Baking with Cloud Plunge

Bakewell Biscuits, a 10-year-old manufacturer and exporter of cookies and biscuits to African and the Gulf countries with manufacturing plant in Gujarat, wanted to expand its business to bigger markets like the United States and Europe.

However, being a small business with 100 employees, the management soon realized that they are still working on traditional communication technologies wherein the global market is much more ahead. There was a clear need for better communication and collaboration to manage its employees and global distributors to support growth, especially as the management focused on markets with time zones as much as 10–12 hours apart.

Apart from this issue, the company was using free email service for its management team consisting of 10 people supported by a local service provider. This was unreliable, with frequent outages of the external mail server. Also, the service provider visit to the office added almost 10–24 hours of downtime.

Similar issues existed with the website—the lack of relevant information was slowing down every decision from strategic to execution. This delayed everything from quotes, invoices, sale or purchase orders and approvals, and adversely affected the business.

By 2012, the company had grown to over 100 employees, out of which 10 managed processes using technologies and the remaining were shop floor workers. Management soon realized that only a world-class solution would allow them to work together irrespective of location. It was time for them to start investing in technology that would support growth.

The IT Angle

Being a small start-up, finance was always one of the concerns for Bakewell Biscuits. However, hiring and maintaining a highly-skilled technology team would not only increase cost but is also difficult to manage. “We wanted a low maintenance solution but all the features of a global corporation included instant messaging, content sharing and audio and video conferencing with storage retrieval, which would involve high costs. We wanted all our information available from any device, and all the time,” says Javed Suthar, Head, Information Technology and Production and Purchase Manager, Bakewell Biscuits.

During discussions with Bitscape Infotech, a local IT services firm, the management realized that cloud-based solutions would provide a reliable and cost-effective alternative to an on-premise solution. After extensive research, Bitscape Infotech shortlisted two solutions—Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 for Bakewell Biscuits.

After evaluating both the solutions, Bitscape deployed five user licenses of Office 365 Enterprise plan. The mailbox migration was smooth. The enterprise-grade email powered by Microsoft Exchange Online offers 50GB of space for each user. “With web and mobile access, we are now able to receive and read emails anywhere,” states Javed.

Lync online gives the flexibility to interact without adding the expense of long-distance phone bills and international travel. Besides information on status and availability of users, it helps in setting up meetings on the fly as well as online chats. Moreover, personal archiving, up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spam protection ensures that the mailboxes are clean and clutter-free. Users can also quickly search content across files and email messages.

Bitscape has also deployed SharePoint Online. With this, the management has access to all the relevant information in a single place and the information is always current. Bitscape has also created work flows to ensure approval processes that communicate decisions effectively across the organization.

And finally, Bitscape Infotech migrated and updated the website as well, using the SharePoint Online component of Office365, creating sub-sites for products using SharePoint Designer and out-of-the-box templates and thus saving annual web hosting costs.

Post Deployment Benefits

Post Microsoft Office 365, Bakewell reaps in the benefits spanning from rapid time-to-value, enhanced efficiency and productivity, ease of use and reduced expenses. They are now able to see all updates on the invoicing, purchase and sales orders.

Lync online allows Bakewell to communicate more effectively with its customers leading to saving on multiple vendors who were earlier required for hosting, emailing and branding. Office 365 single-handle takes care of all these factors.

Besides owning the solution at special pricing for SMBs, Bakewell also benefits from subscription-based pricing. “Through online meetings and conferences, the solution has reduced our traveling, telephone, and shipping expenses. We estimate that within one year the solution will bring down the collaboration and communication expenses by 35%,” added Suthar.