The Business Outcomes
- Grove Juice won a major Coles Supermarket contract because they were able to demonstrate how good their IT systems were as well as the policies and procedures they had in place around IT.
- The productivity and profitability of the business improved.
- Reliability of the 24 x 7 x 365 operation of Grove Juice’s IT systems greatly improved.
- Issues were resolved faster and there was greater availability of technical resources.
- Support became more pro-active and the number of issues decreased.
- Staff were able to become more mobile and work from remote locations.
- Stress and frustration from Grove Juice management around their IT challenges was decreased significantly.
- Grove Juice were able to focus their IT spend in areas that would improve the business, rather than just seeing them as something that kept the business running, and were able to budget effectively for their IT expenditure.
The Challenge
We received a call from Greg Willis, the owner of Grove Juice. He had received some correspondence from Surety IT a few years earlier and kept it in case he ever needed it.
At the time, Grove Juice were dealing with many IT challenges, including:
- IT systems crashing when staff were trying to work.
- Old systems that couldn’t integrate with their customers’ newer systems, leading to staff frustration and time-consuming manual processes and work-arounds.
- A slow internet connection impacting staff access to critical customer applications and the delay in receiving orders.
- Senior management unable to access the systems remotely leading to frustration and the inability to do work on the go.
- An unreliable connection between sites impacting the ability of staff to access critical information and applications in a timely manner.
- Ageing PCs impacting productivity.
- The
inability to access IT systems via mobile including email, leading to delays in order acceptances. - The inability to implement new solutions that would help the business become more efficient.
- Unreliable and unresponsive support from their existing IT who favoured ‘band-aid’ fixes.
Greg also had significant plans for the business in terms of growth. He asked Surety IT if we could help Grove Juice with their existing challenges and develop a strategy to support a bigger and better future.
We said yes!
The Solution
To address the challenges and issues, we implemented our solutions path – a proven process of insight and action that sees us: understand, plan, build, maintain, enhance.
We took a very collaborative and consultative approach and by clearly understanding the issues and challenges that Grove Juice were facing, we were able to plan and build the right solution for them that delivered the outcomes they needed. The process also allowed us to explain our approach to Greg and the other key stakeholders in a way that they understood and could visualise.
The solution we built was tailored specifically for Grove Juice. It was reliable, flexible and had enough capacity to allow for Grove Juice’s growth.
Key aspects of the overall solution were –
- We provided a tailored IT strategy and IT road map that detailed agreed upon priorities, budgets, timescales and responsibilities over a
3-year period. - A hybrid solution with a mix of in-house and cloud based solutions.
- Improved security around critical information assets and IT systems.
- Assistance and guidance around the implementation of their planned ERP solution.
- Improved connectivity between sites, allowing staff to securely access information easily and in a timely manner.
- Provided a tailored support solution that catered for Grove Juice’s unique needs including on-site support twice a week.
- Fully documented Grove Juice’s IT infrastructure and made the documentation available for the business.
- Are still the ‘one number to call’ for the business in terms of IT support for third party applications.
- Have continued to work in collaboration with Grove Juice stakeholders to re-visit the IT strategy, develop it and further refine it as the business move forward and continues to evolve and grow.
Jason and Geoff, A quick note to say how you and your team at Surety IT keep surprising us with your added value service.
The core technical skill we commissioned was expected, but the ongoing service and extra expertise is pretty special.
Who would have thought that 3 years ago when you helped us secure our network that you would be taking responsibility for and coordinating all IT & communication aspects of our Group.
Your vision & commitment to our business, has provided the confidence to transfer this most important aspect of our business, to an external partner. You, your technical partners and network have gone a long way to remove the IT pain we have endured over the past 25 years.
We are really looking forward to working with you in developing the next step of our IT growth.”
Greg Willis – Managing Director, Grove Juice
