While SharePoint does a lot of things well, it also struggles in many areas. These issues can make choosing the right document management or team collaboration platform more challenging. We may be a bit biased, but we really believe that Google Workspace provides greater capabilities at a lower TCO.
Need some convincing? Here are seven reasons why you should choose Google Workspace with AODocs as your SharePoint alternative.
1. The world is moving to Google Workspace
If your company isn’t ready for the next generation of workers, you're going to have some trouble attracting the best talent to come work for you.
“In 2016, Chromebooks accounted for 58% of mobile devices shipped to primary and secondary schools in the United States.” - The New York Times
While Gen-X, Baby Boomers, and early millennials (like myself) grew up primarily using Windows and Office, people born in the later millennial years all the way through to today are growing up with Chromebooks, MacBooks, iPhones, and Android phones. Since many of them are part of the 800 million active Google Drive users, they often prefer to use Google Workspace.
“Millennials will make up 46% of the workforce by 2020.” - Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina
Given that millennial employees will soon make up the majority of the workforce, there has never been a better time to switch to a more agile document management solution.
2. The high investment cost associated with SharePoint
For an organization of 30 people, it would nearly require a $15,000 investment to set up and run Microsoft Office365 and SharePoint. To buy Google Workspace's most expensive license for the same amount of people, you would only need to invest $1,500.
Organizations often add SharePoint to Office365 to enable collaboration, implement document security protocols and retention policies, and create automated workflows. On the other hand, AODocs does the same things (and more) on the Google Workspace platform, at a fraction of the cost.
3. SharePoint costs don't end after the initial setup
SharePoint consulting is a multi-billion dollar industry. Why? Well, oftentimes, SharePoint needs some level of customization to meet the needs of each organization. Some industry consultants advise that you budget between $20,000 - $250,000 per year for SharePoint consulting services. It's safe to say that is a lot of money.
On the other hand, Google Workspace and AODocs work right “out-of-the-box." If you do need some help, AODocs offers in-house consulting services. It's almost always easier when the company that built software shows you how to implement it properly. On average, our consulting fees add up to approximately $8,000. So, you’ll still have about $12,000 left over to reinvest back into your business.
4. Real-Time Collaboration
Google Workspace was built to operate in the cloud. From the very beginning, Google's entire suite of apps was designed to work in real-time. From co-writing documents to working with three colleagues simultaneously on a shared spreadsheet, Google Workspace has set the standard when it comes to business collaboration. AODocs gives you even more collaboration capabilities by making sure that everyone is working on the correct version of a document. On the other side, many of Microsoft's products have been retrofitted to work with the cloud. However, since they weren't initially designed for it, they often run into syncing issues.
5. Mobile-Ready
For a company to survive, it must be ready for the mobile world. With Android and iOS dominating the 4.93 billion person mobile phone market, it's very important. Google Workspace apps run beautifully on both Android and iOS devices. Of course, you can get a Microsoft Surface but you probably won't see a lot of Windows phones around the office.
6. AI-Compatible
There’s a reason that Google, Apple, and Amazon have designed AI-capable devices. AI is positioning itself to be a dominant force in the coming years. Google’s AI is already able to extract text from images, identify and tag a picture’s location, and detect the presence of sensitive information to minimize data security issues. When you sign up for Google Workspace with AODocs, Google’s AI will give your organization’s document security a boost.
7. Superior Search
It’s easy to forget where you saved your latest spreadsheet. Even the most well-organized people lose documents. It’s at this point when the search function becomes incredibly important. Cloud Search brings Google’s excellent web search technology and combines it with machine learning so you can find your documents in Google Workspace faster than ever before. With AODocs, you get even more advanced search capabilities. After organizing your documents into AODocs libraries, you’re able to use combinations of keywords and metadata to track down your documents. Workers can spend up to 20% of their time consolidating and searching for documents. So, effective search tools can provide your organization with a big boost in productivity.
Do you have employees that can’t let go of Microsoft Excel?
No problem! We've recently released AODocs UFO (Universal File Opener). It allows you to open any file in the Google Workspace environment (like Excel files) and retain all document management controls.
SharePoint is part of a generation of enterprise tools that were designed before the cloud ever existed. Instead of being born in the cloud, it had to adapt to it. Other the other hand, Google Workspace is a cloud-native. That allows it to be more collaborative, flexible, and cost-effective. We didn’t even bother mentioning storage space in this post because the Google Workspace license gives Google Drive more of it than you could ever need. Whatever your business size, there's no reason not to at least look into Google Workspacesuite as a SharePoint alternative.
Modernize with AODocs
AODocs is a flexible, cloud native content management platform designed to increase business agility by replacing legacy/on-premise systems with a scalable SaaS environment that allows business users to build and control their content-rich processes.
Tags: Document Management
