Back in 2020, when the Roundhouse team began working from home, it soon became apparent to the IT team that colleagues were using a variety of unapproved tech stacks. To combat this, the IT and operations team decided to migrate the business to Google Workspace to bring unity, increase security and improve collaboration across the business.

Despite a successful migration, there were some initial concerns within Roundhouse. For the IT team, these were around security. They wanted to ensure colleagues could work safely from any location, knowing that Workspace was configured securely and in line with best practices. “We needed peace of mind that we had completed everything properly and that it was secure,” explained Gary Halliday, Head of Systems and Technology at Roundhouse.

Across the wider team, learning and understanding a new system proved a real challenge. Gary continued, “As this was a new interface, our team needed to provide full support and training, which at the time we didn’t have the capacity for”. Whilst the team provided training to their best ability, early adoption of Workspace from colleagues was low. This resulted in colleagues being unable to recognise the benefits of Workspace and the senior team struggling to see the ROI. To support buy-in and ensure ROI, Gary and his team began exploring ways to improve end-user adoption.

Roundhouse reached out to Netpremacy as one of the largest Google Workspace premier partners in EMEA. Together, they decided the solution to improving user engagement and embedding best practices was to join Netpremacy’s Customer Success Service programme (CSS).

CSS is a bespoke service that partners with businesses to help transform with Google by using workshops, webinars and exclusive community sessions. The Customer Success Managers act as an extension of a team to help reach the internal IT team’s goals. “The most appealing thing about CSS for us” explained Gary, “was having someone there if we needed training, having someone to reach out to rather than search it out ourselves every time.” The CSS team took time to understand Roundhouse before building a programme to meet their needs.

Firstly, Roundhouse took part in a strategy workshop to discuss its business objectives. This helped the CSS team build a specific programme for them to meet their goals. From there, the security workshop reviewed the security posture of Roundhouses’ Workspace setup, making observations and recommendations to enhance security.

Gary explained, “What we got from the security workshop was exactly what we wanted. It was really useful to take a good look at everything; there were a lot of questions about things we didn’t know. The review helped us examine where we were and make the changes we needed.”

The security workshop gave Roundhouse the peace of mind that their new system was secure. Their newfound confidence could be relayed to other colleagues and the senior team, helping to reiterate the benefits and reason for the migration.

White-Glove Training was provided by Netpremacy to showcase the benefits of collaborative working, ease of communication and the secured access that Google Workspace provides. Systems Delivery Lead, Jack Moar, explained “CSS gives us access to the knowledge of an IT department three times our size, without any of us being Google specialists we have access to someone who can answer those questions.”

To continue providing in-depth knowledge without taking up the internal team’s time, Roundhouse used the CSS Hub, which contains resources full of tips, best practices and more that they could share with the business. Josh Chandler; Systems and Technology Business Partner explained: “The CSS hub is probably the most helpful element, having resources at your fingertips has helped lead people in the right direction, it has given colleagues who previously gave pushback the opportunity to learn and make the most of Workspace, making not only their lives easier but the internal IT teams”.

As a result of joining the CSS programme, Roundhouse have successfully:

Built a Google-centric workforce. Google Workspace adoption has significantly increased across all levels of the Roundhouse team, with colleagues accepting and embracing the change and benefitting from the improved working structure Google provides.

Increased buy-in from senior management. By attending CSS events and communicating with other organisations, Gary and his team can use real-life success stories to improve buy-in from top-level management alongside showcasing significant ROI.

Boosted enthusiasm across the organisation. With the help of CSS resources, Roundhouse has developed in-house schemes such as ‘Tip of the week’ to boost employee engagement with Workspace – a concept that has been well-received across the business.

Build strategic direction with Google. Now Roundhouse understand the benefits of Google Workspace and are learning more about Google products, they can see the potential to use them in a broader and more strategic way across the business. They are already planning another strategy workshop with NP to discuss ideas.

Improved IT resource efficiency. By joining CSS, the Roundhouse IT and operations team have saved time to spend on other projects. They no longer need to train the wider team and fix issues caused by Workspace knowledge gaps.

Moving to Google has allowed the entire Roundhouse team to collaborate better and work more securely. Joining the CSS programme has boosted enthusiasm for a new way of working in Roundhouse. Google Workspace is no longer ‘just a requirement’ but an interface that is enjoyed and enhances the working environment for the Roundhouse team. Jack explained “now our users feel much more on the pulse with Google, they are excited by it and the future development it will bring.”

The CSS programme has helped relieve the pressure within the IT department of getting end-users onboard and proving ROI to senior staff members. Having resources to hand from CSS has provided a “strong element of reliability, a safety net to fall back on, should it be needed.”

Looking to the future, Roundhouse plans to build on the success of their migration, Gary explained ‘’I’m looking forward to the next strategy workshop with the CSS team, we’re in a completely different place now to when we last did it, so it will be interesting for us to go through the process again!”