Flame Homeware is one of the UK's fastest-growing giftware importers, and they pride themselves on exclusivity, aiming to have one stockist per town and not supplying wholesalers or intermediaries.
The company was registered in 1996 and is located in Sandycroft, Wales. The gifts are manufactured in Asia and are sold through their 24 Gift Company stores and 3 Garden World garden centres.
The Challenge
Flame Homeware was dealing with aging IT infrastructure due to delays caused by the pandemic. The pandemic extended the timeline for IT upgrades.
Their IT estate was hosted on two on-premises servers, one for their Sage 200 financial software and the other for data storage. The on-premises servers were 10-12 years old, severely outdated, expensive to run, and slow. The systems suffered from long boot and program loading times. Flame Homeware also wanted to increase the security of their data on the on-premises servers and remote workers devices.
Part of the challenge was looking for a solution that improved operations, collaboration, security, and allowed for Sage's continuous use.
The Solution
Flame Homeware was already using Sage and their teams were reliant on the Sage software to run all of their business finances. TSG experts and key team members of Flame Homeware discussed possibilities and came up with a solution that would help the business.
Flame Homeware chose to migrate their systems - including Sage 200 - to the cloud as it offered better security and would allow them to grow their IT estate in the future. The cloud migration included migration to Microsoft 365 Business Premium licensing, SharePoint, and personal data to OneDrive. Their existing equipment was replaced with equipment that was tailored to the demands that the staff placed upon it.
The solution was to host Sage 200 on Azure, allowing Flame Houseware to continue using Sage but also having better measures for its data security by hosting it on Azure.
Sage 200 on Azure removed the need for an on-premises server that was coming to the end of its life. During the migration we were able to upgrade Sage 200 and migrate Sage 50 Payroll to PC with one drive backup configured.
Hosting Sage 200 on Azure meant that the Flame Homeware team could be helped quicker as the cloud solution allows TSG experts to provide support without needing to send out an engineer to the site.
The Result
The collaboration between Flame Homeware and TSG helped the team in the following ways:
Increased efficiency: Boot and loading times have been reduced, meaning the Flame Homeware team regains time in their day to focus on the business.
Increased Security: Hosting Sage on Azure provides better security and futureproofing, eliminating the need to buy new servers every five years. We helped implement Sophos Virtual Firewall to further enhance security.
Easy to use: Since the implementation of Sage 200 on Azure, the team has found the solution easy to use which has increased their efficiency.
Better collaboration: Moving to the cloud has improved collaboration and communication within the company, with employees now easily communicating via Teams and accessing data.
Minimal Disruption: With most work completed out of hours the only disruption experienced was Sage being inaccessible for about half a day.
Cost savings: Now their IT estate is in the cloud, there has been cost savings as we were able to reduce their monthly support and back up costs.
Flexibility: Migrating to the cloud will allow Flame Homeware to adjust their data capacity as and when they need it. Should they want to increase or downsize their databases it will now be easier to do so.
Access Management: Sage 200 hosted on Azure allows better user access management. This has helped reduce costs by limiting Sage access to only necessary users as Flame Homeware now only has to pay for licences they need.
Jon Slocombe, Projects & Compliance Manager at Flame Homeware
