Ahold goes Google: Food retailer moves to Google Apps

Ahold, an international food retailing group based in the Netherlands, that operates leading supermarket companies in Europe and the United States, including Albert Heijn, Albert / Hypernova, Stop & Shop, Giant Food and Giant Food Stores has gone Google. Ahold has over 2,900 stores around the world with a local presence in the communities they serve.

Ahold made the decision to move to Google Apps to provide its global workers with a single web-based platform for communication and collaboration, replacing Ahold’s existing email domains and systems in Europe and the US. Ahold chose Google Apps for its 25 GB of storage per account, integrated IM (Google Talk) and a series of additional features that facilitate communication, including video based communication tools, automatic translation and shared calendars.

The global deployment of Google Apps will bring a number of benefits to Ahold employees, among them:

Consolidation and standardization to a single mail system and global address book
Improved productivity through the use of efficient e-mail and instant messenger tools, as well as powerful personal and shared calendars
Training support with new video based communication tools, including video IM
Improved collaboration within and between operating companies and functions
Improved international communication with features such as automatic Message Translate, allowing users to translate e-mails from and into different languages with one click of the mouse or real-time translation in Google Talk.