By creating secure messaging solutions for companies in South Africa, Tradebridge has become one of the country’s leading mid-size businesses. A multifaceted organization, Tradebridge consists of three distinct branches. The oldest, Healthbridge, specializes in providing software and support for healthcare providers. SureSwipe facilitates debit and credit card payments to small, medium, and micro-enterprise (SMME) clients, while the third component, DCM Group, provides financial wellness solutions, helping people restructure and resolve problematic debt. Uniting all three divisions is an emphasis on security, efficiency, and availability, principles Tradebridge aspires to in its internal processes, as much as in its products.

“Across our businesses, cloud is a major disruptor,” says Eli Atie, CEO at Tradebridge. “We see a clear opportunity to move away from thick clients and desktop applications to the cloud. But to underline that shift, we need to walk the talk, showing that we don’t just recommend cloud solutions, we use them ourselves.”

Tradebridge began investigating cloud options, looking for a solution with the right, reliable collaboration tools to create a dynamic organization, focused on future development.

“Cloud collaboration delivers a way of working, thinking, and operating that fundamentally accelerates and enhances the things we feel are important,” says Eli. “Whether it’s innovation or creating value for clients, Google Workspace is a facilitator, helping us achieve cultural change within our organization.”

“Staff would ask themselves ‘Why is my home smarter than my office? Why is it easier for me to communicate on my smartphone than it is for me to get a contract signed while I'm at a client?’” says Luis da Silva, managing director at Healthbridge. “That prompted us to look at how we could become more mobile and simple. In my private life, without the support of any IT department, I can lose my phone, buy a new one, log in, and have my whole profile ready for me minutes later. But if I lost my work laptop while travelling, it might take weeks to purchase and replace it. That kind of disconnect highlighted the urgent need for a new approach.”

To make that happen, Tradebridge partnered with Opennetworks to migrate to Google Workspace. “We worked very closely with Opennetworks from the beginning,” says Eli. “On top of their training programs and technical expertise, they were natural collaborators.”

“Tradebridge’s previous IT system was extremely well run, but it was implemented to the limit,” recalls Hywel Glyn-Jones, CEO at Opennetworks. “But the moment Google Workspace tools went live, Tradebridge carried out the fastest adoption we've ever seen. There was an immediate, strong understanding of what the tools could do.”

On the day Tradebridge went live, 98 percent of its employees logged in to their new accounts. “Early adopters wore their Google t-shirts to work the day we went live, so people could go to them for advice,” recalls Elize Neethling, Head of Central Information Management Systems at Tradebridge. “But when they arrived in the workplace, they weren’t alone, more than half of the company was wearing the t-shirts. The uptake was energetic, with people walking around helping each other. It was amazing.”

Confident that Gmail is available anywhere, Elize’s team has decommissioned on-premises servers, rounding off an exceptionally easy deployment process. “In the past, installing new software meant users at a remote offices would need to courier their machines to us so that we could install the software, then courier it back,” says Elize. “In the meantime, those users would have no computers to work with. Even though the actual update would take approximately half an hour, the courier could take five days. With 15 users in remote locations and 20 in satellite offices, this was a significant loss of productive time. Now, because Google Workspace works through a browser on any device, we roll out tools remotely. For a group of employees that live on mines, all it took to migrate them was a telephone call.”

Making meetings more effective

A key concern for Tradebridge is to streamline its long decision-making processes with enhanced collaboration and shorter, more efficient meetings. Thanks to managers using Google Meet to message teams, the company now has fewer meetings. When they do take place, however, the whole process is transformed, as Luis explains:

“Previously, somebody would first need to create slides and get them lined up. Then, the night before the meeting, I would review those and send them to a team to get them ready on the right machine. In the morning, I might wake up with new ideas, make changes, and email them through, sometimes more than once. Then, I’d have to hope that by the time I got into the office my latest version would be ready on the machine. Half an hour ahead of the meeting, someone would stabilize communication and video by doing extensive tests and test calls to all of the participants. Then we would sit in the meeting using a messenger app on our phones to stay in touch in case the system went down, which it usually did if more than seven people tried to connect.”

Combining Google Meet with Docs, Sheets, and Slides means Tradebridge teams can get to work while meetings are still in progress. “Right in the meeting we can start thrashing around ideas and sketching out thoughts together,” says Eli. “These tools enable a more dynamic, experimental culture, where we start sharing views at an earlier stage. Ultimately, I expect that to enable us to bring products to market faster.”

A catalyst for cultural change

Now Tradebridge is looking to deploy Chromebooks throughout the company. “In the near future, we will arrive at work with no laptop, grab a machine, open it up, log in, and get to work,” says Elize. “Hardware will be far easier to manage and distribute, saving time and resources.” The company is investigating other Google Cloud options, too, reassured by HIPAA-compliant systems that could be applied to healthcare and other sensitive information.

“Google Workspace is a catalyst for cultural change,” says Eli. “The tools open you up to the possibility that there are new, totally different ways of doing things. When it’s so easy to do, everyone begins to collaborate. Google Workspace has that balance really well worked out.”