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Team Olivia: Creating cost-efficient collaboration with Google Workspace

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Team Olivia created new cost-efficient office environments for more than 60 companies at over 200 locations with simple collaboration tools in Google Workspace.

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Team Olivia is a social care provider in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, delivering home care and rehabilitation services.

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Gmail
Drive
Google Meet
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team olivia hero image

Team Olivia created new cost-efficient office environments for more than 60 companies at over 200 locations with simple collaboration tools in Google Workspace.

Google Workspace Results

Compliance and cost cutting without compromises

• Unifies communication and collaboration throughout a rapidly growing organisation

• Boosts compliance and security in preparation for new EU data regulations

• Delivering an estimated cost reduction of 60% by deploying Chromebooks

• Creates completely collaborative office environments without hardware or site visits

By making social care available to those who need it most, Team Olivia helps thousands of people across Sweden, Norway, and Denmark live a full life. Providing home care for the disabled and treating addiction, the company’s network of over 60 independent companies employ 11,000 people at more than 200 locations across three countries. By acquiring small businesses and incorporating them into its network, Team Olivia has grown fast, combining the energy of local enterprises with the resources of a multinational group.

Because each new acquisition came with its own communication solution and IT setup, Team Olivia’s growth presented specific challenges, as Adam Nerell, CIO at Team Olivia explains. “There was no easy way to find employees and email them. We had no intranet, either, so if we wanted to get information out we had to mail the head of each company and hope they would pin it to the fridge in the lunchroom.”

That’s why Team Olivia looked to create a unified, cost-effective communications platform that could help ensure compliance and pull the company together. “Our standard user is not computer savvy at all, so simplicity was an extremely important part of our decision,” says Adam. “Because Google Workspace has everything in one place, you just have one account and you’re signed in everywhere. That’s the kind of simplicity users really appreciate.”

Helping secure the system for GDPR

“Our standard user is not computer savvy at all, so simplicity was an extremely important part of our decision. Because Google Workspace has everything in one place, you just have one account and you’re signed in everywhere. That’s the kind of simplicity users really appreciate.” Adam Nerell, CIO, Team Olivia AB

Legacy communications solutions are a headache for many expanding companies. Not only can they cause compatibility issues and administrative complexity, they also make it more difficult to achieve the necessary oversight to comply with data protection laws. Like many companies in the EU, Team Olivia is preparing for the 2018 introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which imposes major fines on infractions of up to 4% of group revenue.

“We have businesses at over 200 different addresses throughout the Nordics,” says Adam. “Some of those offices are very small, so maintaining the corporate IT standard in every single location would be almost impossible.” That’s why Adam and his team looked for a complete solution that would not only deliver email and intranet services across the company, but help ensure compliance everywhere.

To do that, Team Olivia chose a Google Workspace solution, implemented with Online Partner. With Gmail and Google Sites, Team Olivia deployed a highly available, user-friendly email and intranet solution. Even with a non-tech-literate workforce, Team Olivia managed a trouble-free migration thanks to the simple, intuitive tools in Google Workspace. “Other solutions rely on administrators to handle problems,” says Adam, “but our users can set their own passwords, handle 95% of issues without assistance, and get to grips with Google Workspace settings in seconds. Google Workspace is based on consumer products, and those obviously had to be simple because Google didn't want one billion consumers calling the helpdesk.”

Because Google Workspace delivers its applications through an internet browser, Team Olivia now creates work environments anywhere that there’s an internet connection, without installing hardware or licenses. That means Adam and his team can deploy their solution across the company at speed and manage compliance before GDPR comes into force in 2018. “Staying on top of personal data would have been virtually impossible without a solution like Google Workspace,” says Adam. “By moving data into Google Workspace and Google Drive, we can control it, protect it, and be ready for GDPR.”

“Online Partner’s experts have worked in-depth on data protection and compliance and they brought invaluable knowledge and experience to the table,” says Adam. “With Google Workspace our data is more secure than it would be on our own servers, and Online Partner made sure that the regulatory documents and contracts were in place. In Europe, the biggest misconception about Google Workspace is that it hinders compliance, but putting personal data in a highly secure and controlled environment like Google Workspace is one of the smartest things you could do right now to be prepared for GDPR.”

Keeping costs down with Chromebooks

Following Team Olivia’s migration to Google Workspace, the company began to adopt Chromebooks. “They're not just cheaper to buy,” Adam explains, “they’re also cheaper to maintain, so the overall cost of ownership is estimated to be down by 60%. More than that, you can’t put a price on the fact that Chromebooks just work. A Chromebook starts in five to seven seconds every time you turn it on. On the rare occasion something goes wrong, we just issue a new one, without waiting for a technician. We told every business that if they weren't happy with Chromebooks they could just switch back. No one has. I haven't heard a single complaint and that is indeed unusual.”

“In the past if a computer broke down we would have to get a new one and install it with all the apps and security certificates,” continues Adam. “It was a tedious process. Now, replacing someone’s Chromebook takes less than five minutes. The user just plugs it in and their computer is all there: every setting, every app. That means we don't have to send out technicians and it’s all compliant, because all our hardware is encrypted. It's magic!”

A new foundation for the future

“In Europe, the biggest misconception about Google Workspace is that it hinders compliance, but putting personal data in a highly secure and controlled environment like Google Workspace is one of the smartest things you could do right now to be prepared for GDPR.” Adam Nerell, CIO, Team Olivia AB

Team Olivia has already migrated more than 40 domains and continues to migrate companies to Google Workspace at a steady rate of about one per week. “The whole process of migrating, working with Google, and working with Online Partner has been very easy,” says Adam. Even elements of Google Workspace which were not emphasised in the migration, such as Google Drive, are being adopted by teams keen to avoid versioning issues and to establish a shared file space between Team Olivia’s companies.

Now Adam and his team are looking into the possibility of moving aspects of infrastructure hosted on Citrix into Google Cloud Platform. “Apart from being very secure and having an uptime that most national sourcing partners can only dream of,” says Adam, “Google Cloud Platform offers the ability to scale up and down quickly. That’s great for us, because our business mainly runs between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Shutting down servers during downtime just makes sense.”

For Team Olivia, the migration delivered more than anyone expected. “When you buy Google Workspace, you're not just buying Google Workspace,” says Adam. “You're buying a complete online ecosystem for IT, and it's one of the best systems in the world. Google runs internet services for billions of people on the same hardware that you buy into for virtually no money at all. It's not just collaboration and communication, it's everything admin, user accounts, enhanced security. And when I compare the product that we bought a year ago to the product we have today, it's mind boggling how much has happened.”

*Google Workspace was formerly known as G Suite prior to Oct. 6, 2020.

Deployment Partner (Google Workspace authorized reseller)

Online Partner AB

Founded in 2007, Online Partner AB specializes in helping organizations maximize the benefits from Google products, with more than 500 happy customers to date.