Google Data

Posted by Vishal Agarwal, Chief Marketing Officer, NoMoreRack

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Vishal Agarwal, Chief Marketing Officer of NoMoreRack, an online retailer of discounted brand-name apparel and household products based in New York City. See what other organizations that use Google Search Appliance have to say.

When we launched NoMoreRack in 2010 we started out with eight products a day on our website. Today, we have 15,000 apparel, home, and electronics products at any given time. To make our fast-growing inventory easy for customers to find, we’ve chosen Google Search Appliance (GSA).

As we evolve NoMoreRack, we’re working hard to turn the flash-sale shopping model on its head. We’re not about buying a small number of discount products from closeout companies, and then getting rid of them quickly. We buy thousands of units of in-demand day to day quality goods directly from the same manufacturers and suppliers who sell to top retailers, so we can keep products in stock for days instead of hours. We also want to provide a better online shopping experience than what people usually expect from a discount retailer – which is where the GSA plays the perfect role.

Our previous site search was custom built by our in-house team. It was based on tagging, and although it served the purpose, it did not have advanced features like suggest as you type, relevance or linguistics strategy. This meant sometimes customers couldn’t find the exact product they wanted.

GSA gives all of the tools we missed from our homegrown search – both internally and for customers. GSA will index every word from product descriptions, so if customers use some of that language in a search – like “floral floor-length sun dress” – they are far more likely to see these products in search results. We expect the search results to be more relevant, since GSA will adapt to how our customers search, and will serve up better results over time. Our customers will get to use refinements for things like color, size, and price to narrow down results faster and more accurately.

With tools like Searchandiser, a third party tool powered by the GSA, we’ll create special webpages around popular products or brands that customers search for, and display these eye-catching pages once they’ve conducted a search or refined by a category.

We’ve got the right merchandise at the right prices that our customers are asking for – and with the GSA, we can show them the right product at the right time.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/6003169

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Posted by Richard Huré, CIO, Fred & Farid Group

Editor’s note: Our guest blogger is Richard Huré, CIO of digital creative group Fred & Farid Group. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Fred & Farid Group is the first French independent Digital Creative Group based in Paris and Shanghai. Founded in 2006 by Frederic Raillard and Farid Mokart, we create digital integrated ad campaigns for global brands such as Audi, Porsche, Diesel, Société Générale, Garnier, and Mondelez. We’ve grown extremely fast and now have more than 350 employees in our Paris and Shanghai offices and have won 129 digital distinctions since 2011.

Though Fred & Farid is known for its tech-savvy campaigns spanning web, mobile, social, video and music, until recently, we used old-school business applications like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office. When I joined in 2011, I wanted to move our company to the cloud to improve efficiency and increase collaboration between our creative, technology, and business teams in France and China. I chose to roll out Chromebooks because Chrome OS is the perfect operating system for the cloud — it’s easy to manage and maintain, makes collaboration a snap, and offers integrated security and control.

Macs are a popular choice among the creative team. But I soon realized not everyone needs a Mac, especially the 60 percent of our employees who work in office roles like marketing, sales, IT, and administration. We recently rolled out 10 Samsung Chromebooks in a small pilot and plan to have 200 employees on Chromebooks by the end of the year. Our decision to adopt Chromebooks wasn’t based solely on price — though we expect to save a significant amount compared to deploying Macs — but also a desire to have faster collaboration. When you have a Chromebook, you think less about downloading stuff to your hard drive and more about sharing information in the cloud. With Google Drive, we’re able to store, sync and share all our important files easily, whether it’s when we’re on our Chromebooks or on our phones and tablets on the go.

We use Google Hangouts for all our voice communications — we don’t even have phone lines in our offices anymore. In the Paris office alone, we conduct more than 50 Hangouts each day. Of course, we also use Drive for document sharing and Calendar for scheduling.

From an IT management perspective, Chromebooks are a dream. Using the management console, we can push apps onto employees’ devices, including some in-house collaboration apps we’ve created like the Fred & Farid Bridge, a social network where employees share photos, videos, music, and other creative ideas. In the future, when we have 200 Chromebooks, we’ll explore new ways to use the Management Console, including for security and analytics.

Chrome OS is like a blank canvas, and we can’t wait to come up with new ways to use it. I’m thinking about installing scannable tabs on meeting room doors, and when employees enter they can check in with their smartphones so the rooms show up as ‘booked’ in Google Calendar. Creativity thrives when people can freely communicate, collaborate, and share ideas. Chromebooks will help us unify employees across time zones into one collaborative team — even as the company grows at an unstoppable pace.

Posted by Dale Edman, Vice President of E-Commerce and Online Marketing, The Wasserstrom Company

Revised Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Dale Edman, Vice President of E-Commerce and Online Marketing for The Wasserstrom Company, a supplier and distributor of restaurant and food service supplies based in Columbus, Ohio. Due to a misprint, the Search speed improved for businesses and consumers, with results delivered in 300 milliseconds not .003 seconds. See what other organizations that use Google Search Appliance have to say.

When our customers in the restaurant and foodservice industries visit our website, they don’t have time for leisurely browsing – they know what they need and they want to find it fast. The same goes for consumers who don’t want to waste time hunting for that perfect cast-iron skillet or chef’s knife from among our 100,000 products. Search results on our website used to take as long as 10 seconds to show up, which was frustrating for shoppers and would drive them away. We needed to bring speed to our search, as well as more user-friendly ways to promote our products in our search tools without calling in IT help. We knew we had to go Google. It made sense to choose the people who know search the best.

One of the things slowing searches down was the way our IBM search product managed our customized catalogues, which is how our business customers shop for their own hand-picked products. Even if a catalogue contained only a couple of hundred products, every search request looked for matches within the entire product database – an unnecessary process that created delays.

For both the business and consumer sides of the business, we chose the Google Search Appliance (GSA), an improved search product targeted at online retailers like us. We also used the Searchandiser, a third party tool powered by the GSA, that gave us more control over how we promote products in search pages – for example, we can add synonyms and refinements that help customers search more accurately.

Search speed improved for businesses and consumers, with results delivered in 300 milliseconds instead of 10 seconds. The GSA searches only the products within a business customer’s catalogue, which means results turn around faster. In the near future, we’ll use GSA to add even more custom touches to business customers’ catalogues – like detailed descriptions of products, and special search landing pages built around brands or product types. With the GSA, our customers find what they need faster, which means less time spent searching and more time for making their kitchens run smoothly.

Posted by Director Chen Shou-Chiang, Information Management Office of Directorate General of Highways (DGH)

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Director Chen Shou-Chiang, who leads the Information Management Office of DGH. Read their full story here, learn about the six ways Maps are Going Google and see what other organisations that have gone Google have to say.

Taiwan is prone to natural disasters. Earthquakes, typhoons, landslides and heavy rainfall are very common, especially during the monsoon season. As the authority in charge of Taiwan’s land transport infrastructure, the Directorate General of Highways needs to ensure the safety of road users across 7,000km of highways, 4,000 bridges and 200 tunnels.

We used to rely on civilian drivers or news media for updates on road conditions. This did not allow us to respond fast enough to emergencies. We want to be able to predict crisis situations so that we can alert motorists and the general public. We also want to know when we need to dispatch rescue teams immediately.

We were already using the free version of Google Earth for our existing web-based platform known as thb-GIS (Geographic Information System). The platform consolidated important weather and environment information across 19 government agencies and private companies. The agencies accessed the platform for safety management and disaster prevention.

However, these databases could not provide us with intelligence that we could use directly. It took time to join the data before we could use it. We wanted a solution that could overlay images, terrain and vector data over the map of Taiwan to quickly identify areas that are likely to be affected by a weather crisis.

We ran comprehensive tests to trial Google Earth Enterprise and were confident that it met our requirement for stability, performance, security and user-friendliness. Google Earth Enterprise allows us to define access rights for different groups of users. This is an important requirement if we want to share the intelligence with other agencies and the public. Our next step was to develop SafeTaiwan, a platform that overlays crucial data used in emergency response to a map of Taiwan. This gives us a rich visual dashboard that immediately provides insights for better decision-making and risk management.

With Google Earth Enterprise powering SafeTaiwan, we are now able to monitor real-time conditions on the ground. To further complement available data, we installed 2,800 CCTVs across the country, streaming live images that help us to accurately assess and prioritise our responses during emergencies. The solution improved emergency response time tremendously. Previously, it took us hours to determine the magnitude of any disaster. Today, it only takes us minutes. More importantly, it allows us to analyse historical data to help in predictive disaster management. For example, rainfall readings collected at ten-minute intervals are displayed on Google Earth Enterprise’s dashboard to forecast an approaching typhoon or flash flood. Warning signals are then sent out through SafeTaiwan to alert the public and agencies concerned.

The positive feedback we received from our employees and the public has spurred us on to continue developing the platform for greater use. We have a vision to expand the boundaries of SafeTaiwan to share data from around the region. Eventually, we want to promote greater cooperation in disaster preparedness and recovery efforts across borders. We are confident that with Google Earth Enterprise we will be up for this challenge.

https://support.google.com/a/topic/1056394?hl=en&ref_topic=27380

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Posted by Uzi Bashan, Fire Officer with Israel’s Fire and Rescue Commission

Editor’s note: Today, guest blogger Uzi Bashan, Fire Officer with Israel’s Fire and Rescue Commission, tells us how his organization relies on Google Maps for Business to quickly identify and put out tens of thousands of fires per year. Discover why forward-thinking organizations are investing in tools to help them prepare for situations in advance, including mapping technology. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

Israel’s Fire and Rescue Commission runs the nationwide emergency fire response system, dispatching a team of 1,850 firefighters to blazes large and small within minutes of fires starting. We operate 24 call centers that field 87,000 emergency calls per year, 44,000 of which are fire-related.

Responding to fires is a complex process. Call center operators quickly obtain details, alert the closest firefighters and report the incident to the national control center. Then, operators at the control center calculate the fastest route for the firefighting team, often guiding them through dangerous terrain. We used to rely on a GIS application, which was integrated into a larger nationwide network for managing and monitoring all fire incidents.The GIS application was plagued with slow response times, causing delays getting firefighters to fires: firefighters must reach fires within seven minutes, on average, before risks to life and property dramatically increase. Our old system took too long to calculate routes to fires, costing us precious minutes.

After the devastating Mt. Carmel fire in December 2010, which killed 44 people, injured dozens, and wiped out nearly 40,000 acres of forest, senior officers at the Fire and Rescue Commission realized we needed a more advanced fire alert system. This prompted our decision to deploy mapping technology from Google.

Now, using Google Earth Enterprise as our main GIS mapping platform, each call center operator has two screens – one displaying information from the national system, and the other displaying maps with Google Earth. Google Earth maps, with customized data layers, are automatically updated in real-time to show exactly where fires are and which firefighters are the closest to them. What used to take minutes now takes seconds.

Google Maps have a resolution at least four times higher than the old GIS system, so dispatchers can clearly visualize the area around a fire. Using custom information layers developed by the Fire and Rescue Commission’s IT team, dispatchers can get access to deeper information, such as building height and depth and type of terrain, within a few clicks. They can also visually locate the nearest water sources, including hydrants, reservoirs and private pools and ground-level details, helping dispatchers determine if a street is too narrow for a fire truck to pass. The information helps us make split-second decisions around which firefighter teams to send and how to get them there quickly.

Call center operators and firefighters alike are simply stunned at how Google mapping technologies have helped them do their jobs. With 99.9% up time, an easy-to-use interface, and automatic, real-time incident updates, Google Earth Enterprise provides the reliable tools we need to respond to fires quickly and safely. Now, our emergency responder can reach fires in seconds instead of minutes. And in a profession where every one of those second matters, gaining that time back helps us save lives and property across Israel.

Posted by Eduardo Gomide, CEO of Foreducation

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Eduardo Gomide, CEO of Foreducation, an organization created to deploy and manage the use of Google technology in the classroom. Eduardo is also the grandson of the founders of Colégio Mater Dei, a leading private school in São Paulo, Brazil. Today, Colégio Mater Dei is part of Weducation, a K-12 educational group comprised of seven campuses, 550 employees, and 3,000 students.

Since 1962, Colégio Mater Dei has been a family-run school that prides itself on its adoption of innovative technology. As part of our move to incorporate technology into the academic environment — inside and outside the classroom walls — we started using Google Apps for Education in 2013 after noticing that teachers and administrators were using Gmail and Google Drive on their own. We’re already seeing great results; since introducing Google Apps to math and science classes, teachers report that our students are earning better grades on assignments and tests and are more engaged.

Now, we’re taking things even further by creating the first ever physical Google Learning Space, a collaborative learning center where students of all ages come to read, learn, and share using technology in a specially designed environment. The colorful space is equipped with two Chromecasts, which students use to project assignments, presentations and videos from their laptops and tablets; two Smart TVs; a sound system; and a high-performance wireless network. The room is set up to accommodate a variety of learning activities — students can choose from beanbags for independent reading, stools for guided instruction, or mats for interactive group work.

In the Google Learning Space students can use the Google Apps they already enjoy using to home, while they are at school. As Mater Dei high school student Thiago Pinheiro says, “Google tools make my life easier and more versatile because I can work wherever I am without worrying about storage, access or the possibility of losing something.” At the elementary level, all students are using educational apps with Google Play, a portal for Android apps on tablets.

Watching students improve their test scores and grades with Google tools has been incredibly rewarding, but the biggest impact of going Google is the new level of enthusiasm students bring to the classroom. When students are more engaged, they learn better — our kids have proven that to us. Creating a learning environment in which students are truly engaged with technology distinguishes Mater Dei as what we like to think of as a school of the future.

Posted by Clayton Jones, Product Manager, Google Enterprise

Bring your own device (BYOD) is no longer just a trend — it’s how business gets done. With thousands of mobile applications to choose from and an increasing number of websites optimized for mobile, today’s employees can work whenever and wherever they choose. It also means IT organizations now have the dual challenge of both helping employees be more productive and protecting corporate data.

We’re adding new features to Google Apps Mobile Management for Android to help your organization meet these challenges head on:

1. Inactive account wipe: Set policies that will wipe an inactive account from a device if it has not been synced for a predetermined number of days, so a lost device that wasn’t reported or the old device left in a drawer does not cause a security risk.
2. Support for EAP-based WiFi Networks: Configure settings and distribute certificate authority (CA) based certs for EAP networks.
3. Compromised device detection: Set policies that will detect signals for common forms of a compromised device, such as “rooting” or installing a custom “ROM”, and block that device.
4. Additional reporting fields: Access new reporting fields via the API and Admin console to better understand the devices that are in use and troubleshoot issues. Additional fields include: Serial number, IMEI, MEID, WiFi MAC address, baseband version, kernel version, build number, mobile operator/carrier, language settings, and account ownership/management.

To learn more about these mobile device management features visit our Help Center. You can also visit the Google Admin console at admin.google.com to enable this service to help you rest assured that your corporate data stays safe.

Posted by Liz Sproat, Head of Education, EMEA

Around the world, schools are finding innovative ways to use technology to break down the traditional walls of the classroom, while overcoming the challenges of higher academic standards and tighter budgets. Today, we’re pleased to share the stories from two schools in Wales who’ve gone Google to help them meet the demands of a modern-day education system.

Gowerton School in Gowerton Village serves 1,135 students aged 11 to 18. The IT team migrated students and educators from on-premise email to Gmail and Google Apps. Industry experts recognize them as one of the first schools in Britain to embrace cloud technologies.

The school’s entire curriculum – from geography to cooking – is taught with Google Apps. Students can access assignments, lesson plans and other learning resources through Google Drive, while teachers can provide immediate feedback through Google Docs. This has brought about significant teaching and learning benefits including greater collaboration and more tailored feedback.

Additionally, the move to Google allowed the school to re-invest cost savings from using cloud-based technologies. Gowerton saved £30,000 (US$50,000) in licensing and server maintenance, allowing them to buy numerous Chromebooks. Chromebooks are ideal for Gowerton because they’re easy to maintain and can be used by anyone without much training.

“We’re very keen to deploy more Chromebooks. Students love them because they are intuitive to use and give them instant access to Google Apps,” said Darren Long, Teacher of ICT and ICT Coordinator at Gowerton. “They’re also great from an administration point of view. We experimented with laptops for a while but found they were too expensive and high-maintenance. With Chromebooks, we don’t need to worry about maintenance, updates are automatic, and they are good value.”

Students at Gowerton School using Chromebooks

Coleg Cambria in North East Wales has also gone Google. Coleg Cambria is one of the largest colleges in the United Kingdom, serving more than 7,000 full-time and 30,000 part-time students. Previously, students used Microsoft Live@edu accounts — but as the college expanded, the IT team struggled to support all the new accounts from a time and cost perspective. The problem was solved when the IT department moved everyone to Google Apps and installed Chromebooks around campus. Thanks to the remote, web-based management console, Coleg Cambria found Chromebooks easy to deploy to a large, growing body of students. Furthermore, the IT team no longer had to spend time going to each computer to install an update, since Google pushes these automatically.

With Google Apps, students and teachers are more proactive when it comes to learning and teaching. Teachers find apps from the Chrome App Store and incorporate them in lesson plans. Assignments and resources are saved to students’ Google Drive accounts. As a result, students can simply log into their Google accounts to access their own virtual “classroom.”

“The freedom for students and tutors to find and work with interesting applications — anything from anatomy to mind-mapping — has changed the way they think about learning and teaching,” said Mark Brandish, Head of IT Services at Coleg Cambria. “Traditionally students and teachers have just taken what we’ve provided. Now we’re a facilitator, giving them access to tools that allow them to be more innovative.”

Students from Coleg Cambria using Chromebooks outside the classroom

You can read more stories of how passionate educators and talented students are using Google for Education in their learning environments. We’re excited to hear such stories of how technology helps prepare today’s youth for a better future.

https://support.google.com/vault/answer/2584132?hl=en

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