Intelligent manufacturing is key to success, from developing a more sustainable, resilient supply chain to reducing waste and improving efficiency. Achieving intelligent manufacturing with Microsoft solutions enables manufacturers to achieve growth and exceptional customer and social outcomes.
Why the cloud?
Manufacturer enables remote work and transforms business processes with the cloud
Global kitchen-appliance designer Hamilton Beach Brands replaced aging infrastructure and disparate solutions with Microsoft 365 for anywhere collaboration. To enable more secure remote access to its internal systems, it leveraged the Azure cloud platform and set up Windows Virtual Desktop with multifactor authentication.
“With Windows Virtual Desktop, we got a more secure, modern solution in two days! And our partners could use it with minimal support and training. …. (It) gave us the control we needed; the competing solution did not.” Christina Hollingsworth: Vice President of IT
Hollingsworth began Hamilton Beach Brands’ digital transformation by initiating the stress testing for the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in the Azure cloud platform. She also migrated a critical sales application to Azure and updated employees’ computers to Windows 10. By the end of January, though, due to COVID-19, she had to focus instead on helping the company’s international employees and partners work remotely. At that time, only salespeople had ever worked remotely. To keep the company operations running, almost every worker would need a device and secure, reliable remote access to data and applications.
As Hollingsworth points out, “If your only expert on a particular system goes on vacation, you’re stuck. But going with Microsoft cloud services was an opportunity to get a major uplift in security without having to add to our budget or our IT team. The team’s new Microsoft skill sets will apply across products.”
Remote access improvements
Synergy Technical deployed Windows Virtual Desktop in just 2 work days to streamline supply chain access. “With Windows Virtual Desktop, we got a more secure, modern solution in two days! And our partners could use it with minimal support and training. We used it to provide targeted access to selected areas of our ERP system,” says Hollingsworth. “Windows Virtual Desktop gave us the control we needed; the competing solution did not.”
Flexibility and cost savings
Employees are already enjoying the benefits of Azure AD. Before, they had to navigate to an internal site to see organizational charts and documents, which were often outdated. “Our employees love that they can easily see org charts and reporting relationships,” says Hollingsworth.
Enhanced productivity
Hamilton Beach Brands turned to Microsoft Teams for collaboration. Hollingsworth says, “The main difference between Teams and our previous solution is that Teams has everything very securely integrated in the same space: chat, files, and meeting notes”
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