Interview with Yannick Rault from Sheetgo

Thus far, 2020 has been a great year for Damson Cloud’s weekly blog, featuring interviews with some of the industry’s foremost experts in digital transformation and changing the way we work. This week we continue the trend, sitting down to talk to Sheetgo’s very-own Yannick L. Rault about his own professional background and his journey into business. Access the full video above, and don’t forget to like, subscribe and share!

Like many leaders in the digital transformation space, Yannick Rault entered the world of business with an extensive background in software. His experience stretches all the way back to when, as a 19 year-old, he used Netscape Enterprise Servers to build for none other than FedEx, one of the world’s largest delivery and postal companies, their intranet. As he reached the age of 30, Yannick yearned for something ‘real’, pausing his career in software to build homes in disadvantaged communities in Brazil. 

Yannick’s building work in Brazil continued for nearly a decade, after which he decided that he was starting to miss the world of software. He returned to software roughly four years ago, bringing with him his previous experience and qualifications after studying finance, marketing, industrial engineering and computer information systems - with his own informal study interests based around history, film & architecture. 

The Early Days of Sheetgo

Sheetgo’s seed was planted in response to needs around Yannick’s previous real estate business, which was then overseeing the construction of thousands of homes. Faced with challenges around managing and organising the information behind his business, Yannick first met this need by using Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) products, including Google Docs. The firm’s first tech employee suggested building out a more complex solution with its own coding, with the ability to link with other Google applications.

This plan quickly developed into the creation of a comprehensive ERP system, and Yannick was soon using the system daily, viewing reports on his iPad alongside open Google Workspace applications. Google caught wind of the system and invited Yannick to their headquarters in 2010. The team that would eventually become Sheetgo would have to wait 6 years.

Technology continues to develop at an extraordinary rate. But does this pose challenges to leaders and entrepreneurs like Yannick? The Sheetgo founder highlights that an intrinsic benefit of working within this industry is being surrounded with and composed of tech professionals who are adept at reacting to technological change with effective change management. “One day it’s called digital transformation, next week it will be called something else,” he explains, “and on the hand, you will have other employees who mightn’t be as good at understanding these things.”

Meeting Challenges with Sheetgo

What challenge does Sheetgo solve for customers? According to the founder, the product brings together several solutions offered by the typical spreadsheet, helping customers with the likes of inventory management, cash flows, invoicing, sales, marketing and other information. “Information lives in many places and can often be siloed. We try to bring together all of that information. We understand that data is often trapped by itself, and we want to remove that trap,” he explains. Furthermore, Sheetgo allows a single source of truth, avoiding the risks associated with copying & pasting large swathes of data.

Yannick suggests that part of the challenge is in helping customers understand what to do with this data. “We try to explain this using case studies, and we are finding that clients of all sizes, including schools, governments and large companies are using it themselves,” he explains, outlining some specific industries and departments that use Sheetgo. “With small and medium-sized businesses, we find that executive-level staff use our system to oversee and distribute information. In larger organisations, however, you’ll find that analysts use it to report information upwards. We’ve seen salesforce implementations costing over £1 million, with companies using Sheetgo instead,” he adds.

What is the key differentiator behind Sheetgo? The CEO highlights that in today’s marketplace, the point of technology is to make life easier: “We’ve been compared with RPA, and we want to be sure that if people automate a process with Sheetgo, that process will change and be easier. We want people’s jobs to change - people need to feel that they are important and that the company isn’t totally dependent on them. 

“Technology must be fast, flexible and easy to change, and that’s what Sheetgo is all about.”

More About Damson Cloud

Fintan and the team at Damson Cloud would like to give a big thank you to Yannick for taking time out of his busy schedule to share some of his business insights. The interview now joins our library alongside interviews with a series of tech leaders, including Happeo’s Perttu Ojansuu, Online Partner Sweden’s Fredrik Linnander and Cobry’s Rowan Manson. Check out the rest of our library, and stay tuned for more weekly updates.

As a longstanding member of the Google Cloud Partner program, Damson Cloud specialise in bringing people and ideas together through new ways of working. We champion change management and digital transformation using some of the internet’s most trusted solutions, including Google Workspace, Happeo and Jamboard. To find out more about our services, check out our library of tutorial videos or our blog.