Collaboration could be more relevant to your business than you think

  • Article

Many small businesses are still in the mindset that some forms of technology are never going to be for them. Perhaps not surprisingly. Just a few years ago, who would have thought we'd be writing the words 'sandwich shop', 'cloud' and 'collaboration' in the same sentence? 

A recent case study from our colleagues in the US,  'wichcraft, shows why we are wrong to make assumptions about certain types of businesses. And when you look into the detail of the story, it becomes a lot easier to understand how 'wichcraft's need for a new way of working has come about. Like many successful sandwich businesses of its type, 'wichcraft has grown from a single shop to 15 shops in locations across 3 cities. It has also grown the catering side of its business. As a result of this expansion, it started to  facing issues communicating efficiently across all locations, especially when it came to organising and delivering high-volume or last-minute orders. In short, ‘wichcraft needed to find a solution that would allow multiple, remote employees to collaborate effectively.

The cloud, through Office 365, turned out to be ‘wichcraft’s solution. In a nutshell, here's how:  

  • Collaboration - with Office 365’s ability to seamlessly integrate email and other communication modes, ‘wichcraft has been able to move all employees to one centralized email system, eliminating redundancy and saving time.
  • Accessibility - previously, the business experienced issues loading and accessing the critical documents it needed to serve customers across its many locations. With Office 365, ‘wichcraft employees can access documents faster, and at the same time as employees in other locations, while maintaining version control and consistency.
  • Analysing Data - by creating customisable solutions to gather and organize customer data through Microsoft Access, ‘wichcraft is developing a more intuitive catering program that will enhance customer service and provide information on primary purchasers, order history and frequency.

Is your business growing fast? No matter what type of business it is, it could be time to think seriously about enabling employee collaboration through the cloud. For more on the 'wichcraft story, see here