This Microsoft Customer Switched To Google Because It's 'More Innovative'

After putting both Office 365 and Google for Work through their paces, Canadian real estate company Royal LePage choose Google for its 15,000 agents.

Royal will replace an older Microsoft Exchange cloud email technology (known as Office Web Access Light) with Google Apps.

Royal isn't the biggest contract Google ever won, but the reasons why it won over Microsoft are pretty interesting.

Carolyn Cheng, senior vice president of Business Services at Royal LePage tells us Royal thought Google was better for three reasons:

1. Google Apps was easier to use with no learning curve, she said. The "Google Apps suite was more integrated, not hard to learn. You could start a Google Hangout from Gmail, collaborate on a document."
2. Google was especially easy to use on all sorts of mobile devices, which is important for real estate agents. "When transitioning from a desktop, to a tablet, to a mobile device, all of Google's apps were better integrated on mobile," Cheng said.
3. Perhaps most interesting, Google came across as "more innovative," she said, which is important to Royal since it bills itself as a cutting-edge real estate company. By that she meant that Google was adding new features and helpful features at a really fast pace.

While Microsoft Office 365 was a good choice, and the company would have been happy with it, Google really turned her head, she said.

Even more interesting: Google pitched Apps to this customer because Royal was a customer of Google Maps For Work, which lets realtors embed maps into web sites and documents.

That shows Google is starting to solve a problem we reported on all last year: its lack of enterprise sales knowledge. At one point, Google pushed a business customer into Microsoft's arms by blowing it on the bidding proposal process. And it couldn't handle another potential customer's long, international sales sales cycle.

But Google has clearly gotten its enterprise sales act together. It has reeled in big contracts like The City Of Boston, (76,000 employees on Apps) and Whirlpool (68,000 employees on Apps).

Royal proves it is also convincing customers to buy multiple enterprise products.

This follows new in October that Google signed PricewaterhouseCoopers (45,000 employees on Apps) to be both a customer and a partner helping it sell Google to enterprises.

That professional third-party support is important. Enterprises want to have someone to call when they need help.

The clincher for Cheng was when Google brought in a third-party reseller Cloud Sherpas to help the company get up and running. Cloud Sherpas is helping Royal set up things like using Chromecast to broadcasts Apps presentations to a big screen TV and setting up special open house calendars.