Blomsterbergs chose Microsoft 365 Desktop

With five bedding stores, two furniture stores, a real estate arm and three different business systems, the Blomsterbergs family business needed an IT solution that could be used across the group. At the same time, they felt they had too many IT vendors and that it was time to take a holistic approach. The choice fell on WeSafe's Azure Virtual Desktop-based workplace solution Microsoft 365 Desktop. The result was a much simpler IT life.

Blomsterberg's Furniture Stores was founded by Hugo Blomsterberg in Eslöv in 1936. Today, the business has grown to encompass an entire group, with operations in the furniture and real estate sectors. In addition to the original store in Eslöv, which is now a Furniture Masters store, they operate five stores under the Blomsterbergs Beds brand and a Swedish Home store in Löddeköpinge.

"Altogether we are about thirty employees. There are four of us at the head office in Eslöv, but most of us are employed in the stores. So we are very spread out in several ways."

- Christer Stenberg, Finance Manager at Blomsterbergs

From multiple suppliers to one

A dispersed and complex business places high demands on the IT environment. Christer explains that the company previously had many different suppliers for different functions such as email, server environment and websites. Christer wanted a more cohesive IT environment that was easy to access from one place. But it was only when Blomsterbergs started having problems with the capacity of its server solution that he decided to take a holistic approach.

- 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 shop in Eslöv, needs to be connected to Office 365. This is to be able to use 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 got in touch.

A virtual Windows 10 in the cloud

The solution chosen by Blomsterbergs was WeSafe's Microsoft 365 Desktop service. The service is based on Azure Virtual Desktop and allows users to run a full Windows 10 on a virtual desktop in the cloud. The desktop is accessible on any device and, unlike traditional remote desktop solutions, it has full support for OneDrive and Teams. For Blomsterberg's head office and store employees, this means, among other things, an end to having to switch back and forth between different environments depending on the task at hand.

Moving information easily

As 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 autumn the system was up and running at the head office and in all stores.

Blomsterbergs got up and running quickly, but some fine-tuning is still being done.

- How satisfied you are always depends on what you expect, and when things are moving this fast, you can't expect everything to work 100%. Among other things, we had a few heavy runs that brought the speed down. But we've always had a good dialogue with WeSafe, who have cranked up 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 take it easy and plan better. It's important to map out what the needs are 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 applications. However, it takes some time to get employees to change their way of working."

- Christer Stenberg, Finance Manager at Blomsterbergs

A solution to grow with

Almost a hundred years after the first store opened, Blomsterbergs continues to grow and next up is a new store in the Emporia shopping centre 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 we can grow with. It's easy to add more users or scale up server capacity if and when we need to. We're also looking at implementing Teams. It won't replace the physical meeting, of course, but from what I've seen of Teams, I think it would suit us. Even though we have now got our IT environment in order, we are, as I said, quite spread out and see a need for a common communication and collaboration platform like Microsoft Teams," concludes Christer.

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