.

Lynda.com
You could say Lynda.com is the original help site. Around since the 90’s, the content generating how-to site features literally thousands of videos on every tech-related topic under the sun from Adobe to Blogger and everything in between.

Lynda.com carefully selects and vets instructors who create video series broken down by category, chapter and subchapter. Lynda.com’s Google Apps videos are not only informative and easy to follow, but make moving to and sticking with Google even easier. With clients like Coca-Cola and even Google itself, Lynda.com is a reputable outlet that can fulfill your organization’s training needs.

Google Apps Resellers
For a small organization, transitioning to Google is simple. Conducting a few self-led in-house training sessions should be a good jump start, but for large organizations that need to migrate thousands of users and millions of emails and documents, outside help is needed. That’s where Google Apps resellers come in.

Google Apps resellers act as outside consultants, reviewing your organization’s individual needs and designing a customized plan to start the migration. And once you’ve completed the migration, a reseller can help add and integrate third-party apps and provide ongoing advice and change management solutions, like training sessions, webinars and more.

There are over 4,000 Google Apps resellers to date, so picking the right reseller can be tricky. Choosing a reseller that is part of Google’s Authorized Resellers program is a great place to start, and from there, you can narrow your search down by geographic region, cost and customer reviews.

Why Does My Organization Need Change Management?
Regardless of how comfortable you are with the Google Apps suite, if your users are not familiar with all of the features and functionality, the effectiveness of the platform is lost. To ensure your users are engaging with Google Apps and taking full advantage of its vast feature set, conducting change management training when first ‘Going Google’ and refresher courses down the road will ensure a smooth adoption of the entire Google Apps suite.

About Google Apps Admin Awareness Month

At BetterCloud, we’ve seen first hand the impact Google Apps can have on a business: extreme cost cutting, streamlined management processes, enhanced collaboration and mobility and much more.

During our time as an independent software provider focused 100% on the Google Apps platform, we’ve interacted with thousands of organizations using Google Apps and realized that so many helpful features of the platform go unused by administrators.

This July, we’re devoting the BetterCloud blog to educating Google Apps administrators on the wide array of tips, tricks and features available in the platform. These features not only add crucial functionality, but save you time and effort!