Snapdeal.com makes email a snap with Google Apps for Business

Posted by Posted by Prasad Vootla, Senior Director of Engineering Operations at Snapdeal.com  Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Prasad Vootla, Senior Director of Engineering Operations at Snapdeal.com. Read the full case studyhere, then see what other organisations that have gone Google have to say. Snapdeal.com is India’s leading online retail marketplace. From home furnishings and fashion, to electronics and sporting equipment, we make sure there is something to delight every one of our 20 million subscribers. As an online business, having efficient email and collaboration tools is critical for the success of our business operations. Most transactions require cross-team involvement, but before moving to Google it was challenging to coordinate this; some team members were on different email domains as a result of our legacy system and our teams sought a simple, single channel for communication. We also used to send lots of large attachments which took up our email storage. Our search for a new mail solution began when employees told us they were spending most of their time clearing emails because of storage limitations. With the help of Premier Google Enterprise Partner MediaAgility, we implemented Google Apps for Business. Gmail stood out as the most reliable and easy to use option because we not only get 30GBs of space to cater for high email volumes, but it also offered the stability, high performance and cost-effectiveness we were looking for. The collaboration features built into Gmail have proved to be a real bonus too. Google Hangouts — which give us a way to instant message one another and have multi-person video conferences — have expanded the tools we have to interact and collaborate. We now have group discussions within teams and across departments when people are in different places. Teams also now use group emails to coordinate across departments, and instead of emailing files back and forward, we simultaneously edit and collaborate in Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets. These tools have actually reduced number of meetings we need to have, and because Google Calendar gives us visibility into team members’ schedules, the process to setup meetings and avoid clashing schedules has become faster. The benefits of moving to Google aren’t just being felt by employees. Our IT team now has improved our overall security and efficiency of the IT infrastructure. Our email system performance can now be easily monitored through the analytics features in Google Apps, and we have much greater flexibility and control to monitor all the accounts. We are happy with our decision to go Google. Its positive impacts are felt throughout the organisation. The teams can now focus on their work, like responding quickly to customer requests and around-the-clock product shipping services. This means we now deliver a fun and convenient shopping experience, keeping our customers happy and coming back for more.