Investing in great products and fulfilment capabilities can help you to win major customers, but if your IT systems aren’t robust enough to cope with your newfound administrative workload, any system downtime could see you lose orders and ultimately those hard-won customers.
Lancashire-based Bryan’s Salads Ltd is a family business producing high quality pre-packed salads and vegetables. Significant investment temperature controlled greenhouses for year-round produce availability, as well as state of the art washing, mixing and bagging machinery had enabled them to win supply contracts with major supermarkets. However, their IT systems also needed to keep pace with the requirements of operating in highly demanding supply chains.
Bryan’s Salads Ltd’s Sales Director, Joe Bryan, says: “Our IT systems had been introduced bit by bit over 30 years, so had never been designed as an integrated system and were no longer appropriate for the size of our business. A particular concern was our internet connection, which was both slow and a weak link in our capabilities – if it failed we could potentially miss orders!”
Whilst improvements to data management and security, email and the hardware powering their fresh produce stock control system proved to be relatively routine for the Synium team, the challenge of providing a robust internet connection in a rural local required an ingenious solution.
Joe Bryan explains: “The mission critical nature of our internet connection suggested we needed a dedicated leased line. However, the estimated cost of digging up roads and fields to install it exceeded £40,000! Fortunately, Synium developed a brilliant workaround that’s solved our problem for a tiny fraction of that cost.”
Instead of the prohibitively expensive leased line, Synium oversaw the installation of two additional broadband lines that were bonded with the existing connection via a special router device. Speeds have improved as Bryan’s traffic is shared between three lines, plus the system is more robust, as if there’s a problem with any single line there are two spare to retain the vital internet link.
Joe Bryan says “We’ve had a very positive experience working with Synium. Right from the start they understood our business needs and continue to do so during our period of rapid growth and expansion. Synium’s proactive approach means we have no downtime and any IT issues that do arise are dealt with a lightning quick speed.”
To discover more about how IT is empowering businesses like yours to achieve more, you can view further case studies and request a free IT Support Buyer’s Guide. Alternatively, contact the Synium team today on 0121 663 0203 or via email to hello@dicanz.com.
Businesses requiring high quality pre-packed salads and vegetables should contact Bryan’s Salads Ltd on 01772 812071 or visit www.bryanssalads.co.uk