TheHomeMag Goes With Google Applications Premium

One of the leading direct-mail home improvement magazines in the country, TheHomeMag has converted to Google Applications Premium to provide added support for its franchisees.

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(PR NewsChannel) / November 20, 2009 / Cape Coral, Fla. / TheHomeMag, a leading direct-mail home improvement magazine, has converted to Google Applications Premium in an effort to provide increased reliability and collaborative capabilities to its franchisees. TheHomeMag selected the Google Apps Premium platform citing the ability to support branches remotely, which is a benefit for the support staff at the corporate offices, and is also critical to growth. 

"The ability to create internal support sites has allowed for better accountability and quicker response times to our franchisees," said Steve Aldrich, IT manager for the company. "We took a phased roll-out approach, allowing us to provide maximum personal support for each of our 150 users. By converting groups of less than 40 each week for four weeks, we had an extremely successful adoption rate."
 
The key to success was encouraging each office to have a "GAP Evangelist." This is a person who took the lead in learning about GAP and sharing with the office what they found most useful. Sharing documents for collaborative projects and calendars so that each person in the office has access to them is incredible, as is the available complete Smart Phone integration. What this means to the franchisee is that we now provide a secure means for them to share with their entire team any and all documents that are needed for day-to-day business. The ability to instantly chat (via text, audio or video) with anyone else in the company is a vast improvement over picking up the phone. Add to that the ability to search the text of chat sessions and all email, and you have one incredibly multi-faceted tool wrapped up into one interface.
 
"Better than 90% of our users have converted to the GAP interface, leaving behind Outlook and other desktop email clients," says Aldrich. "The ability to have everything right there in one interface makes supporting the franchisees and their staff a breeze. Any technology conversion can be scary. The first few days of trepidation gave way to resoundingly positive feedback. This conversion took folks by surprise at just how easy it was." 

Chris Goebel, president of the company, says, "TheHomeMag has a win on its hands with this conversion. We are now looking forward to the ability to support the next wave of growth for our franchise, as well as the continued growth of our franchisees' businesses."
 
TheHomeMag is your leading local home improvement direct mail magazine, offering local solutions and helping to inspire home improvement ideas.  For our franchisees, the company offers a simple, proven franchise system combined with the right industry, and an unparalleled support team that is with the franchisee every step of the way to help their business grow.  TheHomeMag is equal parts industry-leading magazine and equal parts successful business franchise opportunity.  The magazine is the franchise, and its business is lead-generating advertising.
 
For more information about TheHomeMag, or to talk about one of our available markets, call toll free 888-772-2269 or visit us online at www.THMfranchise.com.

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SOURCE: THMfranchise.com

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