My uncle used to run a business where he helped cities save money by making their parks more efficient. He was a landscape architect and helped plan better parks for the city in return for a percentage of what he would save the city in park upkeep over a few seasons.

What if I could give you a single piece of advice right now that would save your small company $125,000 or more? What if in the next 200 words, you gleaned the knowledge of how to save a company of 100 people as much money as  a nice house?

Better yet, what if my plan cost you little to nothing up front and you could implement it in an afternoon? Heck, what if I implemented it for you? You wouldn’t even have to lift a finger beyond a couple emails.

Just like my uncle, I’ve figured out a way to save organizations a ton of money and I’m willing to tell you exactly how to do it, if you want to reward me for saving you the money, you’re welcome to do it.

How much money can you save?

• thisismyurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/savings.gif" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">25 employees – $108,716
• 50 employees – $111,857
• 100 employees - $118,225
• 250 employees - $138,003
• 500 employees - $173,222
• 1,000 employees - $252,116

Now that’s a lot of money right? That’s how much money you can save over a three year period simply be switching your email provider from a Microsoft Exchange server to a hosted solution with Google. You don’t have to believe me, you can see the savings for yourself (although they don’t include the cool graph).

So now you must be asking yourself what the catch is right? I haven’t found one. I’ve been using Google’s email hosting services for a couple of years now, the SPAM protection is so good that I openly publish my email all over my website (info@thisismyurl.com) and I have to deal with at most a dozen junk mail’s a week (notice that I don’t say “unwanted mail” … my mother has the address). I can access my email from anywhere, on any computer at any time and I never have to worry about my email box filling up.

The email service lets me use my own domain name (@thisismyurl.com), I can share an Outlook style calendar, common email directory and documents with others in my domain. I have a free Voice Over IP for making telephone calls directly off my computer and an instant messenger to talk to other domain users … all for free since my business is so small. 

Actually, to be honest that service list is just the tip of the iceberg. Google Apps lets me use (and share) a free online spreadsheet program, word processor and slideshow tool with other users or email it and open the results in any web browser.

photo credit: Photo Mojo

It’s secure, connects to my iPhone  or a Blackberry, offers IMAP or POP3 connectivity, lets me send email through an SMTP protocol. I can schedule a meeting, check my calendar or connect to other calendars in my work group … while saving thousands of dollars, servers, software and headaches trying to get MS Exchange to work properly. Did I mention there’s no training required and no seminars for your IT team to jet off to?

So what are your IT guys going to say?

They’re going to tell you that Google Apps isn’t secure enough to use but Marc Benioff – Chairman and CEO of SalesForce.com believes it is, ”With Google Apps, everybody is running the same copy because it all comes from a central server. That’s a more secure and a more powerful way to run your business.”.

They’re going to tell you that it’s too complicated but GE’s Chief Technology Officer Gregory Simpson has lent his support to Google saying “GE is evaluating Google Apps for the easy access it provides to a suite of web applications, and the way they help people work together. Google has a natural advantage understanding how people interact online.”

They’ll tell you that you can’t run a serious company with it but Douglas Merrill, Google’s CIO and VP has this to say “We wanted to demonstrate that we believe so strongly in this product that we run our own company on it. Internal use of Google Apps should validate any requirements that Google makes for business users. In addition, it will improve the product for customers of all sizes, since any features added by Google’s engineers will benefit all users”.

More secure.

Simpler.

Serious.

In the end, you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars, save countless headaches, make your email more secure, easier to use and available globally  … while you free up valuable IT resources to focus on the core business model by taking email out of the hands of an overworked IT team and hosting it with the worlds leading expert, for less it’s a win win in any business model. 

My consulting fee

I figure it took you about 20 minutes at most to read through this posting, assuming you checked your own companies numbers over at Google, using my uncles system I should be collecting 25% of what I just saved you so if you’d like to send me a payment, I’ll be happy to help your IT team save you money both now and in the future.