• Helps place animals into new forever homes, despite social distancing measures, with digital rehoming trials using Google Meet

• Lowers hardware costs with Chrome and mobile devices

• Removes technological barriers for workers and empowers them to find their own solutions

• Assists teams across England and Wales to collaborate to get the right help for animals in need

While the frontline workers at the RSPCA have the most direct impact, roles such as Moynihan’s are no less important for the overall running of the organization. “Our job in IT is to support our frontline workers so they can do the best job they can and not have to worry about the technology,” he says. “Our strategic mantra is ‘Together for animal welfare.’ Everyone in every department is all working towards that same goal.”

Since 2012, the RSPCA has been using Google Workspace as its primary productivity platform. “We wanted a system that provided effective collaboration and communication tools without geographical boundaries. It also had to be economic, intuitive, secure and future-proof, everything our existing system wasn’t. Google Workspace met those requirements,” says Moynihan. The choice of Google Workspace was also driven by its cost-effectiveness. As a charity that relies on public funds, the RSPCA has to ensure that it spends its donors’ money wisely.

In 2012, when the RSPCA first migrated from an on-premises to a cloud-based solution, Google Cloud Partner CTS helped the organization optimize its new productivity platform, providing technical expertise and training.

The RSPCA rolled out the new solution in three stages - nicknamed “Ready”, “Steady” and “Go” - to minimize disruption and allow for course corrections during the adoption phase. The Ready stage was for the IT team rollout, the Steady stage was for a select group of superusers who were ready to help their colleagues during the third phase, and Go was for when Google Workspace was rolled out to the rest of the organization.

With Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Sheets, field and office teams can benefit from the power of anywhere, anytime collaboration. “They can access the files they need wherever they are with Google Drive, instead of having to look through unwieldy email threads. The mantra we had was ‘Share, don’t send!’ during the rollout,” says Moynihan.

Google Forms has proven itself vital over the years as a way of quickly and cleanly gathering data from all over the organization. The RSPCA doesn’t have a huge team of developers on staff, but easy to install add-ons within Google Workspace allow the IT team to quickly turn Google Forms into structured data for use with other tools. “We used to use emails, paper forms and PDFs for everything from basic forms to recruitment approvals. Many of these processes have moved to Google Forms. Everything is accessible anytime, anywhere; it’s indispensable to how we work,” says Moynihan.

The RSPCA also invested in Chromeboxes and Chromebooks for its staff to reduce hardware costs and minimize software downloads. Meanwhile, the use of Android Enterprise and iOS mobile devices means that the charity’s team of rescuers and animal welfare officers can instantly and securely access the files they need in the field.

With Google Workspace, the RSPCA has built a powerful productivity platform that has transformed communication and simplified collaboration across the organization. “The collaboration with Google Workspace has been seamless,” says Moynihan. “It really does lower those barriers to working together wherever you are and whatever device you’re using.”

While the tangible savings in time and costs are hugely important, the benefits of Google Workspace for Moynihan’s team are evidenced as well. “With Google Workspace, we can be enablers rather than a bottleneck,” he says. “We say ‘yes’ more and focus on helping teams with solutions and innovation. Rather than fixing problems, we’re helping departments across the organization to come up with their own solutions.”

And the improvements haven’t stopped. The organization is constantly striving to better itself in new ways with new tools to speed up onboarding, training and animal rehoming. To get rescued animals out of centers and into homes faster, Moynihan and his team are currently trialling a replacement of the existing physical adoption form with an online version using Google Forms. With Google Workspace at its heart, the RSPCA is more ready than ever to take on new challenges and continue its work of rescuing, rehabilitating, and rehoming or releasing hundreds of thousands of animals every year.

“We might be nearly 200 years old, but we are a modern workforce,” says Moynihan. “As a welfare organization, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive, dynamic, innovative place to work and Google Workspace is a key part of that.”