By converting to Google Workspace, Schnucks increased productivity, offering managers additional time for customer service, while simultaneously improving security and reducing hardware and software spending.
Founded in St. Louis in 1939, Schnuck Markets, Inc. is a third-generation, family-owned grocery/pharmacy retailer committed to nourishing people’s lives. The company takes pride in its community partnerships and employs more than 13,000 teammates and operates 100 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
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United States
By converting to Google Workspace, Schnucks increased productivity, offering managers additional time for customer service, while simultaneously improving security and reducing hardware and software spending.
Google Workspace Results
Collaboration with more secure data and integrated operations
• Allows teammates to update Sheets simultaneously, reducing multi-hour workflows
• Reduces time to collect complex survey or procurement data from weeks to less than 24 hours
• Provides automatic encryption and robust backups while reducing spam
• Replaces laptops with Chromebooks, resulting in savings of up to $1,250 per computer
As a family supermarket chain since 1939, depends on driving efficiency and volume sales to achieve its mission, identifying customer service and community partnerships among its key differentiators.
“When we share a Google sheet and request data, 200 people can add their responses immediately, at the same time, from any device. They don’t walk away and forget and need a reminder. The result is near-effortless compliance.” - Kim Anderson, Director of Procurement and Replenishment, Schnucks
In order to commit its maximum resources for success, Schnucks continues to focus on streamlining operations and achieving greater efficiency. Management and administrative staff throughout the company’s 100 stores in five states need to be able to collaborate effortlessly while enjoying an accurate, centralized information exchange platform. These efficiencies have the potential to impact productivity, customer service, and employee engagement.
Fast-tracking data sharing
Before adopting , Schnucks found collaborative workflows to be a challenge. Managers from different stores, often in different states, had to provide data that could be compiled and shared. Collaborative documents on traditional platforms faced challenges at Schnucks, where limits of simultaneous users would result in user lockouts. Schnucks managers often exchanged many different versions of the same documents and spreadsheets. However, reconciling all those versions was time-consuming and limited real-time collaboration.
"When we share a Google sheet and request data, 200 people can add their responses immediately at the same time from any device. They don’t walk away and forget and need a reminder. The result is near-effortless compliance," says Kim Anderson, Director of Procurement and Replenishment at Schnucks.
Schnucks has been successful using the entire range of Google Workspace tools, with , , , , and contributing to enhanced collaboration. is a popular productivity tool for meeting notes and tasks and creating reminders. Schnucks also uses and to reduce time and costs spent in face-to-face meetings, and as the central source for scheduling company events and meetings.
The partnership between Schnucks and helped with a successful Google Workspace deployment for the retailer. Agosto helped coordinate the logistics of the move and tackled the Google Workspace migration with a three-part strategy: IT staffers would move to Google first before employee "Google Guide" experts came in who could help answer teammate Google Workspace questions.
"Agosto’s deployment plan helped our Google Workspace deployment run smoothly," says Dave Steck, Schnucks Vice President of Development and IT Infrastructure. "Their thorough planning helped mitigate the inevitable disruption a change of this size would make."
Enhanced security and reliability
“Google Workspace automatically encrypts our data with a unique encryption key for each piece and distributes it across multiple data centers for performance, security, and reliability. This saves us a significant amount of time and money while achieving top notch security.” - Joey Smith, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, Schnucks
Previously, Schnucks relied on email to exchange information and any outages added even more lag time to its operations. With and the entire Google Workspace, Schnucks now experiences virtually no downtime, allowing for effective communication with enhanced levels of reliability and security.
"We were able to take advantage of the security benefits of Google Workspace right away," says Joey Smith, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Schnucks. "Our administrators are able to quickly configure, test, and manage our Google Workspace security settings to fit the security needs of our business while maintaining compliance with all regulatory obligations."
On top of the CapEx and OpEx savings with Google providing infrastructure for its office productivity software, Schnucks has gained increased security and high availability, as well as robust disaster recovery. These features are included in Google Workspace, without any need for IT intervention.
"Google Workspace automatically encrypts our data with a unique encryption key for each piece and distributes it across multiple data centers for performance, security, and reliability," says Joey. "This saves us a significant amount of time and money while achieving top notch security."
Another way Schnucks benefits from Google security is the availability of data loss protection (DLP) features native to Gmail. With DLP, Schnucks can automatically audit outgoing emails for Personal Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), and other information the store requires.
"DLP is very powerful because it provides detailed visibility," says Joey. "We can isolate emails, analyze patterns of false positives, and follow up with education or enhanced restrictions to increase security."
Spam reduction
An unexpected advantage of adopting Google Workspace was an instantaneous reduction in spam emails. That’s more administrative time saved for employees. In fact, Gmail native spam prevention is so effective that Schnucks was able to replace its third-party spam filter with a simpler technology that costs 80% less.
Savings on hardware and software
Converting to Google Workspace saves Schnucks the operational costs of an infrastructure for office and communications solutions, but its web interface also provides substantial savings on application maintenance, anti-virus software, and hardware.
With Google Workspace files and applications residing in the cloud, the need for employees to use heavyweight installable applications is increasingly rare. As laptops age, Schnucks is replacing them with , saving approximately $1,250 per computer. Because Chromebooks don’t require additional anti-virus software or many other endpoint security measures, the need for software licenses and other security and maintenance costs are simultaneously reduced.
“Adopting Google Workspace as a collaborative platform helped us to integrate individual store activities and increase operational efficiency.” - Dave Steck, Vice President of Development and IT Infrastructure, Schnucks
Schnucks also finds that Chromebooks instantly increase productivity. "What's great about the Chromebook is the productivity savings we get from the speed and ease of use and management," says Dave Steck, Vice President of Development and IT Infrastructure at Schnucks. "You’re not waiting for applications to start up. As a result, Chromebooks are the only laptops we need for the majority of our teammates."
Aligning the company across sites
More than just providing a common set of office tools, intuitive collaboration in Google Workspace enables the grocery chain to provide consistent messaging and a central information hub across all store locations. With posters, presentations, and communications, Schnucks worked hard to help ensure that the entire company understood the value of the tools. The Operations and IT teams rolled out the changeover in three phases, using Google Guides to show the benefits of adoption and then rolling out to larger groups over time.
"Adopting Google Workspace as a collaborative platform helped us to integrate individual store activities and increase operational efficiency," says Dave.
Investing in the future
Employees who were already familiar with Google Workspace because they used it in school or in their personal lives have found the move eases communications company-wide, and Schnucks believes that the move will also help attract prospective employees who already use Google Workspace.
"Knowing that more and more prospective employees are already familiar with Google Workspace is a big win for us," says Joey. "To them, it helps demonstrate our commitment to innovation."
Deployment Partner (Google Workspace authorized reseller)
AgostoAgosto is a cloud development company that provides implementation and migration strategies to businesses. As a Tier 1 Google Cloud Premier partner, Agosto offers resources and support to clients that want to integrate cloud solutions into their workflow. The company has core practices around Google Workspace, Google Cloud Platform, Machine Learning, IoT, and Custom Application Development.