Nielsen: Scores high ratings from users after deploying Google Workspace and Salesforce

• Created a cloud-based internal work environment with the flexibility of mobile access

• Increased collaboration across the company, with users now sharing a single document instead of working on dozens of separate copies

• Integration with Salesforce means key activities, important information, and email details can be quickly, seamlessly added to the CRM, saving about 2 hours a week in administration time for each sales representative

The company also wanted to increase tracking of key activities and speed up the administrative task of entering data on leads, contacts, and opportunities throughout the sales funnel.

"We really wanted a single place to see and understand all of the opportunities and quality issues, all throughout the pipeline, side-by-side with other cases," Andrew says. "On a more basic level, we also wanted to be able to see recent activities so that before we go meet with a client, we’ve got the latest status, and we are coordinated internally as a team."

To accomplish those goals, Nielsen needed to abandon its current office products suite and turn to Google Workspace for cloud-based collaboration and productivity products and to Salesforce for customer relationship management. As a bonus, the two products integrate together, which adds greater ease and simplicity.

Nielsen chose Google Cloud for three reasons: easy collaboration, cross-device capability, and its cloud-first strategy.

"On the collaboration side, we found Google Workspace to be more intuitive," Andrew says. "I’ve experienced this on the personal side and now from a corporate standpoint. It creates simpler and more seamless collaboration."

"The mobility aspect of Google Workspace, whether on a phone or a tablet, is impressive," he adds.

For Nielsen, adopting cloud technology for internal use was a big change. The deployment was a large-scale coordinated effort, with executive sponsors and an executive committee to drive and encourage the change. They started with a 100-day plan and a small, tech savvy team. At the 90-day mark, a core group of IT people began migrating emails and content from on-premises sources into the cloud. Soon after, the company launched Google Guides, a network of super users who tested the system and help others transition to Google Workspace features such as Gmail, Google Meet, Drive, Docs, Slides, and Sheets.

"Moving to Google Workspace was as much a change management effort as a technology shift," said Nerina Martinez, Technology Director at Nielsen. "We appointed a full-time change management leader to work alongside the technical architect and project manager."

Nielsen conducted a multi-phased approach, focusing on creating a culture of collaboration. The company identified several personas to target. These included general end users, administrative assistants, executive stakeholders, as well as core IT staff and help desk professionals. Nielsen onboarded this last group before other employees, since their workload would be most impacted by the change.

In July 2016, the company launched Google Workspace to more than 50,000 users worldwide. The methodical deployment has been a success: By September 2018, usage of Docs was 58 percent; Sheets, 82 percent; and Slides, 49 percent.

"It’s been a huge success from an IT standpoint and a sales operations standpoint," Andrew says.

"With Google, we’re driving collaboration. With Salesforce, we’re driving revenue," Andrew says. "So it was important to see how we could get these two major technologies to play together."

The verdict: "They come together nicely," he says.

The company was seeing increased activity tracking, and further simplifying the administrative tasks involved with that would be ideal.

With some basic admin configuration by one administrator, Andrew’s team implemented Salesforce Lightning for Gmail and Lightning Sync for Google Calendar, making tracking interactions and activities simple and fast.

"No one loves going in and manually typing every single meeting or piece of information they have," Andrew says. "We wanted a better way to track some of that information and the important activities. We also wanted a faster way to enter leads, contacts, and opportunities."

Andrew’s team pushed out the integration to 500 users, with a goal of reaching 1,000 by year’s end.

User feedback has been glowing: "The best SF enhancement ever," wrote a commercial director. A director of new business wrote, "You are going to save my team a TON of time with this functionally. Thank you so much!"

In fact, the integration is saving about 2 hours per week in administration time for each sales rep—building up to a potential 100,000 hours of sales efficiency gained companywide.

"Ultimately our goal to bring these two together was about increased time selling," Andrew says. "It worked."

"I’m happy to say that the partnership and integration with Salesforce and Google Cloud has paid off. It’s been a major win for Nielsen."