The Total Economic Impact™ Of Google Workspace 11-16-23

Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Workspace

A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study Commissioned By Google, November 2023

Google Workspace is a suite of tools that enables transformation toward a more collaborative and connected workplace culture that empowers employees across all roles with intuitive apps like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Meet. Workspace allows employees to accomplish more in a Zero Trust, cloud-native security environment, focusing on what matters most. With Workspace, organizations improve the productivity of both office and frontline workers, enhance security, grow revenue, and drive innovation.

Google Workspace includes tools such as Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Meet, Docs, Forms, Sheets, Slides, and AppSheet, which come together to provide a collaborative and secure environment that drives efficiency across the entire workforce. The platform supports greater digitization and continual adaptation with an easy-to-use, cloud-native solution. AI-powered features in Workspace help employees save time, remove the burden of routine tasks, and stay safe against malware and phishing attacks.

Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Workspace. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Workspace on their organizations.1

“The value of Workspace is collaboration and the stability of the system. We’re an organization that works 24/7. It’s the most reliable and collaborative system that we have.”

Head of IT, technology

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed six representatives at five enterprise organizations with experience using Google Workspace. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization, which is an organization with 10,000 employees in office roles and 10,000 in frontline roles.

Interviewees said that prior to using Workspace, their organizations used a mix of on-premises and cloud collaboration tools. Office workers who used these legacy tools could not effectively collaborate in real time, hindering productivity and innovation. Frontline workers often lacked access to these tools altogether, leaving them disconnected from their organizations’ larger digitization and modernization efforts, impeding efficiency, collaboration, and access to convenient communication channels. In addition, IT teams struggled with the uncertain security standards of these legacy systems and saw a need for solutions that enhanced their organizations’ security.

After the investment in Workspace, the interviewees saw a more collaborative, productive, and secure workplace. Key results from the investment include improved collaboration, faster searching for and finding information, more efficient workflows and application development, security tool cost savings and IT productivity, increased incremental profit, and a more connected and inclusive work community.

Key Statistics

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Return on investment (ROI):

336%

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Net present value (NPV):

$57.3 million

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Payback:

<6 months

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Benefits PV:

$74.3 million

Key Findings

Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:

  • Improved collaboration by 30%. Improved collaboration is a top benefit the composite organization experiences by transitioning to Workspace as office and frontline workers alike see significant time savings due to improvements brought by Workspace that drive collaboration, such as AI automation, better and faster communication, easier information sharing, and more data-driven approaches. The improved collaboration, enabled by apps such as Drive, Chat, Gmail, Meet, Docs, and Sheets, leads to users saving 1.5 hours a week on average and is worth $49.5 million for the composite organization over three years.
  • Improved speed of searching for and finding information by 40%. Workspace makes information easily accessible, and this, combined with the platform’s advanced search capabilities, allows individual users at the composite organization to quickly find the files and information they need. This is valued at $6.6 million for the composite organization over three years.
  • More efficient workflows and decreasing application development time by up to 80%. The composite organization greatly increases the efficiency of app development with AppSheet, an easy-to-use no-code platform that empowers actual end users to build and modify apps. The composite uses AppSheet to create apps with various use cases but focuses on those that automate processes and streamline workflows. AppSheet and other Workspace apps like Drive, Forms, and Sheets improve the efficiency of certain defined workflows. This saves $8.7 million for the composite organization over three years.
  • Enhanced security resulting in security tool cost savings. Given the superior security features built into Workspace as a cloud-based platform, the composite organization is less reliant on its third-party anti-spam, anti-phishing, encryption, ransomware, and data loss solutions. This decreased reliance on external vendors enables the composite organization to retire certain legacy security solutions, resulting in cost savings of $1.8 million over three years.
  • Enhanced security resulting in security team and IT team productivity, including 90% less time to configure workstations and a 20% reduction in tickets. The IT team at the composite organization easily administers Workspace as it is straightforward to create and manage Google accounts, integrate the platform with their active directory, onboard and offboard staff members, and flag problem accounts. SSO provides simplicity for both IT and end users, and a lack of outages prevents downtime. Moreover, the Workspace admin console empowers the IT team to immediately take action as necessary.

“The fact that there’s a bunch of AI features inside Workspace is one of the reasons we chose it in the first place. The AI functionalities help automate. We want the people at our organization to focus their time on using their brains, not monotonous tasks that could be automated.”

Change management leader, manufacturing

  • Increase in incremental profit by 1.5% for certain revenue streams. Workspace enables an increase in revenue generation at the composite organization. Apps such as Drive, Sheets, and AppSheet are used to access data, optimize store inventory counts, and provide better customer service. In addition, productivity gains from improved collaboration, AI-powered workflows, and enhanced security allow employees to focus on higher-value, revenue-generating work. Over three years, this leads to a revenue uplift of $26 million and ultimately results in profit worth $2.4 million for the composite organization.
  • Decommissioned legacy systems. Upon adoption, Workspace serves as the composite organization’s primary productivity suite for employees. As such, the composite decommissions redundant legacy productivity tools and saves costs totaling $4.8 million over three years.

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

  • Supports a connected and inclusive work community. Workspace strengthens connection and inclusion by allowing employees to easily communicate and collaborate, both in real time and asynchronously. Google Meet features AI-powered capabilities that help all employees fully participate, including with real-time captions in multiple languages. Meanwhile, Chat features inclusive and custom emojis, and smart chips across Docs, Sheets, and Slides bring in recommended people and content to broaden collaboration for both frontline and office workers.
  • Improved employee experience and morale. As an effective and modern tool that allows employees to work smarter and faster, Workspace improves employee experience and morale. With AI infused across Workspace, employees have more time to focus on the best parts of their jobs and spend less time on routine tasks like responding to emails. Frontline and office workers, particularly younger employees, often use Google products and Workspace apps in their private lives, leading to existing familiarity with the platform.
  • Easier onboarding and training for HR. Workspace speeds the onboarding process with greater digitization; with a Google account, user provisioning for accounts and devices occurs quickly, so that workers receive, sign, and return documents digitally. Workspace unlocks new training opportunities, particularly for frontline workers, who are reached by Gmail and directed to training opportunities, including live ones on Meet.

“A value of Workspace for frontline workers is definitely the sense of belonging to the digitalization of the company. It eliminates the distance between headquarters and the shops. It increases the quality of the work.”

Director of IT, retail

Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:

  • Subscription costs. The composite organization pays subscription costs to Google for the use of Workspace. This cost is driven by factors such as the number of users and how many are in office versus frontline roles. This costs the composite organization $15.4 million over three years.
  • Internal labor for implementation and management. The composite organization dedicates a small team of FTEs to the implementation and ongoing management of Workspace, while users on average spend a few hours learning and getting comfortable with the platform. This costs $4.6 million for the composite organization over three years.

The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $74.3 million over three years versus costs of $17.1 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $57.3 million and an ROI of 336%.

“Being data-driven and collaborative are two big benefits of Workspace. Those are two pillars of what you need for successful innovation. From a security perspective, it’s a very, very safe environment for our data. Workspace has zero reports of data loss or ransomware attacks.”

Change management leader, manufacturing

Key Statistics

  • icon icon

    Return on investment (ROI):

    336%
  • icon icon

    Benefits PV:

    $74.3 million
  • icon icon

    Net present value (NPV):

    $57.3 million
  • icon icon

    Payback:

    <6 months

Benefits (Three-Year)

Improved collaboration Improved speed of searching for and finding information More efficient workflows and decreasing application development tim Enhanced security resulting in security tool cost savings Enhanced security resulting in security team and IT team productivity Increase in incremental profit Decommissioned legacy systems

TEI Framework And Methodology

From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment in Workspace.

The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the investment decision. Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact that Workspace can have on an organization.

  1. Due Diligence

    Interviewed Google stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to Workspace.

  2. Interviews

    Interviewed six representatives at five enterprise organizations using Workspace to obtain data about costs, benefits, and risks.

  3. Composite Organization

    Designed a composite organization based on characteristics of the interviewees’ organizations.

  4. Financial Model Framework

    Constructed a financial model representative of the interviews using the TEI methodology and risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns of the interviewees.

  5. Case Study

    Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology provides a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.

Disclosures

Readers should be aware of the following:

This study is commissioned by Google and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.

Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Workspace.

Google reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.

Google provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.

Consulting Team:

Matthew Carr

Jonny Cook

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