A recipe for secure success

P&B Foods started as a one-man mobile van operation in Bradford in the late 1960s, and has grown to become the largest independently owned Asian food wholesale distributor in the UK. From its 200,000sq. ft purpose-built facility, P&B manufactures food products for its own brands, Heera, Balah and Rishta, and distributes wholesale throughout Europe.

BCN’s infrastructure planning is designed with flexibility and resilience in mind, ensuring businesses are equipped with the best industry-recognised systems and technologies so they can maintain operations even when disaster strikes. By migrating systems and users, delivering increased bandwidth capacity and implementing robust backup and disaster recovery capabilities, BCN delivers future-proofed infrastructures to support business growth.

P&B had been with its previous IT supplier for years. When an unsophisticated malware attack targeted P&B’s systems, it became clear how ineffective the supplier’s disaster recovery capabilities had been. And while the attack failed to breach any business-critical or customer data, P&B realised they needed to find a more proactive IT partner to shore up security and take the business forward. Following a competitive tender process, P&B engaged BCN to complete a full infrastructure refresh with improved DR capabilities.

“We’d started to experience small but reoccurring glitches with sales and stock control systems. BCN reconfigured the mapping and housing of these business-critical softwares to eliminate problem issues while also enhancing the performance of these applications.”

Mani Bhatoa, Management, P&B Foods Ltd.  

Having grown organically over five decades and spent years with the same IT supplier, P&B Foods had been relying on core internal systems that used outdated tech and legacy platforms that were increasingly unfit for purpose for a steadily growing business. The company had moved into a state-of-the-art, purpose-built facility in 2016, but the tech that had been supporting business operations had stagnated, and the company was suffering more and more downtime as connectivity struggled to cope and systems suffered glitches. They were in urgent need of migration to newer industry-recognised technologies, and sought an IT partner to carry out a full infrastructure refresh. 

BCN drafted a plan for a reliable enterprise system that would impact positively on not only tech processes and workloads, but the business as a whole. We designed a complete overhaul of the infrastructure, including the installation of high bandwidth internet links, leading hardware and the latest software, all underpinned by a fully managed service. We installed new user devices, rolled out Microsoft Office 365 and RingCentral VoIP across the business, installed new HP servers, Nimble storage and switching, implemented an off-site backup DR service, and migrated the business to Sage 200.

The six-month project has revolutionised the way P&B operates. With its new, modernised infrastructure, the business’s IT has been brought in line with its over-arching goals for growth, with leading software and platforms streamlining processes and workflows to free up teams for more strategic activities. The migration to Sage 200 has been particularly transformational, saving the finance team countess hours each week. 

 The newly strengthened DR capabilities have been another boon for the business and proved their worth soon after completion. When a digger accidentally cut through P&B’s internet lines, the new HP servers ensured all local applications were unaffected, and business was able to continue as normal. Under their previous IT supplier, this incident would have halted all operations.

BCN continues to support P&B Foods with its digital transformation, and we are currently designing and installing IT infrastructure as the business’s new warehouse extension. As the chosen managed service provider, BCN is proud to ensure P&B Foods can confidently plan for further growth and strategic acquisitions, safe in the knowledge that their IT is built for purpose, and built to last.