Migrating 500+ Employees Across 50 Locations to Google Workspace
Green Building Group builds high-quality, energy-efficient homes across four main locations in three countries, with over 500 employees — many working externally — spread across 50 distributed sites.
The Challenge: Two Decades of Legacy IT
The existing IT landscape had grown organically over two decades. Many systems were overloaded, and the resulting gaps could often only be bridged through exceptional personal effort from individual employees. With a sales-intensive business model — and a sales team highly sensitive to change — any cloud migration had to be handled with great care.
The Solution: Gentle Migration
Google Workspace was the right solution. Together with Kollaborateure, Green Building Group developed a "gentle migration" approach: all employees across 50 locations were thoroughly trained and received a tailored package from the Google Workspace feature set, matched to their specific needs. The sales team was accompanied closely throughout the transition.
Systems Replaced
Multiple mail servers MS Outlook Thunderbird MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint)Key Stats
In Their Own Words
"In hindsight, we are impressed by the optimisation potential that was unlocked by introducing Google. Our employees are spread across Germany and Austria — before, the distance made many things difficult. Now we are all much closer to the German headquarters. We can bridge hundreds of kilometres because we all use one integrated system. This first experience, combined with side effects like significantly reduced training overhead, has shown us what is possible."
— Green Building Group Management"Together with Kollaborateure, we developed a process of 'gentle migration'. Sales teams are often very sensitive to change, and we couldn't risk the cloud move becoming a source of negative sentiment."
— Green Building Group Management"All employees across our 50 locations were thoroughly trained and received a package tailored to their needs from the Google Workspace feature set. Everyone found a feature that excited them. Kollaborateure worked closely alongside our sales staff during the transition. Following the principle of 'as gentle as necessary, as efficient as possible', the rollout was a complete success for both employees and management. With a unified IT and communication system as the foundation, we can now implement almost any workflow we want."
— Green Building Group Management