Technology Reseller v26

37 COLLABORATION technolog y reseller.co.uk grown by at least 25-30% each year and now roasts 250 metric tonnes of coffee per annum, generating around 50% of the company’s total turnover. Over the same period, the company’s headcount has grown from 12 people to more than 30, split across the wholesale department, the training department, the engineering department, office administration and a workshop. In total, Clifton Coffee Roasters now supports 850 customer sites nationwide with training, technical support and/ or wholesale supplies. To ensure all clients receive the same high level of service, the company has supplemented its Bristol-based operations with field operatives in the Manchester/Liverpool area, the south coast and west Wales, plus storage facilities and delivery drivers in Cambridgeshire and Birmingham. Familiar challenges The company’s growth and geographic expansion have created challenges that will be familiar to many growing businesses, from maintaining good internal communications to managing increased levels of administration and paperwork. “We found that we had gone from a position of meeting every morning at our central HQ, having a coffee together and coming up with a plan for the day to being split across multiple sites all over the UK with no possibility of catching up in person. Our internal communications had become fragmented between 6 or 7 different platforms (WhatsApp, Dropbox, Facetime, Google Hangouts, iCloud, 365), conversations were getting lost and it was becoming difficult to continue to offer the high levels of service that were at the root of our success,” explained Clarke. “As well as finding it increasingly difficult to communicate, we were starting to feel the crunch organisationally. We process 200 to 300 customer invoices a day and also log engineering notes, all of which we were putting through our computer system, generating paperwork. We had pigeon holes for each of our 27 delivery runs around the UK, from which drivers would collect paper before doing their run. In our roastery, we were constantly printing forms, filling them in, then twice a day scanning them back into our database to ensure compliance with our SALSA food safety accreditation.” Microsoft 365 to the rescue To help bring these aged, labour-intensive processes into the twenty-first century, Microsoft partner Changing Social introduced Clifton Coffee Roasters to a number of products within Microsoft 365 that it now uses throughout the business. These include Forms to automate and digitise paper processes; Sharepoint Online and OneDrive to improve access to information; and Microsoft Teams to standardise internal communications. Microsoft 365 is one of the three platforms the company uses to run its business, along with Sage Accounts 50 and Cool Logic, a bespoke design ops software package. All employees have 365 on their laptops and phones and use Teams as their communications hub. “We used to have 10 different group conversations on WhatsApp, for the roasting production team, office orders, engineering trouble-shooting and so on. Teams allows us to consolidate all that and enables us to collaborate on calls. Just this morning I had a call with one of our staff members who is currently in Colombia to buy some coffee. I had my head roaster next to me and together we were able to hold a video call with him to exchange information and get live feedback,” explained Clarke. “Teams is also about empowering our staff with easy access to information: ‘You want something? Here it is on my drive; this is where it’s saved; this is how you can access it’. It removes a lot of white noise just from being able to communicate and collaborate effectively.” Measurable benefits Clifton Coffee Roasters made the transition to Microsoft 365 from an on-prem, hard wired Exchange server in 12 weeks from October 2018 to January 2019. In the 12 months since, it has achieved some significant benefits. “One simple example is that by consolidating data storage and giving everyone access to Files we have been able to save £2,500 a year solely on Dropbox licences, before even considering the benefits of improved access to important data,” said Clarke. Harder to quantify, but arguably even more valuable, is Microsoft 365’s impact on communication with suppliers, customers and prospects. “We have a field team of 16 people now who are out and about with our customers every single day,” said Clarke. “It was getting to the point where we were struggling to find time to communicate with them because we just weren’t operating effectively. For us to be able to migrate everything to one place in Microsoft 365 has enabled us to optimise our time and give that back to our customers. Our office is the local coffee shop where we deliver to and that is where our focus needs to be.” One of Clarke’s main ambitions for 2020 is to build on the operational efficiencies Clifton Coffee Roasters has achieved through digitisation and spend more time with customers. “After five years of rapid growth, our key focus in 2019 was to move forward with digitisation to make sure we were once more communicating and operating efficiently. Microsoft has freed up time spent on mundane processes and allowed us to get back out in the field where we love to engage with our customers. Our focus this year is to cement that – to spend the time we’ve got back with our customers,” he said. www.cliftoncoffee.co.uk Driving Growth in Small Businesses How UK SMBs can transform communications & culture through technology to maximise their competitive edge Microsoft’s report can be downloaded from aka.ms/UKsmbReport By consolidating data storage and giving everyone access to Files we have been able to save £2,500 a year solely on Dropbox licences, before even considering the benefits of improved access to important data Josh Clarke, Director of Coffee