Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the suite places all of your data and workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all at any time from anywhere with an Internet connection.

At £35 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective when comparing it to the likes of Microsoft Office – especially when you take into account that includes automated backup, and even integrating the free versions of Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can help keep
your employees coordinated.

For more casual users, or those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business.

Email – Gmail (or GoogleMail)

The many powerful features of Gmail really make it a leap forward in the web-based e-mail space, and a lot of these are ideal for business.
If you’re not ready to take the full plunge into the premium Google Apps suite, you can still configure the free edition to function as your business e-mail client through your existing domain name.

The first big advantage of Gmail, like all the apps discussed here, is that it functions in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about downloading messages to multiple locations or syncing various devices. Your inbox will look the same from any web-enabled device, whether it’s your desktop computer, your laptop or a mobile
phone.

With 25 GB of e-mail storage per user (with a paid apps account / 7GB with a free account), it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to clean out your inbox or delete old messages. The premium accounts are also automatically backed up, so you’ll never have to worry about losing any emails. Gmail works a bit differently than traditional desktop clients and webmail services in that conversations are “threaded”. This means that e-mails with the same or related subject lines are grouped together in a thread
so you can see all the messages sent and received on a topic in one place. When a new message is received, the entire thread is bumped to the top of your inbox, making tracking complex and multi-party conversations easier to manage.

Gmail also has a chat feature built right into the interface that lets you send a quick update or discuss a project with an employee if you’re not in the same office. Chats are also stored in Gmail so that you can search and refer to them later.

Additionally, Gmail Labs offers some extra settings for your inbox that can be extremely valuable fo

Calenders – Google Calender

Google Calender provides an efficient and intuitive way to keep appointments and events synced across your entire business. With calendar sharing and permissions (similar to those in Docs), you can add other employees’ calendars to your own, and vice versa, in order to see and manage the big picture of your team’s
time.

For example, if an executive has an assistant, their calendars may be shared so that the assistant could manage his boss’s appointments remotely from his own account. It’s also a smart tool for coordinating meetings, calls, and shift staffing for multiple employees to avoid scheduling conflicts. Sharing multiple
calendars with one “master calendar” creates a color-coded scheduling table for the coordinator that updates automatically when users make changes or additions.

The Calendar app can also be used to create events through Gmail. By adding your employees’ e-mail addresses to an event, they w

Download this article as a PDF