Item: Google Drive
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

For security purposes, my company has a policy that does not allow uploads of any files to any file storage websites or non-company (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo) emails. However, since my clients work with Google Drive and it's essential for our projects' collaboration, I was allowed an exception to share files with my clients in their preferred method. Google Drive makes collaboration easier, and allows them to directly tag me in any parts of documents that they have questions on, allowing for a faster response time.

Pros and Cons

Collaboration - allows members of different companies to work together easily and multiple people can be accessing/editing a document at once
Drafting/Automatic saving - automatic and instant saving allows the document to always be the most up-to-date version with ease
Tagging others - I use this feature a lot to assign and ask questions about different portions of the documents
Variety of document types - this can replace Microsoft Word

Incompatible with Microsoft documents - the formatting is not great when uploading Microsoft documents, and presentations are don't look right when downloading to view in Microsoft Powerpoint
Less powerful than Microsoft - Excel ("Google Sheets") does not have all the features that Excel does, so it's not a good replacement

Return on Investment

Saves time/Less time creating versions for client approval (version history)

Alternatives Considered

Dropbox Business and MS SharePoint

Google Drive is better because it has its own suite of product features so it's simple and easy to use. It also allows multiple people to edit at once, whereas for other products (i.e. SharePoint) you have to "check" the document out for a single person's use.

Other Software Used

Medallia, Qualtrics

Performance

The documents load fairly quickly and also update in real time, especially given the fact that multiple people can be using it at once. The "Offline" feature works great to allow the user to make edits and access the document without access to the internet, and then sync changes later once they're back.

Usability

Google Drive is very easy to use, and most of the time, does not require a subscription (anyone with a Google account can use it). All of the documents are similar to ones that most people have worked with before (i.e. Sheets is similar to Excel) and the interface is pretty intuitive. Changes are saved immediately, so there's not too much of a learning curve and the version history feature allows you to go back if you've made a mistake (i.e. accidentally deleting something).

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Drive is best suited for workplaces that encourage a lot of collaboration and need a free and easy tool to handle that. I team with my clients at different companies, so it's the perfect way for us to work together without physically being together. It's also great for storing personal documents, but I can see how uploading files to the drive can be a security risk to companies if employees are uploading sensitive information to the cloud.

Google Drive is the Ultimate Collaboration Tool

Overall Satisfaction with Google Drive