Natures Way Foods

Requirement: Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager

Natures Way Foods approached leading IT provider Blue Chip, to implement a monitoring and maintenance solution across their business. This would improve the speed and efficiency of update management and gain enhanced insight, and control over, their IT systems. 

>> The Client

Natures Way Foods is a fresh produce manufacturing company dedicated to supplying ready to eat salads to leading UK supermarkets. Established for over 20 years they are one of the fastest growing and successful food companies in the UK.

Following an increase to the number of desktop users and the continual appearance of new security threats, updating each fat client machine had become a time consuming and costly task. The management team at Natures Way Foods realised the strong business requirement for a central solution that could control imaging whilst delivering and managing updates to IT systems across their business.

>> Solution

After an in-depth Infrastructure Review and consultation with Blue Chip, it was deemed that Operating System Deployment, in addition to Software Update Management, a key tool from Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager would simplify this complex exercise.

Blue Chip installed System Centre Configuration Manager and its associated tools on a blade server and soon collected information on all the PCs in the estate.  PCs were grouped together based on department and requirements enabling Natures Way Foods to push out updates and new products when required. New templates were also created that could be distributed to new machines added to the estate.  

To ensure that Natures Way food receives the most from their investment, Blue Chip provided the internal IT team with comprehensive system training.

>> Implementation Success and Company Benefit

With a central management solution in place Natures Way Foods were able to increase operational efficiency, have piece of mind over security issues and maintain stability of the systems infrastructure.

Chris Wallis, IT Manager at Natures Way Foods said, “MS System Centre Configuration Manager has significantly reduced the amount of time the our engineers need to spend managing the fat client PC estate in terms of re-imaging machines, creating new templates, and pushing out updates and new products. 

“With help from Blue Chip we can now further utilise the investments we have made in our internal systems.”

Technical Solution

• Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager