JP Alpano for Google Workspace User Advocate Testimonials

Speaker: JP Alpano, Sales Operations Support Manager, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Philippines Inc

JP Alpano: Hi, this is JP Alpano and I'm a manager for the sales and operations team of my organization- and what my team does is try to bridge the gap between the sales and the operations, looking into opportunities where we can enhance processes and automate some of the manual steps in order to fully support the day to day operations of the business.

JP Alpano: We rely on the Google Workspace services in our day to day operations and we needed a tool to streamline how the operations team can better manage requests that were being received from the sales team. We were having challenges in using Gmail to receive requests, using Google Sheets to log those requests and then sharing the spreadsheet file with the sales team for visibility, status monitoring and providing timely updates. We needed a system that can provide an effective and efficient way of making sure that all requests are received, processed fulfilled and analyzed. We needed to develop a resource that can help minimize if not totally eliminate requests being sent via email, which more often than not needed several exchanges due to some required information being missed when the request was originally submitted or sent. A shared Google Sheet was also considered, but to control as to which cells can be edited by who, as well as preserving formatting and protecting information from being accidentally deleted or being messed up in one way or another. Google Forms has limitations in terms of dynamic controls and Google Apps Script just takes too much time to even develop prototype and that's where AppSheet came to the rescue because it allowed us to quickly prototype and deploy an application that solved our- control and monitoring requirements without having to involve maybe the enterprise level of development team that may have bigger projects on their plate. So, Google AppSheet really- uh was a time saver as well as a productivity tool that helps us become more efficient and effective in bridging the gap between the sales team and operations team in terms of sending, receiving and fulfilling requests.

JP Alpano: We have developed a lot of apps that are totally useful in each of the productivity challenges that we were trying to solve. But, as a processor for payments services, I guess the most useful one so far is our refund processing system, because it eliminated a lot of email exchanges across different teams that play a role in every refund request that we received from our merchants. We even added an auto email notification to our merchants as the request goes through each of the stages of the refund process- proactively giving them visibility as to the status of their request, eliminating the need for them to follow up with their sales officers. It saved a lot of time and resources for our sales team, our risk team, our back office team, and our customer services hotline team and most importantly, our customers.

JP Alpano: We've realized a huge improvement of the productivity output of our sales and operations team when we started automating most of the request submission and processing activities between the two teams. Ever since we used AppSheet, we now have a better visibility on the number of requests being received per day, how many are pending, how many are fulfilled and how long it took for the requests to be completed. We now have zero requests being left unnoticed as compared to before, where requests were being very deep in the email inboxes of our operations. And most importantly, we have seen at least a 40% decrease in the escalate for the fulfillment of those requests.

JP Alpano: I guess, with the continuous development of AppSheet and more features being added every month, AppSheet will continue to be used for systemizing processes that may be too critical for the local operations, but may be too small for enterprise level development.