At Wordsmithie, we’re always looking for ways to work more efficiently with each other and our clients. One way we communicate smoothly with clients—from our introductory call, through scoping the project, assigning a copywriter and delivering the finished work—is through Google Apps.

Wordsmithie doesn’t have a dedicated IT department, so we need a solution that’s easy to set up and maintain and doesn’t require a CS degree to figure out. Also, our team is scattered all over the world, from California to New England, Singapore to Madrid. We need access from anywhere, to anything we’ve created and shared with each other. We rarely sit in the same space to work together. Since many of us are former Googlers, we’re already familiar with Google products and how to use them best in our daily workflow. That made Google Apps an easy choice.

Google Apps lets us look professional as we use our branded domain name (wordsmithie.com) to send and receive emails through Gmail. We use Apps to store Contacts information for each other and our clients, and to set up meetings with Calendar. We routinely share drafts of case studies and whitepapers using Google Docs, create project trackers with Spreadsheets, collaborate using Suggested Edits and deliver our finished products to clients—all through Google Apps’ built-in Sharing function. We store all of our contracts and files online with Google Drive. They’re then accessible to us on our laptops and phones, from anywhere we can connect to the Internet.

We often meet as a leadership team and hold regular check-ins with clients using our Google Hangouts. Since Hangouts is browser-based, we don’t worry about whether people are using Macs, PCs, iPhones or Androids. Google Hangouts works seamlessly in Chrome and via standalone apps you can install on the iPhone and Android. We also coordinate our busy schedules by overlaying Gmail and other Google Apps accounts in one interface with Google Calendar.

That said, we know that not all of our clients want to collaborate on Google products — so we’re also well versed in MS Office, in case swapping docs with change-tracking is preferred. And if a Hangout isn’t feasible, we’ve got conference call lines all set for the dialing.

Our main goal is to collaborate the way our clients need us to.  We feel fortunate to have such powerful and easy-to-use tools at our fingertips, so we can work in a variety of ways to get the job done.