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Balle Bros is a produce supplier, and has been involved in growing, packing and marketing New Zealand fresh produce for more than three generations. The company recently acquired iconic potato processor Mr Chips. When Balle Bros needed to consolidate email infrastructure across the two brands, they turned to Theta, already a trusted ERP partner.
Balle Bros came to Theta with a fairly open brief – outlining what they wanted to achieve without dictating how the solution should be implemented. Balle Bros wanted to leverage existing Office 365 tenant they already used to host Mr Chips’ email solution, while retaining the unique identity of both businesses and keep trading with existing email addresses.
It was also important to allow Mr Chips users to use resources from the Balle Bros domain, to centralise management and save costs.
Through the discovery phase of the project we established what would be needed to consolidate the two domains, implement the necessary connections and leverage the existing Balle Bros Office 365 tenant.
Nathaniel Changco, Balle Bros’ IT Manager, says:
After the discovery phase Theta presented us with a proposal that gave me great confidence – it was clear that they knew what they were doing!
He adds:
I liked the openness of Theta’s approach. They recognised that we were on a tight budget, gave us options, and didn’t force us to consider just a single solution or partner.
We established a trust relationship between the two domains for resources and access. We also updated the existing DirSync, a mechanism for user and password synchronization to Office 365, to the latest version. This supports multi-forest synchronization to provision Mr Chips users in the Office 365 tenant.
The project successfully met all requirements and achieved a central point of management for the Office 365 tenant for both businesses.
The benefits of a successful implementation like this go beyond the project itself. Nathaniel Changco comments:
We met the timeline that the company directors had requested, and did so within budget. This is a great result in and of itself, but having such a positive experience also makes it easier for me to initiate new projects.
He adds:
We see our relationship with Theta as an ongoing one, and really value the external perspective they bring. They keep up with the latest technology – which is great, as Azure is evolving so fast – and are very familiar with both the application and infrastructure environment here.
Technology
Office 365
Benefits
- Email infrastructure consolidated for cost savings and efficiency
- Users have access to better productivity tools through Office 365
- Mr Chips identity retained