Iconic Oregon Business Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods Deems Comcast Business Ethernet its Recipe for Network Success

Comcast Business today announced that Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods (Bob’s Red Mill) depends on Comcast Business Ethernet to provide reliable, high-performance network connectivity to more than 500 employees and facilitate internal application development for streamlined business processes.

Based in Milwaukie, Oregon, Bob’s Red Mill produces over 1,700 whole-grain products, from flours and hot cereals, to baking mixes and grains. The company’s Information Technology (IT) team is tasked with helping employees collaborate more effectively to deliver whole grain foods to customers in more than 40 countries. It also develops applications and workflows in-house, such as the company’s warehouse management, inventory and shipping systems, to advance operations at the mill. To fulfill these obligations, along with other critical business processes, the IT department depends on network connectivity.

“Before Comcast Business, we were using antiquated T1 lines, which were expensive and unreliable,” said Terry Kester, senior network architect at Bob’s Red Mill. “We experienced frequent downtime, and due to bandwidth issues, backup processes would saturate our network at night. The reliability and scalability that the Comcast Business network provides allows us to maintain efficient business operations, as well as keep employees connected to our systems, customers and each other.”

Bob’s Red Mill is using two 50 Megabit-per-second (Mbps) Ethernet Private Lines (EPLs) from Comcast that connect the company’s headquarters location to both its retail store and restaurant, and its world distribution center. The EPLs deliver a fast and secure connection for data sharing among the three sites, and enable the IT team to centrally locate applications and workflows at headquarters for company-wide use.

Bob’s Red Mill is also leveraging a 50 Mbps Ethernet Dedicated Internet service from Comcast to provide employees with high-performance network connectivity and scalable bandwidth, which has provided many business benefits. Bryan Emerson, chief information officer (CIO) and VP of IT at Bob’s Red Mill, noted: “Every employee – whether at headquarters, our retail store, our restaurant or in the warehouse – uses a variety of network-based applications and systems every day. With Comcast Business, we have dependable and high-capacity connectivity that allows us to ship orders quickly, process credit cards in real-time, and provide employees with the communications tools they need to maintain customer satisfaction.”

Using Comcast Business Ethernet, Bob’s Red Mill has also improved its backup strategy. Rather than backing up data locally at each site using T1 lines – which consumed network bandwidth and took hours to complete – the company can now seamlessly and securely move all data to headquarters for centralized backup. This new process has minimal impact on the network and saves the IT team valuable time.

In addition to Ethernet services, Bob’s Red Mill also deployed two Comcast Business PRI Trunks, so all vital communications services are now under one provider. Along with the technology and business benefits Bob’s Red Mill is experiencing, the switch to Comcast Business has resulted in tremendous cost savings for the company.

“More businesses are leveraging a variety of technologies to create a digital ecosystem that improves operational processes and meets ever-evolving customer demands, and core to this strategy is a solid network foundation,” said Mark Meyers, enterprise sales director for the Oregon and Southwest Washington region, Comcast Business. “Bob’s Red Mill is a prime example of what organizations can achieve with reliable connectivity. A high-performance network enables companies to enhance connectivity and communications across multiple locations and with customers, increase productivity, guarantee service uptime, easily scale to meet current and future bandwidth needs, and securely share data, among a host of other business benefits.”