As a family supermarket chain since 1939, Schnuck Markets Inc. depends on driving efficiency and volume sales to achieve its mission, identifying customer service and community partnerships among its key differentiators.

Fast-tracking data sharing

Before adopting Google Workspace, 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 Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Forms contributing to enhanced collaboration. Google Keep is a popular productivity tool for meeting notes and tasks and creating reminders. Schnucks also uses Google Meet and Google Chat to reduce time and costs spent in face-to-face meetings, and Calendar as the central source for scheduling company events and meetings.

The partnership between Schnucks and Agosto 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.”

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 Chromebooks, 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.

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.”