Case Study

The Situation

Priestley’s Gourmet Delights (Priestley’s) is an Australian-owned food manufacturer that produces indulgent desserts for the Australian and international foodservice markets. They have a manufacturing facility in Brisbane, as well as two in New Zealand, and deliver their products to the domestic market via a preferred distributor network, and internationally through a network of logistics partners. The business employs close to 200 staff, and this includes a mobile customer service team of around 30 people.

Until engaging Brennan, Priestley’s was operating with a cumbersome, unreliable IT infrastructure. Network failures were frequent, and their staff was becoming increasingly frustrated with regular system downtime. Despite having a dispersed salesforce, they also lacked a reliable mobile collaboration platform, which meant the team’s efficiency and communication were limited.

The Challenge

One of the most significant frustrations for the business was the poor performance of its infrastructure, which would fail constantly. IT support and maintenance were provided by a contractor who came into the office once a week. This meant that if there were any issues, there could potentially be a significant delay before they were resolved.

“We were having a lot of issues and outages, and our internet service wasn’t providing the level of connectivity we needed,” says Heather Cross, Priestley’s Chief Financial Officer.

Security was another ongoing challenge, and the business’ security infrastructure was somewhat dated. When Priestley’s network became infected with a virus due to an employee opening a malicious file, the need for an upgraded solution became extra apparent.

Additionally, employees lacked the ability to reliably connect when they were out of the office or on the road, and this meant a lack of flexibility. It was hard for the business’ mobile sales team to collaborate effectively and share information, and their communication was largely limited to email and phone.

The business was also grappling with a disparate infrastructure. While they had invested in individual quality solutions over time, there was a lack of overall integration – meaning it was difficult for the business owners to get overarching insights, and to make fast or accurate decisions. From an IT maintenance perspective, supplying patches and upgrades was difficult as many employees worked with different hardware and operating systems.

The Solution

Realising an IT upgrade was required, Priestley’s approached Brennan to examine their technology and first provide an initial direction and strategy. They were referred to Brennan and from the outset, were very impressed with the company’s professionalism and high-quality system engineers.

“First of all, we needed educating on what we thought we wanted, but what we didn’t really understand. We went through this process with Brennan’s sales team. They provided us with a fantastic demonstration of a hosted environment and the services that this could include. After this initial discovery phase, Brennan submitted a tender, presented it to our board, and basically offered us the suite of products that we use today,” says Cross.

Brennan helped Priestley’s to define their needs, provided a roadmap for their IT upgrade, and then helped the business migrate to a new, cloud-based infrastructure with managed services across their environment. Now, every element of Priestley’s technology is managed off-site, in the cloud, and the business doesn’t require any IT people on staff. Through Microsoft Office 365, Priestley’s remote sales team is also able to effectively share data and collaborate, even when they are on the road.

When Priestley’s acquired a New Zealand company, Elite Foods, Brennan worked closely with Priestley’s to set up the required technology infrastructure. Elite Foods was relying on a dated server, and when this collapsed during implementation, Brennan’s early preparatory work avoided potentially costly and disruptive downtime. Instead, Brennan was able to roll out and set up Office 365 to all users, and move Elite Foods’ data across to the new server, based in Brisbane, within just 24 hours.

Recently, Priestley’s was also able to leverage their new, cloud-based infrastructure to launch a CRM initiative using Office 365 and Dynamics CRM, and they have also just rolled out a Skype for Business solution across the business – to improve communication between their various offices.