With fast, transparent accounting on Google Drive and collaborative communication tools, Governors’ Camp creates traditional luxury safaris in Kenya and Rwanda while attracting new investments.
Founded in 1972, Governors’ Camp runs pioneering safaris across Kenya and Rwanda as well as seven properties, hot air-balloons and light aircraft.
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Kenya
https://www.governorscamp.com/
With fast, transparent accounting on Google Drive and collaborative communication tools, Governors’ Camp creates traditional luxury safaris in Kenya and Rwanda while attracting new investments.
Google Workspace Results
Approves invoices in hours instead of months
• Cuts the invoice approval process down to hours instead of 6 weeks or more
• Enhances email reliability with zero downtime in 3 years, instead of every 10 days
• Coordinates 70 vehicles and 2 planes with Google Calendar and Google Meet
In 1972, when
“We want our clients to be really well looked after. They have high expectations, so we can have no slip ups. By removing bottlenecks, increasing efficiency, and accelerating our ability to collaborate, Google Workspace helps us get things done in a highly mobile work environment.” Dominic Grammaticas, Managing Director, Governors’ Camp
“There are a lot of moving parts in our business,” explains Dominic Grammaticas, managing director of Governors’ Camp. “We have around 500 employees across the region and 70 vehicles serving up to 200 guests at any one time.” At the same time, mobile internet is revolutionizing life in the region. “Kenya and Rwanda have been very quick to adopt new technology and leapfrog the old fixed-line connections,” says Dominic. “Everyone uses cell phones, 3G is strong across the area, and we have 4G in more than 60% of the country. A lot of people operate off-grid on solar power. We're used to working in unusual ways.”
Until recently, Governors’ Camp used paper for everything from vehicle rotas to invoicing, alongside an unreliable, on-premises email system. Dominic and his team recognized the potential of
“We want our clients to be really well looked after,” says Dominic. “They have high expectations, so we can have no slip ups. By removing bottlenecks, increasing efficiency, and accelerating our ability to collaborate, Google Workspace helps us get things done in a highly mobile work environment.”
Secure, stable communication—anywhere
“Our planes fly a circuit of bush airstrips in unpredictable areas, where we might have to scatter wildlife before landing. With Google Meet, staff know where the plane is at any time, so guests can relax at our locations rather than wait at an airstrip.” - Dominic Grammaticas, Managing Director, Governors’ Camp
Highly mobile teams often find collaborating over distance to be inefficient and frustrating, if not impossible. For Governors’ Camp, running multiple, simultaneous safaris in the Kenyan and Rwandan wilderness turned core operations, such as invoicing and resource allocation, into daily challenges. By 2015, it was clear that even the existing email solution based on on-premises servers was no longer fit for the purpose. “I found that the only way I could synchronize my devices was to forward everything to a personal
“BusinessCom set us up with Google Workspace, and their expertise and availability have been amazing,” says Dominic. “When you implement something new you expect disruption and problems, and that simply did not happen. In fact, we had the exact opposite. People immediately understood our decision to turn off the old solution one day and switch directly to Google Workspace. When people in remote locations collaborate on
The reliability of Google Workspace underpins that enthusiasm. Previously, the company’s 4 email servers would go down around every 10 days, causing serious disruption, especially on weekends. In the three years since the switch, Governors’ Camp reports zero downtime on its email and other systems, and all but one of its on-premises servers has been decommissioned, minimizing maintenance.
Meanwhile, Google Workspace collaboration tools have been readily adopted, such as
Using
Going paperless with Google Drive
“All of our document handling is electronic, so we have no problem at all meeting accounting deadlines. That's allowed our company to move forward, bring in investors and grow its portfolio. That would have been impossible without the efficiencies we get from Google Workspace.” - Dominic Grammaticas, Managing Director, Governors’ Camp
Handling documents has long been a problem for Governors’ Camp, to the extent that in the past, three people were tasked solely with locating documents within piles of old papers. That reliance on paper was a major problem for invoicing, as Dominic explains: “For 43 years we collected credit invoices in a Nairobi warehouse, put them in a mailbag in a truck, and hoped that they made it to the Mara without getting wet or worse. Then the invoices would be distributed to 4 different properties and 10 different departments to be signed and approved, before being returned to Nairobi in a mailbag again. The entire process could take four to six weeks, sometimes longer.”
Thanks to BusinessCom Solutions Africa, Governors’ Camp now approves invoices through a system of folders on
In addition to approving invoices, the team is better equipped to send them, as Dominic explains: “I have completely cut back on bad debts with Drive. In the past, when someone claimed not to have received an invoice from us, we would have to dig it out and send it to them again. Now I can find any invoice in a matter of seconds while on the phone chasing a customer for payment. That cuts out delays and improves efficiency, meaning more cash flow, less stress, and more investment.”
Fast, transparent accounting to bring in investment
Thanks in part to improved accounting practices, Governors’ Camp became a subsidiary of a listed company in 2016. It’s a major development for the company, which Dominic says might not have happened without the transparency and efficiency his team engineered with the new, collaborative tools.
“All of our document handling is electronic, so we have no problem at all meeting accounting deadlines,” says Dominic. “That's allowed our company to move forward, bring in investors, and grow its portfolio. That would have been impossible without the efficiencies we get from Google Workspace.”
*Google Workspace was formerly known as G Suite prior to Oct. 6, 2020.
Deployment Partner (Google Workspace authorized reseller)
BusinessCom Solutions AfricaBased in Nairobi, Kenya, BusinessCom Solutions Africa provides cloud solutions to over 150 clients across Africa. Founded in 1986, the company is a Google Cloud partner