The Sugar Fix Bakery Case Study

Heidi runs a popular artisan bakery and café, producing freshly baked breads, cakes and pastries for customers in and around Truro, Cornwall. The café is open 7 days a week to the public and they take orders over the phone for collection from local businesses, such as hotels, offices and schools. Alongside this, they also run in-house bakery classes five days a week.

The business prides itself on an excellent product and customer experience.

With significant changes to the working environment, the business needed to quickly adapt and diversify how it offer its product. To continue to trade and to provide employment for her staff, Heidi decided to take the business online and offer an order and delivery service from her website, where she could also host the bakery classes via video.

The business had to embrace new technology to ensure they could manage orders, calls, logistics and costs. Initial tests proved the existing ADSL broadband connection was unreliable and lacked the required bandwidth to handle their online demands, such as live streaming of online classes, managing the website orders and the day-to-day running of the business.

In addition, the phone line didn’t have the ability to manage an increase in phone calls, with many customers and businesses being let down and unable to get through. With Heidi coming to the end of her broadband contract with her current supplier, now was the perfect opportunity for her to future-proof her business and embrace a new way of working.

Heidi recognised that for her business to grow, whilst meeting her digital demands, a faster and more reliable connectivity solution was required. To enable her to successfully manage her business online, she chose to upgrade to an 80Mbps SOGEA solution.

The new SOGEA connection increased bandwidth and reliability due to being a fibre-based solution, which meant that The Sugar Fix could stay connected to customers and suppliers while seamlessly live-streaming bakery lessons throughout the week to their growing audience on social media. The SOGEA broadband solution is a data-only connectivity product which doesn’t require a traditional telephone line. This meant that Heidi was able to save money by removing the line rental costs of her WLR line, as she didn’t require any new or upgraded onsite hardware.

Moving to SOGEA and unlinking the broadband and WLR line at her premises meant that she could use the increased bandwidth to upgrade to a cloud-based Hosted Voice solution, whilst keeping her same number.

Utilising a HV.Select solution enabled Heidi to make, receive and manage calls from anywhere. Whether she was working from the bakery and using the new IP phone onsite, making deliveries and taking calls on her mobile via the Office UC Mobile App, or even working at home using the Office UC Softphone Desktop App – the business was now fully mobile.

Although Heidi could now access business calls from anywhere, it was still important for her to have a clear work/life balance. With the Office UC App she can keep business and personal calls separate and has full control of how her calls are managed and routed, such as setting up call queuing when the lines are busy and adding specific messages for customers to let them know when she is taking orders. This allowed for better engagement and communication with her customers, fewer missed calls and orders and helped maintain The Sugar Fix’s high standards of customer service.

Heidi was able to deploy a solution that both met the immediate needs of the business to adapt to her new way of working and also ensured the business was ready for digital transformation.

This case study is based on a fictional company but uses real-world product deployment examples.