JO-ANN STRENGTHENS COMPANY FABRIC WITH GOOGLE APPS

COMPANY BACKGROUND For Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores, creativity is a way of life. Jo-Ann is the #1 fabric retailer in the U.S. and a leader in the crafts market with both an online and storefront presence. Jo-Ann has three large distribution centers and more than 750 stores across the country that offer classes in addition to supplies for a vast range of do-it-yourself creative projects.

BUSINESS CHALLENGESJo-Ann had been using Novell GroupWise, which IT Director Frank Flanagan said was not a viable solution for the company due to lack of collaboration abilities, continuous monetary and labor investments, inadequate spam filtering and lack of accessibility.

“We were basically keeping GroupWise on life support because we knew we were going to roll out a new system,” he said.

The system was on ‘life support’ for around 18 months while the Jo-Ann team began to take a serious look at switching their messaging platform.

“First and foremost, we wanted to get off of an antiquated email system,” Flanagan said. “Secondary to that, I wanted to provide a cutting-edge collaboration platform for the organization that incorporated more than just email. I also wanted employees to be able to access that platform from really anywhere on almost any device.”

About nine moths before Jo-Ann made the switch to Google Apps, Jo-Ann replaced Novell’s spam-fighting software with Microsoft FOPE (Forefront Online Protection for Exchange), as a first move towards switching to an Exchange platform.

“The company was definitely planning to switch to a Microsoft solution,” Flanagan said. “Not a lot of people were aware that the IT department was looking at cloud-based email solutions.”

While the company began to take steps towards an Exchange solution, Flanagan’s team investigated the benefits of the cloud.

“We have a long history of due diligence around products, so we wanted to do our research. Rather than just run down the Exchange path, we decided that we needed to compare what else was on the market,” Flanagan said.

Flanagan’s team quickly narrowed down the results to two options: Microsoft BPOS and Google Apps.

A group of 25 users participated in the Google Apps pilot for about three weeks. At the end of the pilot, all 25 users voted on a solution and Google Apps won out due to its accessibility, easy-to-use web-based interface and smooth Enterprise Directory integration.

CASE STUDY

HEADQUARTERS

Hudson, OH

INDUSTRYRetail (Fabrics & Crafts)

NUMBER OF USERS2,100

LEGACY SYSTEMSNovell GroupWise, IBM WebSphere

SERVICES RENDERED

• Google Apps Deployment

• Google Message Discovery (Postini)

• Google Apps Training

“The most interesting feedback was from my own Microsoft engineers who we had purposefully included in the pilot group knowing that they would be the hardest to convince,” Flanagan said. “As the pilot went on, they told me that Google Apps could work for the organization.”

SOLUTIONFlanagan said his team decided to ‘Go Google’ in less than two weeks.

“The reality is that Google created the Google Apps solution as multi-tenant from day one. We decided we would rather go with Google’s platform than take an email solution that was meant to be an enterprise solution and mold that into a multi-tenant platform.”

Once Flanagan and his team decided on Google, they started building their case to garner support from everyone from end-users to executives.

“After we made the decision to switch to Google Apps, the IT team spent six to eight weeks going through a sales pitch to the organization,” Flanagan said. “Google Apps was definitely not the answer the organization was expecting, so we wanted to pitch it right.”

After building up documentation to support the case for Google Apps, Flanagan and his team pitched the new platform and received a largely positive response.

“It was an easier sell than I really thought it would be,” he said.

Flanagan said that nearly 50 percent of users surveyed before the switch personally used browser-based email applications, which reinforced the idea that employees would be comfortable using Google Apps.

However, because many employees were not familiar with Google Apps in particular, apprehension was still felt across the organization.

“Email is central to every employee’s job, so there was a fair amount of anxiety about making those deep application switches,” Flanagan said. “People were also more comfortable in general with the idea of Exchange. Employees probably hear friends at other companies talk about Exchange, but they don’t hear them talk about Google.”

But when Cloud Sherpas completed a “big bang” migration for Jo-Ann— migrating more than 2,000 users in one weekend— user adoption soared.

Jo-Ann implemented training for all end-users in the form of Google Guides from both Cloud Sherpas and Jo-Ann, e-learning instruction and classroom courses; approximately 445 people took advantage of the 1.5-hour Information Learning Technology (ILT) sessions and 35 people participated in the 1-hour webinars.

“We took a multi-faceted approach to training,” Flanagan said. “The combination of available learning tools gave people their own way to get comfortable with the platform.”

Flanagan said that the organization very quickly adapted to Google Apps and its web interface, as he has heard very few complaints about the new platform.

“Email is one of those tools that if you don’t hear anything, it’s good news.”

“The reality is that Google created the Google Apps solution as multi-tenant from day one. We decided we would rather go with Google’s platform than take an email solution that was meant to be an enterprise solution and mold that into a multi-tenant platform.”

— Frank Flanagan IT Director, Jo-Ann

RESULTSThe move to Google Apps has dramatically reduced maintenance time and money spent on upgrades, patches and general upkeep. The move has also allowed the IT team to reallocate their resources so that employees have more time to work on projects that add business value instead of constantly spending time maintaining the system and filling e-discovery requests.

Before the use of Postini, Jo-Ann was using a disaster recovery process to retrieve old emails and files. The Human Resources department and Legal department had to request these files through IT— a request that could take anywhere from two hours to two weeks to complete.

Now these departments no longer have to come to IT for data because the Postini interface is directly available to them.

Furthermore, when employees would like to retain an email, it’s as simple as flipping on a “retain” flag. Previously, users had to archive the email and later endure a time-intensive process to restore it. Now when users would like to find a retained email, they simply search within their inbox.

“The search functionality in Gmail is far superior from what we had before,” Flanagan said. “I think it’s phenomenal.”

Flanagan says another major benefit of Google Apps is that users may access their email, documents, calendars and more from virtually anywhere. Employees have even configured their personal mobile devices to receive mail from work.

Though Google Docs has not officially launched within the company, Flanagan says that many users are adopting the app organically. He said that users are also embracing Google Talk, Google SketchUp and other tools available within Google.

“The way that we explained to a lot of people what we were doing in rolling out Google Apps is that we wanted to get out of their way,” Flanagan said. “We don’t want to be a bottleneck for collaboration and communications. Google Apps certainly puts the tool sets in the laps of the users.”

Looking forward, Flanagan said that Jo-Ann is planning to formally launch Google Video, Google Sites and Google Docs.

“Google approaches enterprise differently than other vendors. We embrace that because we believe that it will lead to better solutions.”

Take the next step

To learn more about how Cloud Sherpas can help your organization adopt Google’s cloud platform, contact your sales representative, visit us online at www.cloudsherpas.com or call (888) 260-7660.

© 2011 Cloud Sherpas Inc. All Rights Reserved. 11-06

“Google approaches enterprise differently than other vendors. We embrace that because we believe that it will lead to better solutions.”

— Frank Flanagan IT Director, Jo-Ann

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