Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Douglas Grgas at Converga, a business process outsourcing company based in Australia, providing digital mailroom, document processing and a variety of other managed services. Converga introduced Chromebooks to ensure better availability of internal services for remote employees, as well as a new platform for office staff.
When employees are based in many different locations, whether it’s at corporate offices or customer sites, it’s important to make all employees feel connected to headquarters. As a company with over 1,300 resources at more than 150 customer locations, we’ve addressed this challenge firsthand by providing employees with technology to stay in touch. Many of our employees spend the majority of their time at our customers’ offices providing managed services, such as operating mailrooms or converting paper documents to digital versions.
To bridge the gap between off-site and on-site communications, account managers visited customer sites regularly to communicate with remote employees, and our CEO carried out a roadshow, where he talked about company performance, new customer wins and progress on global objectives, but off-site employees still felt disconnected from central operations on a day-to-day basis.
Our biggest ongoing challenge with keeping employees connected while at customer sites was having to rely on customers’ devices and networks. Often employees couldn’t access email and the Internet, which resulted in being disconnected from corporate communications and reduced productivity. We wanted everyone to feel connected and productive wherever they were, and to have access to technology that simplified their activities.
We chose Chrome for Converga because of its simplicity of use and seamless remote management. We liked that Chromebooks are sleek and lightweight like a tablet, but have a keyboard for easy data entry.
Beyond the device, the central Chrome Device Management service allows easy deployment and controls, device security, network connectivity and integrated apps across Converga’s fleet of Chromebooks, all with the additional benefit of leveraging Google’s Support services.
Also, since Chromebooks integrate with Citrix XenApp, which virtually delivers existing apps through the Chrome Browser, we don’t have to repurchase or rewrite existing applications.
Converga has deployed Chromebooks at 50 customer sites across Australia and New Zealand during the past year. We’ve also deployed numerous devices, many utilizing the Citrix XenApp, at our corporate offices.
Now more than 500 employees have a two-way channel to communicate with headquarters, using a reliable and standard operating environment, which IT can manage remotely. Employees can quickly search for information using Chrome, record notes in Google Docs and communicate with employees at other sites via Hangouts and Google+, all accessible via a simple to use, remotely managed, lightweight device.
Chromebooks are the foundation that helps our employees connect with each other and senior management. We use our company Google Site, which acts as our intranet, to do everything from feature employees of the month to communicate company perks and share performance metrics. Employees also use the intranet to share updates about customer sites, so the rest of the business can stay connected. For example, around Christmas, our employees post pictures of how their customers have decorated for the holidays. Each time an employee does something related to the Converga tree, a tree that represents our company values, he or she is asked to share the activity with the rest of the community.
Introducing Chromebooks has supported our goal of making all employees, regardless of their location, feel united. As we continue to introduce new technologies, our employees are more engaged in their work and empowered to share their stories with one another.
