Milking machinery firm rises to the top with cloud transition
For ADF Milking, ensuring all of its staff – no matter where they are in the world – can do business is critical.
The fast-growing manufacturing company designs, manufactures and distributes automatic milking machines that take hygiene to the next level. The technologically advanced units protect cows’ health and dramatically reduce the risk of mastitis, which is both painful for the cow and costly to the farmer.
Since ADF’s launch in the UK around 12 years ago, it has gone truly global and with customers in 24 countries, it needs to know its employees can access its systems wherever they are.
So when ADF Milking needed help migrating to the cloud, they turned to Fareham-based IT company Taylor Made Computer Solutions for help.
Tony Solazzo, ADF Milking’s CFO said: “Being connected is important now more than ever before and when you’re a global organisation, that presents its own challenges. In our industry in particular we’re working with a lot of farmers who can often be based off the beaten track. Ensuring our staff who go out to visit them are tooled up in terms of connectivity is a challenge.
“Add to that the fact we have employees working in different time zones across the globe and you can see why an IT system that’s accessible from anywhere is so important.”
ADF Milking’s transition to the cloud had been on the horizon for some time. “It was a huge project and something we’d wanted to do for a long while,” Solazzo said. “We’d been restricted for a number of years, believe it or not due to our internet connectivity being poor at our UK headquarters in Slindon, West Sussex. There was nothing we or Taylor Made could do until circumstances changed and we were able to put in our own leased line, giving access to the faster broadband we’d need to support cloud working.
“Thankfully that came last year and with some very careful planning we set about the transition to the cloud.”
James Chalmers, who heads up ADF Milking’s support at Taylor Made, said: “Businesses large and small are in a rush to take advantage of the cloud and some are diving head-first into solutions without thinking about the bigger picture.
“ADF Milking was the complete opposite and very switched on to the fact that a transition to the cloud is a journey. We were able to work with them to brainstorm exactly what they needed and what hurdles we needed to overcome to get them onto the cloud smoothly.”
All of ADF Milking’s existing software was incorporated into the cloud solution, including its Sage 200 and Sage CRM systems, which were upgraded in the process. Rather than upgrading to a new server on site, the company moved to Taylor Made’s data centre, a sophisticated virtual server system.
“Now we’re all on one platform worldwide and it’s made a very significant improvement to the way we work,” Solazzo said. “Before, it was far more fragmented and less effective. Now we’ve got one cohesive platform that everyone can see, it works faster, is more robust and our people in different countries are collaborating more than ever before.”
Chalmers added: “Being worldwide, ADF Milking is a truly 24-hour business and we’re pleased to see it’s IT operations are now buzzing around the clock. Seemingly simple changes to IT infrastructure can have a huge impact on efficiency and productivity, as ADF Milking has shown. We’re looking forward to working with its team in the coming years to develop that even further.”
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