4-page Case Study - Posted 11/10/2008

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Sogrape Vinhos

Wine Distributor Adds Zip to Remote Access and Data Retrieval with System Upgrade

Founded in 1942, Sogrape was created to introduce Portuguese wines to the world following three important criteria: an emphasis on quality, the importance of brands, and the presentation of its products. The company’s facilities spread across 10 wine-making centers in Portugal, have a production capacity of more than 30 million liters, and have an hourly bottling line yield of 52,000 bottles. With a strong export component and worldwide presence, its employees are often travelling and connecting with customers. Employees needed easy, reliable remote access to customer information and better organization of company data. Using Windows Vista®, the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Sogrape’s IT team created an integrated solution that boosted productivity, improved remote access, and put data in easy reach.

Situation

Throughout its 66-year history, Sogrape has built an international business by responding promptly to market demands, anticipating consumer tastes, and always focusing on quality. To continue building on its success, the company’s strong export and international distribution component is guided by a philosophy of close customer proximity. Carlos Alves, Director of Information Systems at Sogrape, cites “the need for the company’s employees to be with international customers, while at the same time continuing to have access to the company's resources."

One of the areas where Windows Vista makes the most difference is connectivity, especially Wi-Fi access; the connections are nearly instantaneous. Carlos Alves Director of Information Systems, Sogrape

Given the business dynamics at Sogrape, a company employee can be with a customer in France while receiving orders from Italy or any other location at the same time. Consequently, employees must be able to receive and respond to these orders before returning to their offices in Portugal.

Employees who are in contact with international customers use notebook computers and access the company’s computer systems in Portugal remotely through virtual private networks. However, this system wasn’t always easy or successful. “There were problems with e-mail access,” recalls Alves, “because the application we used at the time, Lotus Notes, was quite cumbersome.” The setup was also difficult to adapt to the new generation of mobile devices, such as smart phones and personal digital assistants.

In addition, Sogrape struggled with managing customer data. “Internally we didn’t have any solution to help us organize information on customers,” says Alves. Valuable customer data was ultimately scattered over various parts of the company’s IT infrastructure.

In 2006, Sogrape felt the need to address this situation. The timing would turn out to be perfect. In discussing the situation with Microsoft in an effort to find solutions to its challenges, Sogrape decided to become an early adopter of the Windows Vista® operating system, the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 e-mail messaging and collaboration software. Says Alves, “The timing was perfect as it coincided with the periodic renewal of the company’s equipment.”

“We used to replace equipment PC by PC on an as-needed, sporadic basis,” explains Alves. “However, for some time now we have had a periodic renewal strategy for both hardware and software, which is done in a global and organized manner.” The opportunity to deploy a solution to organize information and improve remote access coincided exactly with one of these renewal cycles.

Sogrape had a policy of using software with at least two years on the market, so the company discussed at length the decision to move forward with the recently launched products from Microsoft. The company figured that if its IT team spent time optimizing a solution internally, release of the new software would be imminent when the team was done. “The idea of using new versions finally won out,” says Alves. “Consequently, we ended up having more time to work with the solutions and capitalized on the new technologies available to us."

Solution

Despite its relatively small IT team—seven members, plus one part-time member—Sogrape chose to deploy the solution in-house, with the direct support of Microsoft Portugal. Microsoft Gold Certified Partner DevScope helped configure Office SharePoint Server 2007 to meet Sogrape’s needs.
 

Windows Vista is excellent for system administrators in terms of creating policies, which is great for us, since it makes our work much easier. Carlos Alves Director of Information Systems, Sogrape

The project was initially launched with the Windows® XP operating system, Office 2003, and Exchange Server 2003 on new Dell computers with Intel Core 2 Duo processors and 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM (2 GB of RAM in the portable computers). The solution was later migrated to the newer software at the end of 2006 on more than 300 personal computers, around one-third of them portable computers. No special configuration was needed to accommodate the hardware requirements of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system, assures Alves; the same new computers used for Windows XP and Office 2003 were used when the new versions arrived.

The deployment of the updated operating system and desktop productivity tools was accompanied by the replacement of the former messaging system, based on Lotus Notes, with Exchange Server 2007. Office SharePoint Server 2007, the last item deployed, was used to create an intranet to facilitate the organization of information, enable data inquiries, and improve access. The intranet was organized into two main areas, by company and by operating area, with the latter subdivided into a public section and a work (or department) section.

Sogrape found it easy in Windows Vista to implement synchronization policies, which, together with the automatic detection of connection speed, optimize data synchronization and transfer. “Although this exists in Windows XP, it is much easier to configure in Windows Vista. It also works much better, since detecting the connection speed did not always work in the past.”

Benefits

The project’s benefits were felt immediately. Employees are more productive and, when traveling, take advantage of fast connectivity and data access. Companywide information is better organized and stays up-to-date with synchronization between portable computers and corporate resources. Finally, the IT team enjoys easier administration and development tasks.

Improved Remote Access and Productivity

“The synergies in Exchange Server 2007 are clear. We immediately saw greater productivity and flexibility in the remote access of our employees working outside the company,” says Alves.

The synergies in Exchange Server 2007 are clear. We immediately saw greater productivity and flexibility in the remote access of our employees working outside the company. Carlos Alves Director of Information Systems, Sogrape

For portable computer users, the greatest difference is how easily they can synchronize information between notebooks and company servers. “This is now much more transparent for the user and much quicker, especially in the case of remote access,” says Alves.

Those working remotely also benefit from the operating system update. Says Alves, “One of the areas where Windows Vista makes the most difference is connectivity, especially Wi-Fi access; the connections are nearly instantaneous, while in Windows XP this required some knowledge on the part of the user.”

Sogrape has also found the computers with Windows Vista to be more responsive, both within and outside the company. “With the desktop computers, which are directly connected to our network, we have seen a much better use of network resources—such as with printing, which is much faster in Windows Vista,” says Alves.

Sogrape employees are making good use of the integrated, updated programs in the 2007 Office system. “With the 2007 Office system, we particularly saw improvements in terms of productivity,” says Alves, “due to the new interface with shortcut menus that show only those commands and tasks that are relevant to what people are doing at the time.”

Better Information Management

The intranet, based on Office SharePoint Server 2007, helped consolidate information that was once spread throughout the company among various storage systems. Tracking and accessing customer data has been improved through the use of tags, which employees assign to new documents when they are saved to the server. “We defined classification models and made the use of tags mandatory for users through a policy,” explains Alves. “This has greatly facilitated the search for information a posteriori.” The tag rule for documents was implemented in each work/department area of the intranet.

The entire solution works together to keep information organized, tracked, and accessible. E-mail messages, which are managed by Exchange Server 2007, are preclassified and sent to Office SharePoint Server 2007. “This makes it very easy to immediately find any document of any type, since the system also indexes content,” says Alves. “We capitalized on the synergy between all the products.”

Easier System Administration

“Windows Vista is excellent for system administrators in terms of creating policies,” explains Alves, “which is great for us, since it makes our work much easier.” For example, the IT team can create policies for computer configuration that avoid remote access problems or policies that increase data security through mandatory synchronization of data from notebooks as soon as they are connected to the network, locally or remotely.

Alves underscores the advantages of developing a solution from scratch using Microsoft technologies. “It is very easy to develop and customize Microsoft applications,” he concludes, pointing out the implementation of policies in Windows Vista and the ease of configuring Exchange Server 2007.

Windows Vista
Windows Vista can help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to find and use information more effectively. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to enhance corporate IT security, data protection, and more efficient deployment and management.

For more information about Windows Vista, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about DevScope products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.devscope.net

For more information about Sogrape Group products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.sogrape.pt