Are you a Microsoft Office kind of person? Think you’d never change from them? Maybe you want to explore Google’s office products – G Suite. It’s a much more modern take on tools you’ll need for running your business, and it’s less expensive than your current Office 365.
First let’s look at the offerings of both.
365 includes:
Outlook email
IM
Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Publisher
Access (Database management)
OneDrive (Cloud storage)
OneNote (collaboration)
Calendar
Additional: Skype and Microsoft Office Teams
G Suite includes:
Gmail email
Google Calendar
Hangouts
Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, Keep, Jamboard (all have collaboration built in)
Drive (Cloud Storage)
Additional: Vault, Mobile, Admin
Additional: HIPPA compliant products
In the world of business Office 365 (or just 365) has some advantages. It’s a heritage product. Since it’s been around for so long, many people are familiar with it, have used it for decades and know what to expect. There’s usually no learning curve with new employees. Pay your fee, pop it in, and away you go.
There are some disadvantages to 365 though. If you like to video conference your employees that work from home, that’s going to be done through Skype for free, or through Teams for additional dollars. Skype can be glitchy, especially when you have several people on the call, and when switching from camera view to sharing your screen and back.
And there was a reason we said, USUALLY there is no learning curve for new employees. As your new hires start getting younger, they are unfamiliar with some of the basic 365 offerings, specifically, Outlook and the calendar. These employees were weaned on Google.
The Glory of G Suite
For everything 365 offers you, Google’s G Suite has that and more. (G Suite for Business)
You may already be familiar with Gmail and Google’s Calendar. But let’s look at the other offerings G Suite has.
Google Docs is the same as Word. Google Sheets is the same as Excel. Slides is the same as PowerPoint. What these three products do differently than the 365 offerings is that on all of them you can make them private, or share with someone. When you share with someone, they can make changes to your work and save it back to you, making collaboration easy. To use collaboration on 365, you would need to use OneNote. You can work with OneNote online or you can download it. Working online you can simply share it with someone to collaborate.
OneNote and Google Drive are both cloud storage spaces and work about the same.
Like OneNote – as a place to keep notes, G Suite offers Google Keep. What’s cool about it is that you can save video and voice to Keep. It’s your virtual note book, voicemail and video clip saver. And you can share from Keep to collaborate with others.
Now let’s look at what G Suite has that 365 does not.
Forms helps you create forms. Something you can do in 365’s Excel, but you’d have to be experienced to do it. Forms also can live on the web and be shared. You can use forms for making a job application, use it as a survey and more. You can leave it online for people to fill out, share it to everyone, or just people you invite. You can also password protect it.
Don’t have a dry erase board at your office? Welcome to the online version, courtesy of G Suite called Jamboard. Use it for yourself or like the other Google applications, you can share and collaborate.
Connect with us and we’ll be happy to connect you to the solution that works for you.
At Talon, we’re the technology experts, so you don’t have to be. We make sure that your business is tech-savvy and cutting edge. We want our clients to be free from the worry of their IT responsibilities so they can be the best in their field. We believe in creating long-term business partnerships, and it all starts with a conversation. Contact us today for a free consultation.