Market Gardeners Limited

Market Gardeners Limited is a Fruit and Produce Wholesaler which supplies fresh produce to New Zealand, Australian and global consumer markets. We caught up with their Chief Information Officer, Chris Hibbert to talk about 2degrees and their business.

Mobile is important to us because a large number of our employees operate with a laptop and cell phone. They need access to a good 3G network for both voice and data.

Before joining 2degrees we had a growing need to provide a good mobile email solution. We were using Blackberry as our “smartphone” option but it was becoming an expensive and had limited options. We needed a reliable solution which gave us the flexibility to provide mail and data services that we could easily control.

2degrees ticked all the boxes for us. They were very responsive during the initial negotiation phase, very upfront and certainly with the plans offered, we were going to save a lot. Also keeping the same numbers was important to us because the long standing relation our employees have with their trading partners, we wanted a seamless cut-over.

On the day the switch over to 2degrees went fantastical well. My whole IT team was geared up to spend the whole day and into the next if needs be to make sure everyone went across OK. The whole process took less than an hour, it was fantastic.

Are there extra costs for calling different networks or landlines?

There are additional costs for international calls and roaming but we factor that into our cost structure and there is of course spend control to minimise any inadvertent over-spend.

I haven’t come across any issues with people calling me.

2degrees has given us the ability to provide our staff with a reliable mobile solution for both voice and data and do it with cost savings. From an IT support point of view there is less maintenance and easier set-up, so we all win. Because we had kept historical data about individual phone use we were able to tailor plans to suit the individual. Roll-over minutes and data has enabled us to minimise cost especially in data. We have since had to change a couple of plans, but are really pleased with how it was all configured. We would conservatively say we have halved our mobile spend.

Coverage is good and in a lot of cases better. I guess the very nature of the terrain in New Zealand is that there will be some places where coverage is not so good but generally that would apply to most mobile providers. We have had 2 or 3 staff with coverage issues, this is actually less than we anticipated and we are working with 2degrees to ensure all staff enjoy good coverage.

Customer service has been great, 2degrees customer service are very responsive and proactive. What I like about 2degrees is that mobile is their strength. We are constantly looking for support partners who are the “best of breed” for the service we require. For us 2degrees is “best of breed” in mobile. 2degrees is certainly worth contacting, they are easy and straight forward to deal with and there will be a plan to suit.