• Supports a flexible, effective work-from-anywhere policy for 250 global employees

• Enables a streamlined file-sharing process, putting an end to email attachments

• Facilitates onboarding of new employees with an intuitive, user-friendly system

• Clarifies document ownership with shared drives

• Streamlines user management with Single sign-on

“Our work-from-anywhere policy means one half of our workforce is based in Paris, and the other elsewhere in the world,” Fourreau says. “Google Workspace enables us to collaborate seamlessly and ensure we’re all on the same page at any given time.” This new way of working saves the company time and has helped create more efficient administrative solutions.

Founded in 2007, the company distributes the eponymous open source e-commerce platform PrestaShop. Originally launched as a student project, the platform is currently used by 300,000 online stores across the world. Its business model is based on three revenue sources: the PrestaShop Addons website marketplace, strategic partnerships with payment industry leaders, and provision of training and support services.

“Our users are very varied—a majority are based in France and the rest of Europe, and we’re also growing steadily in Latin America,” Fourreau explains. “They range from someone launching a homemade jewelry line from their living room to major companies setting up highly customized versions of our solutions.”

PrestaShop went through a period of considerable growth from 2010 to 2012, during which the number of employees climbed from under 20 to over 100. “At that point, we started looking at solutions that could help us streamline administration and day-to-day management tasks,” Fourreau says.

PrestaShop started out with Gmail. “Before moving to Gmail, we had been sharing files by sending email attachments back and forth,” recalls Denis Severe, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, PrestaShop. “When there were only 30 of us, that worked well enough. But as we grew, it became obvious that we needed something a little more advanced.”

“It was a gradual process. We started using the basic G Suite plan that was included with Gmail at that time, and just never went back to the old way of doing things. By the time we decided to employ a work-from-anywhere model, we were already committed to Google Workspace.” Fourreau continues, “Beforehand, people were using a variety of different office suites and sending files to each other via email. That’s now a thing of the past: We’ve given up all office suite software except Workspace, which has made our whole collaboration process a lot more intuitive.”

The team uses Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides for collaborative document editing and sharing and to keep each other updated without the hassle of sending files back and forth. All remote meetings are conducted via Google Meet and managed with Google Calendar: “Again, there was a time when everyone was using different software for video calls. Gradually, they were all dropped in favor of Google Meet, which provides us with all the features and stability we need.”

As the company grows, Fourreau and Severe find the user-friendliness of Google Workspace to be a true advantage when it comes to onboarding new team members. “When I think about it, I can literally not remember a single incident of someone coming up to me and asking for help in using such or such a tool. The software is very intuitive and people are able to get started with it very easily,” Fourreau says.

“Shared drives are an absolutely essential aspect of our collaboration system. Beforehand, we had constant issues with file ownership. Someone would leave the company, and ensuring we didn’t lose access to their documents was a hassle. That’s no longer the case: Documents belong to the whole team, and no longer just one person,” Fourreau says.

Google Cloud has become the company’s single source of truth when it comes to user management, with team members using Single sign-on (SSO) to log in to Workspace as well as third-party apps and services. “If someone isn’t in our Google user base, they don’t exist, period. Whenever we need to delegate, verify, or authenticate someone, everything goes through Google Single sign-on.”

Alongside Google Workspace, the PrestaShop team uses a range of Google Cloud products to support its operations, including Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, and BigQuery, and is looking forward to continuing to work with Google Cloud to further grow its global platform. “Combining Google Cloud and Google Workspace enables us to address a wide range of business and operational needs that we would have needed a full-time team for only 10 years ago,” says Fourreau. “Working with Google Cloud is both simple and effective, and we’re excited to see where we can go next.”