3 Benefits of Google Workspace for Financial Industry: a Quick Start Guide

The financial industry is no stranger to new technologies; besides the IT industry, the financial industry is the quickest to apply new technology and techniques to their endeavour. Behind a big successful financial firm requires not only people who make big decisions or even bigger transactions, there are also people who work at the background processing daily paperworks. 

Today, I am going to talk about Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), a mundane yet very powerful collection of tools that facilitates and improves the efficiency and productivity of SMEs and large firms. You may ask, how is a web-based email client, document editors and cloud storage make a big difference in my business? Google Workspace (G Suite) is much more than just that: it also includes a conference software, chat room, notes and the ability to integrate Google’s search engine into your website, all included in the same package. By reading this blog, you should be able to understand why you should use Google Workspace (G Suite) for financial institutes. 

1. One of the Most Trusted Leaders in Data Security

For most businesses, particularly the financial firms handling a large amount of money everyday, the security of the system is the top priority. Don’t worry, Google Workspace (G Suite) has a robust security build around it and is easy to configure and maintain. The Forrester named Google Workspace (G Suite) as a leader in the Data Security Portfolio Vendors Wave.

First things first, whether your business is a large international corporation with offices around the world, or a local financial firm/institution, looking for a product that complies with international laws such as GDPR or industry specific regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, Google Workspace (G Suite) is in compliance with most of these specifications. If you are looking for qualifications and 3rd party certifications, Google Workspace (G Suite) is also compliant to international standards such as ISO/IEC 27001, 27017 and 27018, SOC 2/3 etc. All data in Google’s servers are also encrypted at storage level using AES256 or AES128.

For administrators, aside from the usual suspects such as 2FA login, IAM etc. Features like Google Workspace Security Center and Security Investigation Center also make it very easy to look up for potential risks and compromised users. Not only this, the security can also be fine-tuned on the user levels and change the security policy in real time. 

For developers, they can control the Google Workspace (G Suite) through OAuth 2.0 with domain-wide delegation. It can also be integrated with 3rd party security services such as OneLogin, Phishline etc. to add an additional layer of security. 

Perhaps the most important feature is that, particularly in these times with COVID-19, remote working from home is very easy. Most companies require connecting to a VPN provided by the company in order to login from outside the company network. When integrating with 3rd party security services such as OneLogin and/or Google’s own Authenticator, connecting from outside the company network becomes much easier and effortless, great for employees with less technology experience.

2. Streamlining Workflow by Centralizing Everything 

Do you find your employees having to dance around multiple software and services in their daily work? Have you ever experienced this? Your employees, receive documents and file with email, download the documents then edit them offline with document editing software. Once finished editing the document, it is sent via email. Then somewhere between the email chain, just to find someone mistakenly switched the newest and the other version of documents, which cost one or more extra man day? 

In these cases, Google Workspace (G Suite) can help your business streamline the collaboration process. Once finished downloading the file through Gmail, your employees can then upload it onto Drive and edit the document with Docs, Sheets and Slide. 

3. Lowered Operation Costs in response to COVID-19

Migrating systems onto the cloud these days is a good way to cut costs, especially to companies not in the IT industries. Not having to hire a large number of people to maintain the servers, paying for licenses, paying less on electricity bills for cooling and running the servers are attractive incentives to make the transition. The flexibility to allocate the right amount of resources at the right time also allows your business to minimize overhead costs and allocate more resources to focus on the primary goal.