ED&F Man Holdings

Industry:

Commodities Broker

Environment:

Microsoft® Exchange 2003 email platform, Active Directory, SQL databases, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Overview

ED&F Man Holdings Limited is an employee owned company incorporated in England and Wales, with over 4,000 employees worldwide.

The group’s primary business is the sourcing, delivery and distribution of sugar, molasses, cocoa, coffee, spices and alcohol around the world. Customers include food and beverage manufacturers, farmers and other industrial users.

These activities are supported by integrated teams of experts in research, physical brokerage, freight, futures and risk management.

The company’s headquarters are located in London, UK and another 15 trade offices are located all over the globe including Paris, New York, and Singapore.

Evaluating the Solution

With more than 300 users and only three system administrators located in London, ED&F Man Holdings Limited was interested in finding tools that would leverage the power of their BlackBerry® wireless platform and help a lean team of professionals to increase their efficiency.

They found out about the Mobile Admin solution on the Research in Motion® website and decided to try it. The IT administrators investigated other solutions, but were unable to find any product with a set of features that was as comprehensive as Mobile Admin’s.

Performing Simple Tasks

The IT administrators at ED&F Man Holdings Limited wanted to be able to do management tasks from their BlackBerry smartphones.

Restarting a server, unlocking users or resetting passwords now takes seconds, and can be done from just about anywhere when executed with Mobile Admin. The threemember team no longer has to rush back to the office or find a place to dial-in. The IT staff can respond effectively and quickly to the many demands of their jobs, even while traveling on the train home.

“We are very satisfied with Mobile Admin. The installation was easy and we now perform tasks simply from anywhere from our BlackBerry devices” says Steve Sigsworth, IT system support at ED&F Man Holdings Limited. “One day I was in Paris, France when I received an email announcing a problem with one of our users back in London. I was able to unlock the user and reset his password in seconds. And all this from a café in Paris.”

Steve will be recommending that Mobile Admin be implemented in all the company’s other trade offices around the world.