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Customer Success Stories

Jelly Belly Prefers a Proactive Flavor

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Experience Highlights
  • Challenge: Jelly Belly and its IT staff aim for an extremely high level of customer service that demands proactive problem resolution.
  • Solution: Zenprise has identified and diagnosed perplexing, worrisome, and even previously undetected problems that affect e-mail users and e-mail infrastructure.
  • Interesting That: Even seasoned Exchange administrators can’t hope to know about every problem that can occur. The complexity of the Exchange environment means IT staff can be more effective by leveraging intelligent software to diagnose and resolve problems.

The Jelly Belly candy company became a household name when former President Ronald Reagan ordered 7,000 pounds of jelly beans for his 1981 inauguration. Yet you can trace the roots of Jelly Belly as far back as 1869, seven years before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. In those days, the Morse telegraph, which rendered the Pony Express obsolete, was your best bet for getting a message quickly to someone far away. Today, of course, Jelly Belly relies on a more modern means of communication – e-mail.

The family-owned business of over 600 employees uses a Microsoft Exchange e-mail system to discuss new Jelly Belly products, to plan meetings, and to assist with business workflow. And you can bet that Jelly Belly receives a huge number of emotional e-mails from its happy and surprisingly opinionated customers discussing the latest new flavors.
 
So when Zenprise and Jelly Belly first met, Jelly Belly was curious but also insistent that Zenprise prove its value to the Jelly Belly family. Dan Rosman, Director of Information Technology, soon found that Zenprise significantly improved the effectiveness of his staff by discovering, diagnosing, and resolving recurring e-mail issues.

First, Do No Harm

All IT staffs are guarded and vigilant when introducing new products into their midst. Their first questions center on the overall costs, impact, and potential for damage. Will the product bring down the Exchange Server? What infrastructure changes will it demand? Rosman, like many seasoned IT veterans, honors a variant of the time-honored tradition “first, do no harm”. Fortunately, Rosman found that Zenprise respected his existing environment, his time, and his budget. “We liked the flexibility of Zenprise. We could, but didn’t have to, install agents on our Exchange server. Also, the product didn’t require a team of consultants to install and configure it. I actually installed the latest version myself without incident.”

Make Us Smart

Jelly Belly is not a huge company, still, even for companies the size of Jelly Belly, managing all the components of an Exchange environment is difficult.. Zenprise has helped Rosman and his team manage complexity, quickly douse fires, and maintain focus on more strategic and important projects. Zenprise diagnoses and provides valuable context for problems that challenge even veteran Exchange administrators. According to Rosman, “Zenprise understands the complexity of the Exchange environment, and condenses the issues down to simple instructions and suggestions that my staff can use to precisely pinpoint and correct problems.” “Even our junior administrators can use Zenprise to learn about and solve complex issues in the Exchange environment. The step-by-step resolutions are critical.” says Rosman. Does it replace people? “Absolutely not, but it certainly makes them smarter.”

Make Us Proactive

Rosman needs smart products like Zenprise to uphold his end of the Jelly Belly culture. Jelly Belly is a trusting, family environment. Many employees have spent twenty or thirty years at the company. One candy maker just celebrated his thirtieth anniversary with the company, and the director of customer service has been with the company over twenty years. “When I get a call from one of our salespeople who is struggling with his laptop or e-mail, I really feel bad, ” Rosman says. “We want to be proactive and service-oriented for our people. I want IT to know about these issues first and fix them before our customers are affected.”

Solve Our Problems

Zenprise helps companies solve thousands of Exchange-related problems. Jelly Belly certainly didn’t have every one of these problems and Zenprise can’t solve every possible problem. (PV: the last sentence feels a little awkward) However, in all cases, Zenprise can help administrators evaluate the situation, rule out the causes that did not result in the detected symptoms and allow them to focus their resources in the right direction.

For example, Jelly Belly had a mysterious problem where some users experienced intermittent connectivity glitches. Sometimes they could access e-mail and sometimes they could not. The problem was baffling, but Zenprise quickly uncovered the cause – a case constraint issue in mailbox names that was introduced when Jelly Belly upgraded from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000. Zenprise also uncovered other settings that could have led to serious security problems on the Exchange server. “You can’t fix what you can’t see, and many of these configuration settings are obscure and time-consuming to traverse manually,” says Rosman.

Give Us Confidence

After solving problems like these, Rosman feels more confident that more things are being looked at than weren’t being looked at before. Jelly Belly uses the alerting features of Zenprise to warn of critical problems, and Rosman monitors Zenprise's dashboard every few days to stay apprised of overall health. When Zenprise stays quiet, Rosman and his staff are comfortable that users are getting what they need from e-mail and that he and his staff are providing the highest level of customer service to the Jelly Belly family..