Grow your business with Teamwork solutions
For Clifton Coffee Roasters, based in Bristol, the first step to growing their business was to improve internal communication and teamwork within the company. In the past, communication among team members was disjointed, so it was challenging for team members to connect in an efficient manner. And as the business expanded and more employees were onboarded, the communication breakdown became even worse.
Clifton Coffee Roasters uses communication tools from Microsoft to create a shared workspace every team member can access, from almost anywhere. With new Microsoft 365 Business Message Encryption capabilities, they can share protected email with anyone, on any device. And with instant messaging and group chat capabilities, connecting and sharing ideas has never been easier. Because communication within the company is airtight, they are now one of the premier coffee companies in the UK.
Clarke Lenthall, Operations Director, says, “With Teams, we immediately felt the impact of having channels where you get a fast response because your question is relevant to that channel rather than something that could get lost in a giant group chat on WhatsApp. Now, most employees keep three windows open on their devices to cover everything they need: Outlook, Teams, and the company’s financial system.”
In addition to using Teams to communicate on both their laptops and smartphones, employees at Clifton Coffee use SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Forms to share files and media—and to request leave, file expenses, and collect feedback on coffee trading.
the company had more plans for its new tools, reaching beyond the initial efficiency gains. Within a couple of weeks of Microsoft 365 going live, the company had already developed two exciting use cases. The first involved putting QR codes on each piece of coffee machinery in the field. Previously, it kept all documentation – invoices, delivery notes, quotations, engineering logs, and callout forms – on paper. Staff would print copies, fill them in while onsite, then scan them once back in the office and save them on a server.
“It was an archaic method of data management that left too much potential for human error,” says Clarke. Now, when engineers visit a customer, they take a picture of the code with their device and a form pops up in Microsoft Forms where they can enter the service data. This gets automatically saved in the cloud for anyone who needs to access it. And easy ways to log data result in higher-quality input.”
If you have any questions about Microsoft 365, or any other technology-related questions, and would like some advice, give us a call on 0345 319 4877 (local call rate). We’ll be happy to help you.
