Natures Way Foods
Industry:
Food and Beverage
Environment:
Microsoft® platforms, SQL, BlackBerry Enterprise Server
Overview
Natures Way Foods, based in West Sussex, supplies washed and ready to eat bagged salads and prepared fruit to major supermarkets and catering companies across the UK and Ireland. With two factories, based in Selsey and Runcton, Natures Way Foods works closely with their suppliers ensuring they source the highest quality raw materials and process it with state-of-the-art processing facilities, making them amongst the most technologically advanced produce companies in the world.
The Challenge
Natures Way Foods is a 24/7 business, with systems and machines running around the clock. Any lack in visibility of stock and systems could result in poor stock maintenance and incorrect orders. In keeping with their commitment of delivering 100% customer satisfaction and investing in technology, ensuring excellent supply to customers, Natures Way Foods required a network administration solution that would allow IT administrators to manage their entire network anywhere, thereby reducing network downtime and increasing response time. The solution would be required to seamlessly integrate with other systems. “With an eight person team on a 5 day rotation, on call between 4 of us, and the weekends between the rest of the team, it was necessary to enable staff to continue their lives without being tied to a PC,” said Chris Wallis, Senior Technical Analyst for Natures Way Foods.
The Solution
Natures Way Foods was introduced to Mobile Admin by a BlackBerry Specialist company. Commenting on the installation, Chris Wallis said, “I downloaded the free trial from the Rove website and decided very quickly that this was the perfect tool for performing a full range of network management functions from anywhere. Taking into account the cost-benefit analysis we completed, the cost to time savings comparison, and the additional benefits such as quality of life, it was clear that Mobile Admin was an obvious choice.”
Evaluating the Solution
Now the entire support team manages 10 critical servers using Mobile Admin. “Before Mobile Admin, if a server went down and the IT person on duty was not at their desk, didn’t have their laptop with them, or had to drive into the office from home, there could be long delays – creating work stoppages.” Now when the IT team is on the factory floor, around the building servicing or troubleshooting switches and wireless access points or at home, they are able to use Mobile Admin to perform a variety of tasks including resetting passwords, troubleshooting SQL server issues and pinging servers.
Reduction in Network Downtime costs
System downtime at Natures Way Foods can cost us up to £10000 per hour. The company has been able to decrease these network downtime costs by increasing their response time. “Issues that used to take 1 hour to solve can now take 5 minutes!” Wallis said.
Improvements in SLAs
Natures Way Foods has Service Level Agreements that must be met. They are required to respond to a call in 30 minutes, and they have 4 hours to fix the problem. “We have seen 50% time savings on our Service Level Agreements, as we could do simple things like unlock accounts from our BlackBerry. This is truly a win-win situation for everyone.”
Increase in Productivity
“We are also more productive because we can respond faster and administer simple tasks, such as responding to on-call situations, monitoring backups, and troubleshooting server connectivity issues. I have been able to troubleshoot SQL server issues while I was at dinner with my family,” Wallis said. “A food and beverage company receives 100% customer satisfaction if the servers are running 100% of the time. So if a server is not running, you have to get server issues fixed as quickly as possible. Mobile Admin helps us do that. It has been a lifesaver.”