When Strauss Romania, the largest network of coffee vending machines in Romania, wanted to improve customer experience they turned to Lenovo Services. The engagement involved an update to Strauss Romania’s IT infrastructure to allow for real time issue identification and repairs. This streamlined solution means every customer gets a delicious cup of coffee where and when they need it.
“You can’t buy happiness but you can buy coffee, and that’s pretty close.” – Unknown
What would the world do without coffee? The steaming elixir can serve as a simple mood booster, a morning pick-me-up or an excuse for a midday break. And the fact is that a single cup o ’joe is packed with antioxidants and health boosting chemicals. It has been shown that coffee improves productivity, reduces rates of type two diabetes and, in a review of 36 studies, 3.5 cups per day appeared to reduce the rate of cardiovascular disease by 15%.
However, coffee is more than just a means to improve your outlook on the day and impress your doctor. Drinking coffee is a ritual that has been developed and perfected over the centuries, and it is widely believed that coffee was first brewed around the 11th century and the practice quickly spread east from Ethiopia to the Arabian peninsula, Persia and eventually Europe.
And every cup connects those who drink it with the history and people who discovered how to perfect every step, from the roasting process to the brew. One could say that coffee is an engine that fuels societies.
Take Romania for example. A recent report found that the average Romanian will consume 2.5kg (5.5lbs) of coffee in a year and that 64% of all coffee revenue there comes from sales at hotels, restaurants and cafés.
This means Strauss Romania, the largest network of hotel, restaurant and café vending machines in the country, has a huge job to fulfill. The company provides more than 7,000 vending machines and 14,000 smart coffee machines that are integral to Romanian society. Luckily, Strauss Romania, a company whose mission statement says, “Our passion is the delight of giving, our need to nourish others,” takes their responsibility seriously.
So when the company decided to improve the customer experience by responding faster to local business needs, Strauss turned to Lenovo for solutions.
Aurelian Mester, IT Manager at Strauss Romania, explains, “IT is the backbone of our organization, underpinning everything from production to distribution to finance,” explained Mester, “It is essential that our IT systems run reliably and perform well because any issues could seriously impact operations.”
The Strauss IT team recommended that the company move their core SAP business applications from their parent company’s offices in Israel to Romania. This migration would allow the IT team to detect and respond to issues more efficiently than if the process was managed off site. And to ensure that they would have the computing power necessary for the move, Mester used the opportunity to upgrade to a two-node Lenovo ThinkAgile VX3320 appliance with VMware vSphere and vSAN virtualization technology.
“Lenovo is a complete one-stop shop for us,” says Aurelian Mester. “Our servers, storage, networking, PCs, laptops are all from Lenovo. So, when it came to choose the hardware for our new on-premises SAP environment, Lenovo was the obvious choice.”
Together with Lenovo’s Professional Services team, Strauss Romania simplified their IT management while doubling the efficiency and productivity of their SAP business environment.
“We wanted a solution that was quick to set up, easy to manage and cost-effective to run. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Appliances ticked all the boxes,” said Mester, “We can now check the status of vending machines in real time, enabling us to identify issues and schedule repairs promptly.”
The ongoing relationship between Lenovo and Strauss Romania, as well as the resulting improvements directly benefit the consumer in the form of uninterrupted, delicious streams of coffee.
“This is what we are always searching for, both for our operations and our customers: refreshing innovation.”
