About sp.a
sp.a is a Flemish social-democratic political party which stands for equality and protection.
The Problem
Work at a political party is a team effort. News is volatile and time to market is extremely important in a public facing organisation like sp.a.
The classic way of working, where sending attachments back and forth by email or accessing the file server via VPN was the norm, was a bottleneck to reach results fast.
The Goal
sp.a started looking for a solution that could facilitate collaboration across distances, enabling the organisation to reach results faster.
Solution
sp.a chose to replace their file servers by Google Drive in 2016. This gave them, politicians and staff alike, the possibility to access their files from anywhere and easily share them with others.
In addition, it unlocked real-time collaboration capabilities from any device with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.
Methodology
There are always three work streams when deploying G Suite, also for this case.
First, there is the technical aspect that focuses on (automatic) user creation, making sure the people can login (authentication), mail routing to make sure the emails arrive in Gmail instead of the legacy platform and data migration. The technical aspects count for about 30% of effort throughout the project.
The work stream where we put the most of our effort (50%), is change management. We first analyse the change impacts before we can make sure the people are prepared for the change and guide them afterwards through timely communications and training sessions.
The last work stream is project management where we make sure to engage all stakeholders, and make sure the project is being delivered on time and on budget.
A big roll-out happens in three phases, but since this roll-out impacted a smaller group of people, we decided to do the roll-out in two phases.
We decided to start a first roll-out with only IT and a couple of early adopters, so that we could validate the technical and change aspects before rolling out to the rest of the organisation in the next phase.
The Result
sp.a is now using G Suite to the fullest, both utilising it for collaboration and communication purposes. They are using Google Drive on a daily basis, which has given them the possibility to achieve results faster.
