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SADA Systems: Building a successful business on Google Cloud

SADA Systems has grown into a highly successful Google Cloud partner, helping enterprise and public sector customers improve productivity and collaboration, drive innovation, and reduce costs with Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform.

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SADA Systems is a Google Cloud Premier Partner with proven expertise in Google Cloud consulting, migration and deployment, custom development, user adoption, and change management services.

Features used
Docs
Forms
Sheets
Slides
Google Meet

SADA Systems has grown into a highly successful Google Cloud partner, helping enterprise and public sector customers improve productivity and collaboration, drive innovation, and reduce costs with Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform.

Google Workspace Results

Double-digit growth in Google practice 10 years running

• Improves collaboration and productivity, both internally and for customers

• Generates rapid and significant ROI for customers through user adoption and change management services

• Enables fast and smooth customer migrations to the cloud

Founded in 2000 as a family business, SADA Systems geared up for fast growth in 2007 when it became one of the 10 original launch partners for Google Apps for Work, now known as Google Workspace. For SADA, business has never been the same. Today, the company has more than 200 employees, more than 3,000 customers served, and annual revenues of over $100 million.

As more companies became interested in public cloud, SADA worked with larger customers, helping well-known clients such as The Colgate-Palmolive Company, Hunderton Healthcare, and TVG Network improve productivity and collaboration while reducing costs. All told, SADA has successfully migrated more than 15 million users to Google Cloud. SADA also uses Google Workspace internally to enhance its own collaboration.

“We earn customers for life by enabling companies to gain a competitive edge. We pride ourselves on aligning with the Google vision and strategies—we are a fun, innovative brand, and our customers enjoy that. We also get excellent results and can help any business get the most from public cloud.” - Jessica Hylton, Enterprise Consulting Manager, SADA Systems

As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, SADA has a successful track record of delivering Google Cloud solutions, including Google Workspace, Google Cloud, Chrome, Google Enterprise Search, and Google Maps Platform. It offers a full range of consulting solutions, including cloud migration and deployment, custom application development, managed services, user adoption, and change management. Recently named Google Cloud 2017 Sales Partner of the Year - North America, SADA grew its Google practice 55% in 2017. Previous accolades include 2013 North America Partner of the Year for Google Maps, Google Maps Global Partner of the Year – 2014 and 2015, as well as the Google Cloud 2016 Americas Partner Award for GCP Customer Success and Maps Customer Success.

“Our customers are eager to streamline business workflows and provide their workers with new capabilities to achieve more, and they know that Google Cloud solutions are a pathway to superior collaboration and productivity,” says Joe Kosco, Vice President of Sales - Google Cloud at SADA Systems. “We’ve demonstrated time after time that the combination of Google Cloud solutions combined with SADA’s expert services drives rapid and significant ROI for our customers.”

Building relationships for life

To help customers commit to their cloud journey, SADA works to create transformational value for each customer early on, often using Google Workspace as a first step. By taking a relaxed and informal yet business-focused approach to consulting and sales, SADA puts customers at ease from the beginning.

“We earn customers for life by enabling companies to gain a competitive edge,” says Jessica Hylton, Enterprise Consulting Manager at SADA Systems. “We pride ourselves on aligning with the Google vision and strategies — we are a fun, innovative brand, and our customers enjoy that. We also get excellent results and can help any business get the most from public cloud.”

Putting customers first

“By the end of our security presentation, customers see that Google offers a strong security model and compliance benefits that are difficult to match compared to on-premises and competing cloud solutions.” - Nicky Parseghian, Practice Director - Google Workspace, SADA Systems

SADA gets involved in customers’ initial meetings with Google to help both sides understand if, how, and why Google is a good fit for their business. After introducing the customer to the Google Cloud portfolio at a high level, SADA explores how different offerings can fit into the customer’s initiatives and timelines.

“We take customers through Google Cloud success stories so they can relate to how other companies solved similar problems,” says Edmond Youash, Account Executive at SADA Systems. “Google has a wealth of experience working with enterprises in various industries, which is a great way to start conversations with customers. Often, a customer reference gets them 50% of the way there.”

SADA also emphasizes to customers that Google does business differently and innovates faster and more openly than other technology companies—a message that most CIOs are glad to hear.

“We explain to our customers that with Google Cloud, they’re going to benefit from major new product releases without paying to upgrade thousands of seats,” says Nicky Parseghian, Practice Director - Google Workspace, SADA Systems. “They can add valuable, innovative tools such as Google Chat, roll them out to users in minutes, and reduce licensing costs by eliminating redundant systems.”

Often, SADA conducts a separate session on security and administrative controls, which some enterprise customers initially view as a risk in moving to public cloud. “By the end of our security presentation, customers see that Google offers a strong security model and compliance benefits that are difficult to match compared to on-premises and competing cloud solutions,” says Nicky.

SADA also shows customers how to improve their workflows with Google Workspace, taking business users through a two-hour Google Workspace course in their work environment to generate enthusiasm and get their buy-in. A total cost of ownership analysis highlighting hard and soft cost savings is also a powerful motivator for CFOs and other business decision-makers.

“We show customers how we can take them from where they are today to a full Google Cloud migration, and how that would look both operationally and financially,” says Edmond. “When they see what we’ve done for large organizations in industries similar to their own, they see the value.”

Experience breeds best practices

Ten years of experience has helped SADA hone its deployment processes and develop best practices for Google Cloud migrations and rollouts. SADA leverages progressive planning, allowing customers to keep evaluating progress as the project moves on.

“Each customer is unique, and there are always unknowns in the initial stages,” says Nicky. “We use outcome-driven planning to constantly address those unknowns and make sure we’re addressing each customer’s specific requirements.”

SADA has also found that forming a tight-knit group for decision-making and executive sponsorship is critical to a successful cloud migration. Following that approach has helped SADA move some large customers to Google Workspace in impressive timeframes:

Colgate-Palmolive: Migrated 28,000 global users in 6 months

Digital First Media: Migrated 6,100 users plus an additional 850 users from an acquisition within 72 hours

Hunterdon Healthcare: Migrated its entire workforce of approximately 3,000 users

“Those kinds of results are not easy to achieve in large enterprises, but our team can do it because of the best practices we’ve developed along with Google,” says Edmond.

Champions for the cloud journey

SADA recognizes the importance of identifying cloud champions from within the customer organization to help overcome any resistance about moving to the cloud. This happens early in the planning process, using a decision-making tree to identify key stakeholders from management, lines of business, and IT. Executive sponsors form a steering committee that meets regularly throughout the migration process to help guide the journey and address any concerns.

“Big organizational change like moving to the cloud is a daunting task for many, and failing to address that concern early on in the customer engagement is a big mistake,” says Edmond. “We found that engaging with IT first is the best approach, but if you don’t involve key champions including business users and executive teams, the adoption and consumption of new platforms and tools will likely fail. Enterprise consulting and change management services are where we have seen great success with our customers.”

Finding better ways of working

Every customer that SADA has moved to Google Workspace has quickly realized the benefits of new ways of working and collaborating. For example, a healthcare organization on the East Coast that historically dealt with a lot of manual processes helped its nurses be more productive with real-time collaboration and planning. Previously, nurses used paper-based notes, which required a transcriptionist to later manually enter the information into a database. Today, the process is entirely paperless using Google Docs and Forms.

At the same organization, the hospital director used to manually compile data from different contributors to produce variance reports to better understand profits and losses. Now this process is likewise streamlined, as contributors input data through Forms and the data automatically flows into Sheets for additional analysis and formatting. Afterwards, data can be easily output to Slides for business presentations.

“The soft savings that collaboration enables is usually much higher than businesses expect,” explains Edmond. “Building out requests for proposals is a great example. Instead of taking 20 people a month to generate an RFP through multiple workflows, they can collaborate in real time in Docs and get it done much faster.”

Driving change and innovation

“We strive to be the number one Google Workspace partner globally, and we can achieve that by focusing on exceptional technical consultation, implementation, and change management for our customers. Once they understand what the world looks like without traditional office systems and software—and how we can get them there—it’s an easy conversation.” - Edmond Youash, Account Executive, SADA Systems

Freed from the drudgery of managing on-premises systems, SADA’s customers find that they can focus more on process change and innovation. Instead of spending time managing servers and storage, IT employees can use App Maker, Apps Script, and other GCP solutions to develop lightweight, innovative ways of working that will help move the needle for their organization.

“We’ve found that collaboration with Google Workspace usually sparks a snowball effect for our customers in terms of innovation because they didn’t realize how much they were being held back by their legacy tools,” says Nicky. “It’s very satisfying to see them shift their focus, improve productivity, and realize their full potential.”

A winning combination

Already a vital contributor to the growing Google Cloud ecosystem — currently number two globally for GCP sales — SADA Systems has its sights set on the number one position. It’s working toward that goal by helping more companies realize the potential of cloud services, and by providing ongoing training and documentation to its customers about new Google Cloud solutions and releases.

“We strive to be the number one Google Workspace partner globally, and we can achieve that by focusing on exceptional technical consultation, implementation, and change management for our customers,” says Edmond. “Once they understand what the world looks like without traditional office systems and software — and how we can get them there — it’s an easy conversation.”

*Google Workspace was formerly known as G Suite prior to Oct. 6, 2020.