CHALLENGE

A leading fresh food producer and distributor, Total Produce has over 3,000 employees operating out of over 100 locations in 20 countries. It has 12 sites around Ireland, including one in Dundalk, County Louth, where the roots of the company can be traced back 50 years to a family business.

The headquarters is in Dublin where Director of Information Technology, Tony O’Halloran (pictured), is responsible for an IT roadmap that will make the business more efficient. Part of his strategy is to consolidate service providers.

His first move was to find a mobile carrier that would deliver consistent coverage to the Irish business. Next, he wanted to identify a communications service provider that could support its global footprint.

“What we liked about Three was their ability to support our local business at the same time as grow our global infrastructure,” explains Tony O’Halloran. “It very quickly became apparent that we had found a partner with the same culture and the expertise to deliver what we needed.”

SOLUTION

Having proved itself with excellent mobile coverage and strong customer service, O’Halloran began to talk to Three about more strategic solutions. Total Produce had grown fast through acquisition and wanted to consolidate some of its services, including fixed telephony.

In Association with

Three proposed its cloud telephony solution 3Connect, which would transform our telephony  infrastructure while moving it to the cloud. The big benefit of this solution was that all our offices and employees could access the same features regardless of location. 3Connect was rolled out across our Irish and UK locations.

“We were able to decommission our inherited telephone systems at the same time as delivering better service and experience to our employees. The 3Connect service has made it possible for us to reduce our internal costs and take advantage of the features set including voice  conferencing, virtual fax, fixed mobile convergence and free internal dial plans across our UK and Ireland footprint all over the internet,” said O’Halloran.

Total Produce is now looking at more innovative ways of deploying mobile technology. Tony O’Halloran sees a role for tablets and smartphones in the firm’s distribution depots, helping automate warehouse processes by mobilising supply chain activity.

“Three are innovative and always coming up with ideas. It’s a collaborative arrangement and I can see lots of possibilities in the supply chain,” he says. “They bring a lot of knowledge to the table."

BENEFITS

The role of mobile is essential to Total Produce, empowering sales and marketing as they bid for new business and look to maintain established relationships. Three’s network has provided much better coverage to the multiple sites located across Ireland, ably supported by strong customer service and proactive account management. It proved to be the first step in an increasingly close partnership that continues to deliver benefits.

The 3Connect solution has enabled the business to keep internal calls between different locations “on net” and free, because they don’t go out over the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

The cloud-based PBX (or Telephony service) saved more money because it did away with the need for physical equipment and on-site engineers – the only on-premise requirement is IP handsets. “And  because it’s all run virtually, it’s much easier to roll out and expand as we open new locations,” explains O’Halloran.