The solution

Companies that are about to implement new productivity tools worry a lot about additional trainings that are required to these changes, even more when they have lots of employees that are less comfortable with digital tools. "In our community there are lots of people that are not very proficient with digital tools," tells Enrico. Previous IT implementations caused trouble for himself and for the team, and required intense aftercare. To check which cloud solution would fit the scattered organization (with over 1,500 digital laymans) best, DrieGasthuizenGroep has done a series of pilot projects.

"We initiated three pilot projects around one solution, but people found it hard to understand it", says Enrico. "Instead of using and trying to grasp the new mobile tools, we realized that people still headed to their workspace to access their old email address. We needed something more intuitive, something that was really easy to understand."

DrieGasthuizenGroep ran a pilot with Google Workspace and after just two weeks, employees were convinced to continue with the full implementation. "The enthusiasm convinced us totally," tells Enrico. "Everyone was just so happy to work with Gmail and the other Google Workspace tools."

DrieGasthuizenGroep reached out to g-company, a Google Cloud Premier Partner, to let them support the deployment. "Together we made sure that the deployment focused on change rather than technical issues," said Enrico. "We made people enthusiastic. Less like a normal implementation, more like a party. We sampled T-shirts and launched 'Google Champions'. We started with it and kept track of the conversion of old data and other complicated tasks for later. g-company recommended us to implement Google Workspace in phases with the help of great training sessions. We started with Gmail and Calendar."

The result

DrieGasthuizenGroep and g-company encouraged adoption even more by creating a group of 75 Google Guides, chosen by employees that were directly in contact with elderly and disabled patients. "There is less hierarchy now," says Enrico. "We made groups in Chat and work together in stead of working in silos. For IT projects, for instance, we used to work at the HQ and thereafter ensured on the location that the solution fit the reality on the working floor. From now on, Google Guides explain in the Chat group what they experience and work together to come to an ideal solution."

Supported by an enthusiastic board within DrieGasthuizenGroep, the Google Guides create (who now work location independent) an effective network which Enrico and his squad can use to deploy Google Drive and Chromebooks.