Extending Google’s Grab and Go program to businesses so they can save time and money

Devices are more than tools; they’re the home base where your employees go to connect, collaborate, and get their work done. So when an employee’s device isn’t working, the effects are greater than simply the cost of replacement. In addition to the hours employees devote to troubleshooting devices instead of completing projects, there’s the time your IT team spends on repair and replacement when they could be focusing on more strategic initiatives. In fact, IHS estimates that IT downtime costs a large enterprise $60 million a year.

But what if you could decrease that lost time from hours and days to just a few minutes? We answered this question at Google by creating our Grab and Go program, allowing employees to use self-service stations to quickly borrow and return devices.

Chrome devices and Chrome Enterprise are the key ingredients that make this program so effective. With Grab and Go, centrally-located racks with fully-charged Chromebooks are available 24/7. As soon as an issue arises, employees can grab any of these devices and log in through their corporate account. Because their work is already stored in the cloud, they can jump back into projects immediately, as if they never left their old device.

The Grab and Go program makes life easier for our IT admins as well. Chrome Enterprise provides simple manageability through the Google Admin Console. Employees sign in to the Chromebook and all of the company’s management policies are immediately applied upon startup. This ensures that employees are using a secure device and can access all websites, emails, and documents they need to do their job. And all of their bookmarks, passwords, extensions, browsing histories, and personal settings are available on the new device thanks to Chrome Sync.

Employees using a Grab and Go Chromebook automatically get an email upon sign-in that explains how and when to return the device, plus instructions on how to extend the loan, if needed. Upon return, devices can go directly to the next user—no reset or setup is needed because Chrome OS encrypts individual user profiles by default.

We’ve deployed Grab and Go in many of our offices around the world, and the program has seen more than 30,000 unique users rack up more than 100,000 loans in the last year. In fact, our Grab and Go program administrators estimate that their initial investment in deploying the program paid for itself in productivity time saved after only 50 days.

Our success with this program prompted us to release a detailed white paper to help businesses create their own Grab and Go programs. However, we know many businesses can benefit from a turnkey solution that makes deployment fast and easy. As a result, we’re offering an early access program to get them started. With this early access program, IT admins will have all the resources required to start their own Grab and Go program—including an open source app for inventory management, a Chrome OS companion app that greets users upon sign-in, and a full deployment guide.

Because the program is so simple, Grab and Go is also an ideal solution for other business cases where employees require temporary access to a device. For example:

• Frontline workers who only need devices for short periods of time—such as for training or sending emails.

• Shift workers in workplaces with shared devices, such as healthcare and call centers and can use virtualization solutions through Citrix and VMware to access legacy apps.

• Remote workers who travel between office locations, or frequently work outside the office and need both a work and home device.