Thatcher’s Cider
Making refreshing change to comms and connectivity for better productivity and reduced costs
The Customer
Thatcher’s Cider Company, a renowned beverage producer with approximately 250 employees, operates from its main head office and brewery site–Myrtle Farm, Winscombe. The company boasts a rich history and multiple areas, functions, and use cases, making seamless communication vital for their diverse operations.
The Challenge
Inflexible Comms
Thatcher’s on-premise Avaya comms system restricted the 250+ team’s ability to work remotely and made it challenging to add new lines.
DECT Phones
The DECT phones used across the manufacturing and warehouse teams were becoming a major source of frustration due to signal and quality issues.
Mobile Devices
Costs were starting to increase, employees were experiencing coverage issues across multiple sites, and managing multiple contracts was taking valuable time out of more pressing projects.
A Unified Approach
Thatcher’s needed a cloud-based solution that could integrate with Thatcher’s CRM, Cloud, and collaboration tools to empower contact centre, back o ce and ‘hands-on’ sta with more insightful information to enhance the customer experience.
The Process
Experts within the Windsor team collaborated with Thatcher’s individual departments; IT, customer services, logistics, brewing, warehousing and operations, to identify their unique objectives and challenges, before defining the most cost-effective and beneficial solution possible.
Windsor then conducted a pilot deployment with selected users to validate functionality and surface issues, providing training sessions for pilot users to familiarise them and gather feedback for improvements.
The pilot also surfaced concerns around Thatcher’s connectivity, requiring an upgrade to ensure a fast, reliable and resilient Dedicated Leased Line that could act as the backbone for future Digital Transformation (e.g. IoT) and ensure Thatcher’s continued 24/7 operation.
The Solution
Windsor implemented a phased deployment strategy, prioritising business-critical units before migrating users in batches for a controlled transition, while simultaneously transferring user profiles, contact lists, and historical call data to Xelion to maintain continuity. All while offering real-time support to address immediate issues.
The Roll-out Plan
“Once the roll-out plan was agreed, Windsor worked very closely with Thatcher’s IT team to commission and configure the Xelion platform with a target of like-for-like functionality or better.
The project was rolled out and completed within the agreed timeline and well within budget. Teething problems were few and far between, and when we did experience them, Windsor were highly responsive no matter who needed to be involved from their end.”
– Ian Dorling, Head of IT – Thatchers
Why Xelion
Xelion was ideal to bring all of Thatcher’s communications together into one single user interface, open up new channels, and integrate with its other business-critical platforms.
“I had envisaged potential issues in relation to the integration with our ERP solution, which allows Customer Services sta to immediately see customer account details when an inbound call number is recognised. However, this was an unfounded fear, because this was far easier to achieve than with the previous platform.
Likewise, the Active Directory integration has streamlined our processes and allowed us to focus on our MS365 environment as the central repository to drive many key functions.”
– Ian Dorling, Head of IT – Thatchers
The Results
Xelion’s Cloud-based platform has enabled the team to work productively from anywhere while minimising operational and maintenance costs by removing the need for on-premise hardware, licensing, and support.
MS Active Directory and Power BI now act as Thatcher’s central repository to drive key operational functions, produce more insightful reporting, and strengthen on-site security.
This enables both Windsor and Thatcher’s to conduct thorough post-deployment testing and performance analysis, respectively. This enables Windsor’s team to keep an eye of system stability and ensure all features are functioning correctly, while Thatcher’s team can monitor key performance indicators to ensure optimal system performance.
Now, with a broad solution encompassing connectivity, communications, Business Mobile, CRM integrations and more, Thatcher’s can enjoy a single point of contact for all its needs and services, as well as a significantly simplified billing and management process.
“The softphone has proven to be a real winner with mobile users and the fact that it is part of the single licence fee per user means that we can deploy it alongside the desk client software or handset, so the user and caller experience becomes seamless as they move around.
We are very pleased with the outcome. Xelion has improved many areas of our employee and customer experience. The high levels of engagement we received from Windsor to make it happen, and the ongoing support and development they provide us with further integrations and service enhancements have been second to none.”
– Ian Dorling, Head of IT – Thatchers