Xero: How Grab and Go with Chrome Enterprise helps employees stay mobile

Editor’s note: Today’s post is by Garrett Cox, IT Support Team Leader for Xero, the global small business platform. Xero uses Google Grab and Go in offices in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to help workers stay productive and test out Chromebooks.

Xero was founded in 2006, with the intention of changing the game for small business, making accounting easier and relationships between small businesses and their accountants or bookkeepers more seamless. Today, we’re a small business platform with over 2 million subscribers, over 2,700 employees, and offices in 20 cities around the globe.

At Xero, we’re passionate about enabling our people to do the best work of their lives, which is why we’re committed to working with the right technology partners. That’s the logic behind our recent adoption of Grab and Go with Chrome Enterprise. 

Free to work from anywhere

We love to think of our IT team as enablers. We’re here to solve problems and provide solutions. Keeping our employees happy and productive is very important to us.

In the past, if someone forgot their laptop, our IT support team had to say, “OK, wait around for an hour while we process a loaner laptop.” That slowed everyone down—workers and IT alike. When people handed their borrowed laptops back to us, it took time to process the return and put laptops back on the shelf. If employees missed meetings or deadlines because they had to wait around for a laptop, productivity suffered.

Grab and Go solved a lot of these problems. It’s nice to be needed, but it’s even better when you can enable people to enhance their own mobility. With help from our partner Dialog, we set up seven Powergistics racks, stocked with ASUS Chromebook Flip devices, in our Wellington and Auckland offices in New Zealand, as well as offices in Melbourne, Toronto, Milton Keynes (UK), and Denver. 

Every time we consider new technology, we ask, “Will it work within our flexible environment and culture?” and “Will it enable our people to have a great mobile experience with our technology and tools?” 

We know we’ve got it right when our people really embrace new technology. That’s why, during a typical workday, many of our people use Hangouts Meet for a meeting at least once. It’s also why, for many people, G Suite tools like Google Calendar and Drive have become their bread and butter. And it’s why we use Okta so people can log in once and get access to 150 cloud apps, including G Suite.

Test-driving Chromebooks

We’re a CYOD (Choose Your Own Device) company. We want to enable people to use the computers and laptops they feel most comfortable with, which will make them happier and more productive. Since we’re on G Suite, we see a lot of potential for making Chromebooks an option in the future. We’d like to see them become as popular as our other options.

In the meantime, we see Grab and Go as an easy way to help people become familiar with Chromebooks. Through giving employees the freedom to use the tools that are best for them, we hope they’ll discover that Chromebooks are a great fit for a cloud-based company. The feedback we’ve gathered so far has been very positive. 

A time-saver for smaller offices

Grab and Go makes life easier for Xero employees and their guests, but it also helps our IT team serve the business better. The simplicity of Grab and Go was a real “aha” moment for us—and it takes very little management on our end. Using Chrome Enterprise Upgrade, we simply enroll each device and manage it through the Grab and Go app. That’s about it.

As we grow as a company, we will likely find new opportunities where Grab and Go racks will be incredibly useful. In particular, they could come in handy in cases where offices don’t have local IT support; helping people manage laptop repairs long-distance is incredibly taxing. They’ll be a massive time-saver if someone forgets a laptop or in any other situation where an employee needs a laptop quickly.

Loaner laptops in less time

We have now flipped the challenge of replacing or loaning a laptop from a time-intensive task to one that is fast and easy. With Grab and Go, we can say, “No worries, here’s a laptop, just drop it off when you’re done.” Every technology choice we’ve made since day one has been about enabling people to work flexibly. Grab and Go fits in perfectly with the Xero approach: finding smart, easy solutions to common problems.