Merging Old and New: TFGLabs Goes E-Commerce with the Help of Deimos and Google Workspace

Recent data from FNB Merchant Services shows that the South African online e-commerce market is prosperous.

Now valued at just under R200 billion a year, it’s clear that some of the country’s biggest retail brands are doing their best to tap into the trend and cater to new consumer habits.

For TFG Limited, this meant the creation of TFGLabs, a technology hub that aims to drive the group’s omnichannel vision.

TFGLabs was created to create remarkable omnichannel experiences for customers and make TFG the largest and most profitable e-commerce destination on the continent.

That may sound ambitious, but Luke Jedeikin and Claude Hanan, co-heads of TFGLabs, believe these goals are achievable with the right team, structured and efficient execution.

Deimos, Digicloud, and Google Workspace have played key roles in TFGLabs’ quest for omnichannel market dominance.

A startup working within a larger company

As the center of innovation within TFG, it was important for the TFGLabs team to work with tools and products that enable rapid and effective response to market trends.

“Each area of ​​the broader enterprise has different technical requirements,” notes Alastair Hendricks, software development manager at TFGLabs.

“Although TFG is an organization heavily dependent on Microsoft and MS solutions meet their needs, the technology and software needs of TFGLabs differed significantly from those of the larger organization.

As such, it was essential that whatever solution they decided to use could integrate seamlessly with TFG’s existing infrastructure.

For Hendricks, Google Workspace was the obvious choice.

“Our team is made up of people mostly from startups, so we’re all pretty familiar with using Google products.

When we moved, we were all excited that we could use the tools we love and are all more comfortable using,” adds Bailey Kropman, people manager at TFGLabs.

“And because everyone was so familiar with Google’s offerings, as most have personal Google accounts, the amount of training needed to familiarize staff with the new solution was minimal.”

“The tools we use determine how effectively we innovate, communicate and collaborate,” says Hendricks. Moving to the cloud was essential to creating a competitive and modern e-commerce platform.

“This decision comes down to agility and speed. We wanted to be able to make changes in hours or minutes, not weeks, as was the case in the past,” he explains.

“The cloud also allows us to modernize our software development workflow, it streamlines how we build for the customer and allows us to respond to market changes in a timely manner.”

Hendricks emphasized that they needed seamless collaboration and the ability to set up shared drives so the team could innovate as and when they should.

“Working in a company that had previously been enabled by Google, we understood what Google Workspace could do and what collaboration could look like when you use the right technologies,” he says.

In order to take advantage of the advantages offered by Google, they also knew that they had to create a dual environment. But making sure it went well was no easy task.

Partnership for Onboarding Success

Deimos played a fundamental role in the TFGLabs integration process.

Google Premier Partner and Digicloud Africa Reseller, he partnered with the TFGLabs team to ensure that their modern cloud-enabled Google solution could speak the same language as the company’s Microsoft suite.

“It required a lot of labor and consultation, which the Deimos team was happy to do,” says Hendricks.

Once the initial integration was complete, Deimos was able to expand it to over a hundred people working in different areas within TFGLabs.

For Leon van Rooyen, Customer Engineer at Deimos, some of the more technical challenges of navigating Microsoft Exchange environments didn’t easily align with cloud-based integration methods.

Getting this email and calendar solution to work with Google took a lot of creativity to bypass existing notification filters and ensure that Google Workspace’s Calendar Interop, which allows Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar to work together, works like it should.

“Using Google’s best practices and employing an extensive testing methodology resulted in a smooth onboarding.”

Make change, manage change

Today, TFGLabs uses the full suite of Google Workspace products.

“All of our collaboration happens in Docs and Sheets. All of our mail is handled through Gmail, and people can chat effortlessly through Google Meet and easily keep tabs on their upcoming meetings using Google Workspace’s calendar,” Hendricks shares.

“Visibility is another big win for TFGLabs. Shared drives mean anyone can access information without having to ask anyone for permission,” he adds.

From a results perspective, the team is more productive, spends less on licenses, and works in a more collaborative and organized manner.

“But that doesn’t mean they didn’t get a few paper clippings along the way,” Kropman adds.

“From a change management perspective, they had to put a lot of effort into building a justification to show that they could pull off this hybrid model, without negatively impacting how we operate within the company. enterprise in the broad sense.

“Before we started this project, we had bold ambitions that we could have done all of this on our own, but they weren’t realistic,” admits Kropman.

“We didn’t have the expertise or the time to really get started and we underestimated how long it would take.

Considering what we didn’t know, it’s amazing how much we’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time with the help of the right partner, Deimos.

Hendricks jokes that he’d like to bring everyone in the organization to Google Workspace, a workforce of about 27,000 employees.

“Until then, we’re excited to see our team working together and ensuring continuity using the flexible and intuitive cloud solutions offered by Google Workspace.”

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