What are the tough challenges today's companies of all sizes are facing in this global economy? Is the profit margin shrinking due to increase cost? According to a recent study average fortune 100 worker already is sending and receiving approximately 178 messages and documents each day. The daily e-mail volume is now over 210 billion a day worldwide and increasing, according to a market research firm.

This white paper examines the four challenges business of all sizes are facing today and discusses latest trends that smart managers are adopting to improve productivity and cut costs.

The four tough challenges are:

1. Cost of your IT infrastructure among other costs
2. Communication
3. Information overflow and too many emails to read
4. Improper management of task and responsibilities

This white paper informs latest trends about Google apps and suggests that companies can significantly cut costs and improve productivity by selectively using online (software as a service) tools that that provide solutions to all the above challenges.

Larger companies always have an advantage over smaller ones in IT spending, largely because of their ability to tap economies of scale.

According to CIO news, small and midsized companies often outspend larger companies. The average small company spends 6.9% of revenue on IT, midmarket firms spend 4.1% and large companies bring up the rear at 3.2% of revenue. So size does really matter!

On a per-employee basis, small companies are also bigger spenders, at $15,810 per employee, while midsized companies spend less at $13,100 per employee, and larger companies spend $11,580 per employee.

For smaller companies, IT spending must be closely managed because projects can get out of control quickly, threatening execution and profitability.

Also your employee nonproductive cost due to inefficient use of complex software drains a substantial portion of your profitability.

Due to global recession in 2010 most businesses are still making cuts and whittling budgets down and this trend will continue for several years. Even if your business is doing fine, it never hurts to be smart and trim costs where you can.

Many projects fail due to improper communication. Many large projects are so complex that these projects always require large amount of analysis and work. Project managers do not communicate properly with the team and do not report progress regularly because they believe that progress will not be seen by the executive management or they fear of improper reporting. Team members do not communicate effectively with other team members and often rely heavily on emails and phone calls.

"In the last 30 years mankind has produced more information than in the previous 5,000." (Information Overload Causes Stress. Reuters Magazine).

The average Fortune 100 worker already is sending and receiving approximately 178 messages and documents each day, according to a recent study, "Managing Corporate Communications in the Information Age."

E-mail is at risk of killing its own usefulness. Daily e-mail volume is now over 210 billion a day worldwide and increasing, according to The Radicati Group, a market research firm.

The burden of managing all that e-mail has prompted a backlash. One extreme reaction is "e-mail bankruptcy," where users throw up their hands and erase their entire inboxes. Many admit the distraction makes it near impossible to get work done, or even socialize normally.

Companies are coming up with both behavioral and technical answers to the e-mail overload issue. Some major companies discourage the use of the "reply all" feature, which generates lots of extra mail. Other companies try to enforce "e-mail-free workplace.

Many times project managers fail to delegate tasks and responsibilities to the team in such a way that they should fit team members' job descriptions. When team members are asked to work outside their specialization (often as added responsibilities), they not only go through a learning curve but also tend to lose focus on the project objectives. This always results in confusion among the team members and eventually cost and time overruns. Also managers face challenges in creating to do list, assign responsibility, keep a track of what needs to be done and who is doing what.

Use software as service and cloud service to significantly reduce your cost. The ability to scale, the reduction of up-front costs and the pay-as-you-go model reduce your IT cost significantly and offer a fast return on investment, simply because the initial investment is minimal.

One of the key advantages of software as service that all your data is centralized and accessible over the internet from any computer at any time. You can't leave something on the wrong computer since everything is stored in a centralized repository that you can access anytime from anywhere on the Internet.

Save money and improve productivity by signing up for Google apps. The basic version is always free.

Google Apps helps businesses work smarter Learn how to migrate easily from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. For more information please visit http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html

Proven cost savings

Google's web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses.

End users can use the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface for email, contacts and calendar as they transition to Gmail and Google Calendar.

50 times more storage than the industry average

Each employee gets 25 GB for email storage, so they can keep important messages and find them instantly with built-in Google search.

Mobile email, calendar and IM access

With several options for accessing their information while on the go, employees can be productive with Google Apps even when they're not at their desks.

99.9% uptime reliability guarantee with synchronous replication

Google guarantees that Google Apps will be available at least 99.9% of the time, so your employees are more productive and so you can worry less about system downtime.

Information security and compliance

When you trust your company's information to Google, you can be confident that your critical information is safe and secure.

Full administrative and data control

Administrators can deeply customize Google Apps to meet their technical, branding and business requirements.

Helpful 24/7 customer support

Google Apps is highly reliable and easy to operate, but support is available for administrators should you need it.

Communicate effectively and efficiently with the team members. A great deal of a project manager's time is spent on communication. Help your managers communicate with the team and the stakeholders effectively using very simple, effective and ubiquitous productivity tools. Make the members communicate effectively with other team members and often without relying heavily on emails and phone calls.

Again reduce dependencies on emails and document sharing. Use Saas (software as service) productivity tools where you can upload messages that will be sent as email message to everyone on their Pcs, laptops, ipad and all mobile devices. This online software should allow you to view messages on the message board and organize messages as per topics, category. Your team members should not need to dig into your old email messages. Also this online service should have centralized project data repository that team members can share with everyone.

Manage people and task. Find out who spent how much time on what task. Set up project milestone and track deadlines. Create to do list, assign responsibility, keep a track of what needs to be done and who is doing what. All these can be accomplished by using online project and issue tracking tool that should be simple to use and easy to learn so that you not only save substantial amount on training but also improve productivity of your employees.

This white paper has shown the four challenges companies of all sizes are facing today. You need to accept the fact that your employees are overburden by information over flow. The cost of IT is increasing and at the same time the productivity is decreasing due to information overall flow. The trend is already set to use software as a service and reduce upfront cost. Also your employees should be able to use productivity tools that will help them organize their activities, create to do list, find out who is doing what, share and edit files & documents from a centralized repository and respond to only few emails.