Blomsterbergs chose Microsoft 365 Desktop

Blomsterberg's möbelaffärer was started by Hugo Blomsterberg in Eslöv in 1936. Today, the business has grown to include an entire group, with activities in the furniture and real estate industry. In addition to the original store in Eslöv, which today is a Möbelmästarna store, they operate five stores under the Blomsterberg's Sängar brand and a Svenska Hem store in Löddeköpinge.

"In total, we have about thirty employees. There are four of us at the head office in Eslöv, but the majority are employed in the stores. So we are very scattered in many ways."

- Christer Stenberg, Financial Manager at Blomsterbergs.

From multiple suppliers to one

A scattered and complex business places high demands on the IT environment. Christer says that the company previously had many different suppliers for different functions such as e-mail, server environment and websites. Christer had a desire for a more cohesive IT environment that is easy to access from one place. But it was only when Blomsterbergs started having problems with the capacity of their server solution that he decided to take a grip on the whole thing.

- Our business is special in that we have three different business systems, which has made us dependent on remote desktops. Another reason why we needed to change environment was that our business system Pyramid, which we use in the store in Eslöv, needs to be connected to Office 365. This is to be able to utilize Pyramid's full potential, says Christer.

Christer had worked with WeSafe before and had a good impression. He also had WeSafe recommended to him by Blomsterberg's Visma supplier DataPartner and contacted them.

A virtual Windows 10 in the cloud

The solution chosen by Blomsterbergs was the WeSafe service. Microsoft 365 Desktop. The service is based on Azure Virtual Desktop and allows the user to run a full Windows 10 on a virtual desktop in the cloud. The desktop is available on all devices and, unlike traditional remote desktop solutions, it has full support for OneDrive and Teams. For Blomsterberg employees at head office and in the stores, this means, among other things, no more switching back and forth between different environments depending on the task at hand.

Smooth transfer of information

Since Blomsterbergs needed to find an alternative server solution and had even terminated their existing contract, they had to act quickly. WeSafe was contacted just before the summer and by the end of the fall, the system was up and running at the head office and in all stores.

Blomsterberg's got off to a fast start, but some fine-tuning is still being done.

- The level of satisfaction always depends on what you expect, and when it's going this fast you can't expect everything to work 100%. Among other things, we had some heavy driving that caused the speed to go down. But we have always had a good dialog with WeSafe, which has increased the server capacity when the business has required it.

Christer is pleased with how smoothly all the information was transferred. However, his recommendation to other companies making the same journey is to slow down and plan better. It is important to map out what the need looks like and also focus on ensuring that employees receive proper training before the solution is implemented.

"Store employees see the benefit of having everything in one place and not having to switch between their local environment and a remote desktop. They have their own personal user profiles and can make full use of Microsoft programs. However, it takes some time to get employees to change their way of working."

- Christer Stenberg, Financial Manager at Blomsterbergs.

A solution to grow with

Almost a hundred years after the first store opened, Blomsterberg's continues to grow, and next up is a new store in the Emporia shopping center in Malmö. The store is independent but will be linked to the same IT solution.

- With Microsoft 365 Desktop, we feel we have a solution that we can grow with. It's easy to add more users or go up in server capacity if and when we need to. We are also looking at implementing Teams. Of course, it will not replace the physical meeting, but from what I have seen of Teams, I think it would suit us. Although we have now got our IT environment in order, we are, as I said, quite scattered and see a need for a common communication and collaboration platform like Microsoft Teams," concludes Christer.