United Diary Farmers
Helping United Dairy Farmers deliver improved efficiencies and customer service through delivery of storage, backup and remote management solutions
Northgate has helped to deliver greater efficiencies to United Dairy Farmers (UDF) by creating a secure and flexible ICT infrastructure. The investment in data storage technologies is enabling UDF to manage its ever expanding volumes of transactional data, resulting from continued business growth.
Company Background
United Dairy Farmers operate five dairy processing plants in the UK under it's subsidiary company Dale Farm, and collect over 1 billion litres of milk per year. The Group has an annual turnover of £300 million and its activities span the food chain; from providing farm inputs & feed to farmers, to manufacturing an extensive range of dairy products for domestic and international retail, food service and the food ingredients market.
In an increasingly challenging environment UDF has benefited not only from investment in new products, facilities and developing value added markets but from investment in its ICT infrastructure.
Business Challenge
UDF manage a significant number of business transactions on a daily basis, most of which involve automatic data capture and interchange. This includes a wide variety of transactions with leading UK retailers as well as customers both in the EU and worldwide. As a result of increased business activity in all areas of the organisation it is necessary to ensure the appropriate systems are in place to support the increased volume of data and to ensure that staff have the ability to work efficiently with the support of more efficient systems.
UDF and Northgate have been working in partnership for over 4 years, most recently on devising and implementing a solution which would address each of the following areas:
- Increase in company data storage due to the growth of the company
- Provision for Enterprise Resource Planning Application Upgrade Platform
The Solution
Northgate’s solution included a number of services from its Store and Manage ranges which provide data management and asset management services, respectively. The Store services included a Storage Solution and Backup Strategy whilst the Manage service delivered a Remote Management Solution.
The Storage Solution involved implementation of a new Storage Area Network to handle the vast quantities of data being processed and analysed by UDF’s group-wide business applications, including its main Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
The Storage Solution improves system performance and makes it easier to manage and grow the business, improves user efficiency and provides an opportunity to simplify data backup and security. As a result service levels increase as the organisation is in a better position to respond to changing needs.
Northgate also implemented its Backup Solution which included improved anti-virus and anti-spam capabilities to increase security and counter the growing volume of junk e-mail. Having no routine back up provision can lead to rising costs, downtime and lost data. The Northgate solution delivers centralisation of data and use of consolidated backup hardware and software which ensures efficient management of the system, data and processes leading to reduced, predictable and managed costs. It also delivers increased productivity and availability of key resources, business continuity and overall efficiency.
To ensure the ICT infrastructure operates efficiently to support business operations, Northgate introduced a proactive Remote Management Solution on UDF’s key servers and hardware maintenance of these servers. This assists UDF in reducing the risk of system failure and alerting them to potential problems at an early stage. Issues can then be addressed before productivity and customer service levels are affected.
Key Results
The project was delivered successfully on time and within budget. Key to this success was the strong partnership between Northgate and UDF's IT staff.
The improved data Storage Solution provides UDF with the security and efficiency it needs to grow providing proven, scalable technologies to ensure information availability and minimised costs. The back up and Remote Management Solution ensures systems are operating at optimum efficiency levels in order to deliver maximum productivity and customer service levels at all times.
UDF now has a secure and flexible IT infrastructure which meets the demands of a growing business. Northgate's robust solution provides flexibility and enhanced customer service to allow the business to continue to grow locally and internationally.
Key Benefits
- Improved Productivity
- Improved customer service
- Increased security and flexibility
- Improved system efficiency
- Business continuity
David Brown, Group IT Director, United Dairy Farmers commented:
'United Dairy Farmers manages a significant number of business transactions on a daily basis, most of which involve automatic data capture and interchange. This includes a wide variety of transactions with leading UK retailers as well as customers both in the EU and worldwide. In order to support our growing operation, and the increasing demands placed on technology throughout the business, we required a stable and flexible technical infrastructure. In addition to improving our data security, the key benefit of our partnership with Northgate has been the identification and implementation of a number of key technical solutions that support all major data processing systems within the business.
By reducing the time required to manage and monitor our infrastructure we have been able to concentrate our time on implementing new systems which provide tangible benefits to our business as well as improving customer service."
