Confection Supplier Struggling to Keep Up with Rapidly Expanding Business

A Chicagoland tradition since 1948, this company is the leading regional supplier of caramel apples and specialty confection treats. The company produces caramel apples that are sold in grocery stores and at school fundraisers in the Midwest. The company also operates a gourmet brand, Mrs. Prindable’s, that provides products to specialty retailers, gourmet food stores and directly to consumers via television and the Internet. The perishable products from both brands are made to order and ship the same day to ensure the freshness their customers have come to expect.

In 1995, the company changed ownership and evolved from a simple operation to a major manufacturing firm. With the addition of Mrs. Prindable’s five years later, the company invested in a new manufacturing system to support its rapidly expanding business. While this consolidated many of the accounting and inventory management functions, there remained a number of stand-alone technology solutions that each ran on its own hardware. the company soon found itself with an increasingly complex IT infrastructure and a heavy reliance on technology.

Not only do the IT systems need to work, they need to work fast and be dependable — there’s no room for downtime. The company’s reputation for quality depends upon the freshness of its products. This means that orders received in the morning are made to order and often ship the same day. As demand grew, it became increasingly important that the company’s orders were processed with speed and accuracy. As a result, the company needed its IT systems to be highly reliable and able to manage high spikes in demand. During the height of the busy season, there is no room for business disruption – every second counts and the network must be working 100% of the time.

BDO Digital Updates IT Systems to Meet Growing Business Demands

The company came to BDO Digital to help increase the reliability, performance, and manageability of their IT environment. As a first step, BDO Digital conducted a site assessment to better understand the company’s current IT situation. After reviewing the server and network environment, BDO Digital recommended upgrades to the server, backup and network to ensure that these systems would appropriately support the company’s business needs – today and in the future.

After studying the assessment results and knowing BDO Digital’s quality of work and proven track record, the company decided to have BDO Digital implement the recommended solutions prior to the start of the busy season.

The timeline was tight and failure was not an option. BDO Digital identified the high-risk items and created an implementation plan that would meet the company’s compressed timeline. BDO Digital upgraded the infrastructure, providing dedicated on-site support staff to ensure that the new systems were performing as expected. To provide proactive monitoring and ongoing system support, BDO Digital recommended its Managed Services solution. Managed IT services enables a company to outsource or augment the monitoring and management of their network environment. A “managed environment” is an ideal solution for many growing businesses. BDO Digital’s Managed Services solutions offer a combination of technology, people and process that allows BDO Digital to remotely monitor, quickly identify and proactively repair issues that could challenge network or server performance, avoiding service disruption.

An Optimized and Streamlined IT Infrastructure that Can Support Business for the Future

The company is passionate about its products. As the creators of “the original gourmet caramel apple,” it’s been the company’s commitment to quality and innovation that has turned a sweet Fall treat into a thriving confectionery business. The company expects the same passion and commitment from its partners. Consequently, they set the bar high for BDO Digital’s recommendations and results. And BDO Digital delivered on time and with creative solutions that eliminated the possibility of service disruptions and ensured consistent oversight for their systems.

The company now has an optimized and streamlined infrastructure with the capacity to easily meet seasonal spikes in demand. They have a Managed Services solution in place to monitor, maintain and secure their systems. However, what is most important to the company is that they have gained a reliable IT partner in BDO Digital whom they can trust to help guide the company to make technology decisions that will support the growth of their business.

Since the initial infrastructure project, BDO Digital has worked with the company on an ongoing basis. Now with the network running smoothly, the company has the time and resources to undertake strategic IT projects that will improve business performance and enable the company to provide exceptional service to its growing customer base.