Tech company Google is moving into the software training business, thanks to an agreement announced yesterday to acquire the Toronto-based Synergyse. Synergyse offers interactive online training courses for Google Apps, with a focus on enterprise clients. According to Synergyse, the company has trained more than 4 million users working for more than 3,000 organizations.
“Synergyse Training for Google Apps puts a virtual guide into Google Apps, helping users get the most out of their Google Apps experience and training them to be more productive,” the company wrote on its Web site. “By joining the Google Apps team, we can accelerate our mission because we will be working even closer with the teams that build Google Apps.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Higher Adoption Rates
Synergyse was founded in February 2013 by former Google engineers Varun Malhotra and Majid Manzarpour. The startup launched Synergyse Training in April of the same year to help businesses keep up with the latest upgrades and additions to Google’s productivity apps such as Gmail, Calendar, and Drive. The company built a virtual coach inside of the Google Apps interface based on the Google Cloud Platform. Users can access Synergyse training modules by downloading and installing an extension on their Chrome browsers.
The company offers interactive voice and text training modules that are searchable by topic within the different apps. Because the platform is based on Google Cloud, it is constantly updated with new material as new versions of Google Apps are rolled out.
Google said that companies that use Synergyse training modules see an average of 35 percent higher adoption of Google Apps across the different product lines. “By providing the right help at the right time, Synergyse will help our customers with the critical task of change management in the enterprise, and bolster the training and support programs we already offer today,” Google said in its announcement of the acquisition.
Constant Upgrades
The acquisition appears to be good news for anyone hoping to gain access to Synergyse’s training modules, since new customers will now be able to download the Chrome extension at not cost. Google said that it plans to integrate the Synergyse platform directly into Google Apps later this year.
Although Google Apps are known for being simple to use, they are also noted for upgrading constantly. Unlike other productivity suites that might see new updates only once every three or four years, Google Apps can roll out new features as soon as they are ready for production.
While that’s great for getting upgrades into the hands of users as quickly as possible, it can make training more challenging, with new features and changes appearing regularly. Synergyse can update training materials to include new features even before they appear on a company’s domain, according to the company
The service also allows organizations to create their own proprietary video training content and upload an unlimited amount to a secure storage space, where the content can then be distributed to specific departments.
