Read Time, 2 min.

Modern coffee is complicated. Gone are the days when a quick cup of ‘instant’ in the morning would satisfy most of us. Coffee is a living, breathing culture, and with it comes a burgeoning set of consumer expectations. Meeting and exceeding them determines whether coffee businesses sink or swim in an industry where you’re only as good as your last latte.

It’s amazing to think that when Swiss coffee machine provider, Thermoplan, was founded in 1974, there was only a single Starbucks store worldwide. 45 years later, the American coffee giant operates more than 28,000 locations globally. That’s a lot of coffee machines. And it’s Thermoplan that supplies most of them.

Here’s why

What makes Thermoplan’s machines the coffee-makers of choice for businesses in 72 different countries, including clients like Starbucks and Nespresso?

They’re connected to the cloud.

Rolf Hochstrasser, Project Manager at Thermoplan, explains:

“Previously we did not have our coffee machines connected to the cloud and could not receive data that would help us track any possible issues with the machines. We relied heavily on time-based maintenance to keep them running. The move to an IoT-based solution was driven by a request from one of our key accounts, expressing the need for a cloud connected machine that can give valuable insights”.

Here’s how

Using Microsoft Azure as a cloud platform, Thermoplan developed a solution that enabled them to remotely monitor and gain deeper insights on the statistics for every coffee machine used by its customers. Insights like the amount of coffee being consumed, or customers’ favourite drinks, or when machines parts needed changing.

The impact for Thermoplan’s clients was immediate. Now they can enjoy benefits such as proactive stock control, reduced product wastage and better maintenance of machines via predictive analytics. By being able to record all of their machines’ activities, Starbucks, Nespresso and all of Thermoplan’s other clients can rest assured they are consistently serving coffee that meets their customers’ increasingly high standards.

 

Thermoplan’s migration to the cloud came with help of the company’s long-term Microsoft partner, bbv Software Services.

The Factory of the Future: Manufacturing a smarter, more connected world

The “Factory of the Future” goes beyond the walls of production to transform the connected manufacturing ecosystem, across R&D and the supply chain.

Discover more related articles per industry:

Education

Finance & Insurance

  • How to transform banking with Personetics’ revolutionary app

    How to transform banking with Personetics’ revolutionary app

    A new generation of customers now expects much more from banking. The customer journey, not the product, needs to be the focus for financial services. And the key to enhancing it is data.   Personetics is responding to this demand with its white label solution that allows any bank to start to maximize the benefits of […]

  • a view of a city

    Harvesting data helps save water

    With more than 140 years of history, the financial service company Ibercaja is deeply invested in the north-east region of Spain. In order to support its rural clients and solve the local water scarcity problems, the company now helps farmers to digitally transform their crop management. Key to this transformation are “Internet of Things“ enabled […]

Government

  • a close up of a mans face

    AI is driving value across businesses in Europe – so why is only 4% of the public sector seeing real impact?

    In April 2018, the European Commission adopted its first AI strategy, laying out a vision for how AI could transform the public sector. The strategy revealed how new machine-learning technologies and data tools can improve public services, reduce costs, provide staff with new skillsets and drive efficiencies. And yet, for the vast majority of public […]

  • a woman sitting on a sidewalk

    How to digitally transform citizen services

    “Having a website, call centre and information desk isn’t enough. Citizen services need to be streamlined to empower citizens and government employees alike.” The eBook ‘The digital transformation of citizen services’ is honest in its appraisal of the urgent challenge facing governments worldwide, whose citizens expect their digital experiences to match the quality of those […]

Healthcare

Manufacturing

  • a man holding a paint spray

    What we can learn from AkzoNobel’s digital transformation

    Savvy businesses are always on the lookout for ways to improve what they do and differentiate themselves from the competition. From organisational restructure to the development of entirely new business models, the quest for continuous improvement takes many forms. But one common factor in almost all modern business leaders’ plans is an emphasis on technological […]

  • Guy standing next to plane looking at Smartwatch to check reporting.

    Air France and KLM subsidiary EPCOR predicts future failures with data and AI

    EPCOR provides maintenance, repair and overhaul services, including state-of-the-art test facilities for aircraft pneumatic components and Auxiliary Power Units (APU). The APU is responsible for starting the main engines and provide power to essential aircraft functions. By harnessing cloud-based APU data using innovative analysis and machine learning, EPCOR is helping airlines meet their cost, safety […]

Retail

  • Two women in a furniture shop looking at color tones on a tablet

    Resilient Retailing: thriving in times of uncertainty

    I’ve been to many NRFs and it’s always exciting. But the energy at this year’s event was positively electric.   After a 3-year hiatus, retailers from across the globe flocked to New York for NRF 2023 in search of ideas and inspiration for how to tackle some of the biggest questions facing retail and CPG right […]

  • Woman clothes shopping

    Italy’s National Chamber of Fashion turns the Milan Fashion Week into a digital event

    Fashion brands all over the world have spent the past year reimagining the industry with a more digital mindset. The disrupting effect of COVID-19 has forced them to keep their stores shut for long months, cancel their fashion shows and make their day-to-day operations much more complex than they used to be. Yet as the […]

Discover more related articles per dossier:

Customer Stories

  • a group of people in a room

    Cordel Norge: creating automation and efficiency with a cloud-based datacenter

    “It’s our vision to become the preferred solution for the building and construction sector in Norway and Sweden by 2022.” Thorbjorn Jenssen, Consultant Manager at Cordel, is outlining the Norwegian software company’s bold plans to dominate the sector in the next few years. Cordel provides innovative digital tools that handle administrative tasks for the construction […]

Digital Transformation

  • A woman wearing HoloLens

    Natuzzi: A new way of seeing your home with HoloLens

    In retail, the gift of the sales rep has always been to conjure up a vision for the potential buyer. Transport them to another world, surround them with artefacts – imagined or otherwise – that complete a picture in which the customer can envisage themselves. Because when we buy, we buy into something. The object […]

Security & Privacy

Tips