Google Atmosphere: Telegraph employees boosted by move to the Cloud

Employees at Telegraph Media Group feel more connected and more productive since the firm moved to Cloud applications, a factor that can be usefully montised says CIO Paul Cheeseborough.

The media giant has been one of the most enthusiastic Cloud Computing advocates with deployments of Salesforce.com and SuccessFactors in place. The firm has also rolled out Google Apps to 2000 users, migrating awway from Microsoft Outlook. This migration took place between June last year and July this year.

The firm decided to evaluate the impact that the new Google Cloud apps were having on its staff and conducted a qualitative survey of all employees to measure satisfaction and compare productivity, efficiency, collaboration, communication and accessibility before and after the switch over.

Key findings included:

• During the transition, staff were 3.63 times more productive while mobile, rising to 16.2 times greater after 6 months. This has a direct benefit in terms of connecting the workforce with remote workers, partners, client and suppliers, said Cheeseborough.
• During the transition, staff were 2.56 times more communicative, rising to 5.95 times greater after 6 months. Employees now spend 36% more time communicating with co-workers, which in turn is leading to key positive impacts on productivity and efficiency, noted Cheeseborough.
• During transition, employees collaborated 4.9 times more than previously, rising to 16.1 times after 6 months
• Some 65% of employees feel they get work done more quickly and efficiently, 42% of employees feel more engaged in their work and 24% feel they generate more innovative ideas.

“The biggest resistance to change was from my own department, but the remit I had from the chief executive was to move the IT department from a 'run the business' model to a 'change the business' model,” said Cheeseborough. “We use Cloud Computing across the organisation to drive change.”

Paul Cheeseborough will be one of the speakers at BusinessCloud9's Business Cloud Summit in December.