Business Impacts of Google Drive

Here at Kohl’s, we work in an environment where we need to collaborate, communicate, and operate in an efficient and seamless manner. As executive leaders in this organization, it is my belief that we are not currently utilizing the appropriate tools in order to achieve this. The current program with which we create and share reports is the Microsoft Office Suite. While the program has been used in our offices since we started, the program currently does not offer the options that we need in today’s business environment while also we continue to pay for features that we rarely use. After examining our current program with other options the I.T. Department and Operations Team have come to the agreement that we should exit our current subscriptions with Microsoft Office Suites and utilize Google Docs in order to create and share our reports.   

The standard in business reporting and document creation has always been Microsoft Office. In order to support the software on all 15,000 personal computer stations which are on a three year lease costs the company $300,000. We also have portable devices carried by our upper management staff which requires a subscription as well which adds another $100,000. In total we are spending $400,000 on antiquated document creation software that limits a user’s accessibility and collaborative efforts.

Google Drive presents us with an exciting opportunity which will allow us to work collaboratively and from anywhere on the Cloud for free.  Unlike Microsoft Office, we as Executives can access and create documents from anywhere and share with anyone using Google Drive. We can stay informed with sales, merchandising, and store reports while we are constantly on the move instead of having to rush to a work station in order to create, share, or edit documents. Just as portable devices brought us the ability to stay in constant contact with emails, Google Drive gives us the ability to stay informed and work together from anywhere.

As was mentioned before, using Google Drive is free for us to use, but there are costs associated with converting over from Microsoft Office. Since Microsoft Office has always been the standard, our users have become familiar with its interface and functions. Even though Google Drive acts in the same way as our current program, there will need to be a training period as well an understanding that there will be a dip in productivity in the roll out. In order to create a training video and carve out hours out of our staff’s day to complete the activity will cost the company $100,000. This will be a one-cost as opposed to the 3-year subscription cost on our leased work stations.

It is our belief that in the long run having this program will increase future productivity by our staff because of the ability to work seamlessly and with one another. The initial invest of $100,000 to convert over to Google Drive will figure to pay itself off within the next three years as our users become more familiar with its accessibility and functionality. While the current program is “not-broken”, it does not effectively meet the demands that our staff needs in order to have all information accessible to them from anywhere. Google Drive will be an exciting program for us here at Kohl’s as we will be able to work more cohesively while reducing expenses on expensive programs that do not keep up with our business needs.