Smart Solutions employ smart Google Apps

---

At a Glance

What they wanted

• Rapidly scaleable IT system
• Improve efficiency of infrastructure
• Improve accessibility whilst maintaining security
• Reduce IT operational costs

What they did

• Deployed Google Apps
• Deployed Google Docs
• Deployed Google Apps Script

What they accomplished

• A system that can grow with them
• Increased productivity through better collaboration
• Improved Email uptime and reliability
• Significantly reduced their IT spend per capita.

Smart Solutions Recruitment is one of the UK’s fastest growing independent recruitment companies.  Its reputation for creating bespoke staffing packages for their service sectors has earned them a place in the “Wales Fast Growth 50” list for the last three years.  The company is managed by a team of highly experienced recruitment specialists and senior operational staff, many of whom have worked within the industries in which they now recruit. Challenges Having experienced rapid growth over the past 3 years, Smart Solution Recruitment’s existing IT infrastructure was struggling to keep up with its 130+ users across 17 sites.  The organisation was suffering with reoccurring email outages, causing a severe loss in employee productivity.  “When I joined Smart Solutions, they didn’t have an IT department, but did have an unreliable MS Small Business Server” reported Mark Williams, IT Manager. The company was also hindered by a lack of a secure site to site means of communication, such as VPN; meaning that sharing documents electronically was performed via email or fax.  Inevitably, this resulted in issues with multiple master documents throughout the ever-expanding business, and a need to have a facility to enable true collaboration across the organisation. The challenges were to provide a solution that would allow the entire organisation to share documents, email, calendars, as well as provide protection from spam and malware.  The business wanted low overheads in terms of staff administration and low implementation and operational costs going forward. Solution Smart Solutions Recruitment felt that Google Apps offered their business the flexibility that their growing company needed.  “Google Apps fitted the bill perfectly,” explained Mark Williams, “with Google Apps we were able to expand our email requirements at short notice, without the worry of upgrading our hardware.” Damson Cloud oversaw the deployment of Google Apps for the business, ensuring a seamless transition from their old system. Result The business has reported an increased level of collaboration through its use of Google Apps, as well as a decrease in the total cost of ownership for an enterprise email solution.  Documentation is now shared using Google’s cloud platform, dramatically improving accessibility for staff across all sites.  With a 99.99% uptime over the past 3 years, Smart Solutions Recruitment has not had to worry about downtime, server maintenance or upgrade costs. Google Apps Scripts have proved to be a particular benefit to the business, with the business now automating numerous workflows using Google Spreadsheets and App Scripts – with help from Damson Cloud.  Mark Williams, IT Manager has reported “increasing productivity” as a result of leveraging this added functionality from Google Apps.