• Reduces overall cost of Voice over Internet Protocol through Dialpad services

• Improves interdepartmental collaboration through Chat and Spaces

• Strengthens disaster preparedness and resilience in remote work environments with reliable Google Workspace apps

Managing its legacy, on-prem collaboration and productivity tools was challenging for SproutLoud. For example, the company had to routinely manage different types of users and the data they had on their laptops, which took up time for already busy IT teams. It also created time-consuming problems if laptops crashed or were lost or stolen.

"We need collaboration tools that offer automatic backups, encryption at rest, and other features to keep our teams focused on their main responsibilities," says James Aggrey, Enterprise Collaboration Solutions Team Lead at SproutLoud. "Google Workspace is the clear choice. It’s not only easy to use for employees but also eliminates the need for backup solutions and removes technical demands on our IT team and end users."

Google Workspace improved SproutLoud’s ability to support remote work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, but the company’s move to Workspace was inspired by an ever expanding distributed workforce, need for rapid collaboration, and an increasing need for resiliency and high availability.

"SproutLoud headquarters are located in South Florida, and we have offices in Latin America, so we are no stranger to office closures due to severe weather," says James. "Google Workspace gives SproutLoud the mobility to continue normal business operations — even when major events, like hurricanes and a global pandemic, impact us. That level of flexibility has proven to be invaluable."

SproutLoud uses secure LDAP in Google Workspace to provide employees with easy and controlled access to the systems they need to use for their everyday tasks. This was especially useful for the company’s DevOps team during pandemic-related office closures.

Security is enhanced as Google Workspace provides automated spam filtering and event logging to keep SproutLoud accounts protected. It also enhances visibility through a security dashboard.

"Google Workspace lifts a big burden for us in terms of security, providing great insights and making it easier to track and troubleshoot issues when they occur," says James. "After so many years of using Google Workspace, it’s hard to remember just how hard this was to do in our legacy environment."

Since migrating to Google Workspace, SproutLoud has seen a clear increase in collaboration across departments. Employees set up Spaces, a feature of Google Chat, within their departments to stay in constant contact while working remotely.

Spaces also help SproutLoud maintain camaraderie and connection across the business with fewer people working in on-site office locations. For example, some spaces are set up for people interested in movies, and others for employees looking for family-friendly activities. This translates to a more traditional office-life experience for the company’s many remote employees and an ability to maintain a solid employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS).

"One of our core values is ‘One Mission, One Team,’" says Catalina. "That means whichever department someone works in, they have the support of every other team across the business to keep clients happy. Google Workspace supports this value exceptionally well, because it enables us to automate more processes and encourages ongoing, easy collaboration across teams."

SproutLoud chose to migrate its unified communications (UC) platform from a local Voice over IP provider to Google Workspace partner Dialpad. After evaluating and testing other solutions, SproutLoud selected Dialpad, because it runs on Google Cloud and offers the widest range of integrations with Google Workspace and other third-party software.

Dialpad worked closely with SproutLoud to get up and running remotely due to pandemic-induced office closures, handling critical processes such as retraining call flows, porting phone numbers, and enabling integrations with Zendesk, Salesforce, Calendar, and Chat. An intuitive side panel in Dialpad provides quick access to the various communications and management systems employees might need throughout the day.

The integrations have been useful across the business to keep the most-used applications accessible from one interface. The ease of use has been especially vital to successful adoption by the customer service team. As this lean team consists of more recent SproutLoud hires, having intuitive solutions helps the reps focus on supporting customers rather than toggling through different arduous collaboration tools.

"Dialpad works great. It’s made a huge difference in how our customer service team works," says Cesar Salgado, Customer Service Manager at SproutLoud. "We no longer have to be in a call center and instead can access all the same tools conveniently from our mobile devices. Dialpad works naturally with Google Workspace, with the Calendar and Chat integrations saving a lot of time and making it easier to manage our workloads."

SproutLoud also takes advantage of better metrics visibility and accessibility in Dialpad, using the platform to monitor KPIs such as customer service call volumes, pickup rates, and issue resolution. Integrations with Calendar and Salesforce also extend the benefits to sales teams who are looking to set up demos by providing availability and contact information all in one place.

From an IT management perspective, SproutLoud has enjoyed easier employee onboarding and offboarding thanks to Dialpad, thanks to the more automated tasks. In addition, Dialpad provides SproutLoud with softphone technology to help the company operate regularly in the event of severe weather like hurricanes or other disruptive forces.

SproutLoud uses spaces in Google Chat as a simplified way for employees to chat, share files, and stay connected. SproutLoud has also begun experimenting with Google Classroom to host and deliver employee training materials, improving file management and employee engagement with training modules.

"My focus is on integrating the best technologies to improve how our teams work and our business operates. Google has so many solutions that make that possible," says James. "From single, secure sign on for accelerated app access to improved data access and insights, we continue to transform and expand what we can accomplish with the help of Google solutions."

SproutLoud is now working to continue pushing its global business operations further into the future using Google Workspace.

"Google Workspace has allowed us to seamlessly scale up for many years and especially during the pandemic," says Anjan Upadhya, Chief Technology Officer at SproutLoud. "We are hypersensitive to privacy, security, reliability and ease of use. Mostly everything just works and that is a huge advantage for our teams distributed globally across the enterprise."