Employees: 250
Founded: 1999
Industry: Food and Beverage
Website: www.stumptowncoffee.com

“I think The Gooru does a great job bringing in timely information and I love that the videos are less than 2 minutes!”
– Kevin Corbett, IT Manager

Established in Portland, Oregon in 1999, Stumptown Coffee Roasters’ founder, Duane Sorenson, set out with a bold plan: find the best beans in the world (scouring the planet if need be), pay a living wage to the farmers who harvest them, and raise the level of discourse and expectations that surround a cup of coffee.

Since its founding, Stumptown has expanded on both coasts and most recently unveiled a new 37,000 square foot headquarters and roastery on the Portland waterfront, a much-welcomed new home for its entire staff.

Going Google

Coinciding with Stumptown’s move to its new headquarters, the company transitioned from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps in the fall of 2012. Hastened by a server crash, Stumptown’s move to Apps was based on Google’s ubiquity and heavy integrations. According to Kevin Corbett, one of Stumptown’s IT Managers, the suite is “so much more than just email.”

Corbett, who started in August 2012 after the migration, also noted that when he joined the company, Stumptown had only scratched the surface of Apps – now the company has active users on Drive, Google+ and Chromebooks. To facilitate this rapid change, Corbett has been leveraging training videos and content from The Gooru.

Leveraging The Gooru for Change Management

Corbett himself is an active subscriber to both the Gooru’s newsletter and Chrome extension, which he uses to submit questions and watch new videos – he particularly loves when the Gooru turns red indicating a new video has been published.

Beyond personal use, Corbett has used Gooru content for employee training and change management. Every so often, Corbett holds IT training sessions to reinforce best practices, which are often inspired by different Gooru video topics. During these sessions, Corbett leads Q and A and follows up with attendees by sending out relevant Gooru training videos and houses select Gooru videos on the company intranet.

While Corbett personally keeps up with nearly all of the Gooru’s content, he’s found Gooru videos to be the most relevant to users around the following topics.

Google Sheets

Although Stumptown has made significant progress with its adoption of Google Apps, the finance department has a ways to go in its transition from Excel to Google Spreadsheets. “It’s sort of a sales job anytime you bring in a new system, but Google is improving Sheets constantly,” added Corbett. Steady improvements along with The Gooru videos like “How to Create Pivot Tables in Google Sheets” are helping the finance department take on more and more of the Google Apps suite.

Google Drive

While Stumptown has a hybrid of on site and Drive storage, the company is using Drive more and more. “Over the last two months we’ve had an increase in Drive usage,” noted Corbett, who added that “training documents for baristas are all stored in Google Drive and shared out from there.” While these baristas might not have a Stumptown email address, Drive makes it extremely easy to share content with anyone, “something that’s really not doable with a local file server.”

To help with the adoption of Google Drive, Corbett frequently shares out Gooru content to the feature and notes that in terms of adoption, “Gooru videos have helped.” In particular, he found the Gooru’s video on how to create a template in Drive extremely valuable as well as the video on how to attach a Drive file to an email.

Google+

With the company’s move to their new headquarters, Corbett also began implementing Google+ as an internal social network. To facilitate the roll out, Corbett sent employees a Gooru video on private communities and sharing Google Drive files inside of a Hangout.

As Stumptown’s employees continue to embrace even more of the Google Apps suite, Gooru will be right there to assist the IT team with any necessary training and change management.

This case study is brought to you by BetterCloud.