A more resilient IT foundation for Brook Foods

Brook Food has been supplying bakery equipment across the UK since 1994. From its Somerset base the business serves everyone from home and micro-bakery setups to industrial plant projects, holding over 3,000 machines in stock at any one time, along with the spares and servicing that keep them running.

It's a business built on being able to answer the phone and find the part. Which made it all the more frustrating that its own IT had started getting in the way.

Contents

1. The Challenge
2. Our Solution
3. The Net9 Framework
4. The Result

The Challenge

Brook Food's IT had aged to the point where it was creating a genuine risk of disruption and, just as costly, pulling attention away from the work. Time spent on IT problems is time not spent on customers, and for a supplier whose customers are bakeries running to tight production schedules, responsiveness is effectively the product.

They wanted two things. A dependable, modern setup was the obvious one. The less obvious one mattered just as much: a provider they could actually reach. Not a ticket queue in another county, but someone nearby they could pick up the phone to.

"What initially struck us about Netitude was how professional they looked and sounded. The website was great, and we had several phone calls, which were really helpful. We also needed someone local. Netitude ticked all the boxes for us."

Mark Dorrill, Director, Brook Food

Our Solution

We began with a full audit of Brook Food's systems under our Net9 framework, which produced an alignment score and a clear view of what needed to be done first. From there, we put solid foundations in place and took on day-to-day support, so the team could get back to running the business rather than firefighting.

A Microsoft 365 migration is the next step in the roadmap, with regular strategic reviews keeping the plan moving as the business grows.

The local point is worth dwelling on, because it cuts both ways. Netitude is based in Frome, a short drive from Brook Food. That proximity is why the phone is answered by someone who knows the business, rather than by someone reading it off a screen for the first time.

The Net9 Framework

 Everything we delivered for Brook Food runs through Net9, our framework for giving a business full visibility across nine key delivery areas: 

1. Business continuity protection
2. Cloud platforms
3. Scalable technology estate
4. Licensing and legal
5. Network infrastructure and wireless
6. Connectivity and collaboration
7. Threats and vulnerabilities
8. Power, environment and ESG
9. Standardised, efficient, scalable systems

Rather than fixing problems one at a time, Net9 lets us see the whole picture — and build a roadmap that keeps working as the business grows. To learn more about our Net9 process, click here.

The Result

Six months in, the difference was clear on three fronts. Security was stronger; the risk of a disruption bringing things to a halt had dropped substantially; and when something did go wrong, recovery was far quicker than it would have been before.

That third one is the quiet win. Most businesses focus on preventing incidents, which matters, but the gap between a two-hour recovery and a two-day one is usually the difference between an inconvenience and a genuinely bad week.

The more day-to-day change is simply that IT stopped being something the team had to think about, which is what Brook Food asked for at the outset.

What to take from it

Brook Food didn't come looking for a technology upgrade for its own sake. They came because IT problems were eating time that belonged to customers, and they wanted that time back. The modernisation was the means rather than the point.

It's also a reminder that how a provider is to deal with is part of the offer, not a detail alongside it. Brook Food chose partly on proximity, and six months of working together suggest they read that correctly.

If your own IT is taking up time that ought to be spent on something more useful, we'd be glad to talk it through. Get in touch with the Netitude team, and we'll take a look at where your own constraints actually sit.