Sweet Success
How BIG’s Managed Services Transformed IT Operations at Wolfgang Confectioners
Wolfgang Confectioners, a co-manufacturer of confectionery products, specializing in private label confections and snacks for national brands, faced significant IT challenges as they experienced explosive growth following their transition from retail to a commercial setting in 2016. Self-described as “the 100-year startup,” Wolfgang needed a strategic IT partner who could help them mature their operations while expanding their mission of to “Make Candy and Bless Lives.”
Business Information Group (BIG) partnered with Wolfgang to provide comprehensive managed IT services that augmented their internal team, introduced best practices, and established robust cybersecurity protocols. The result has been improved operational efficiency, reduced downtime, and the ability for Wolfgang’s IT team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than day-to-day firefighting.
Project
Wolfgang ConfectionersLocation
York, PADuration
OngoingServices
Cybersecurity, Strategic ITPrior to partnering with BIG, our IT process was what I would call the brute force approach.
Company Background
Wolfgang Confectioners is a legacy confectionery manufacturer with over a century of experience. While their roots lie in retail operations, the company pivoted to commercial manufacturing in 2016, becoming a trusted co-manufacturing partner for major consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands and emerging brands. This strategic shift catalyzed tremendous growth for the organization.
With approximately 325 employees, Wolfgang operates with a relatively lean IT department of seven staff members led by Bobby Gohn, Senior Director of IT.
The Challenge: Growing Pains in a Centenarian Startup
When Bobby Gohn joined Wolfgang three years ago, he stepped into a newly created leadership role tasked with evolving the organization’s computing technology approach.
“Prior to partnering with BIG, our IT process was what I would call the brute force approach,” explains Gohn. “It was really a startup mentality, which was ‘I don’t care what it is, go do it, get it done as quickly as possible. We’ll pick up the pieces later.’”
This reactive approach created significant challenges for his team:
- Overwhelming request volume: The IT team struggled with the speed of incoming support requests and completing them in a timely manner.
- Fragmented processes: Documentation, change management, and support procedures were not well-defined or consistently applied.
- Cybersecurity concerns: The company lacked robust monitoring and response capabilities for potential security threats.
- Process definition gaps: Without standardized approaches for support, documentation, and IT governance, the team was constantly reinventing their approach.
As a manufacturing organization experiencing rapid growth, Wolfgang needed more IT capabilities than their internal team could provide, but they didn’t want to expand their headcount with specialists who might not be fully utilized.
The partnership with BIG included:
- Augmented IT staff capabilities: Access to a broader range of specialized skills without maintaining full-time specialists.
- First-line defense support: BIG began handling frontline support requests, reducing the backlog for Wolfgang’s internal team.
- Improved cybersecurity: Implementation of advanced monitoring, detection, and human-guided response capabilities.
- Process standardization: Establishment of documentation standards, change management protocols, and support procedures.
- Microsoft ecosystem expertise: Specialized knowledge in Wolfgang’s core technology platform.
The Results: A Transformed IT Operation
After 2 years of partnership with BIG, Wolfgang has experienced significant improvements in their IT operations:
“One of our metrics that we track pretty closely is network uptime,” Gohn explains. “We’re consistently at the five nines or above. To me, that is a direct correlation to BIG being available, around, and monitoring.”
Service request completion rates have also dramatically improved: “Our target is 80%, and generally speaking, we are hitting that or above. Recently we’re having three digits of percentage—we’re at 100%, 105%, 110%—because we’re getting more done than what’s coming in, which is super cool.”
The impact on day-to-day operations has been equally significant. “The fact that BIG takes on a frontline first line defense posture with that and really kind of partners with us in that first line of response and request has really given us the ability to keep our open support cases much lower than what they were previously,” says Gohn.
One unexpected benefit was BIG’s approach to cybersecurity monitoring. “The fact that there is dedicated staff, human beings that are continuously monitoring…through technology that can distill down billions of lines of log entries to identify key issues, but then a human being is the one reaching out to another human being to say, ‘Hey, did you really want this to happen or didn’t you want it to happen?’ That was for me unexpected, but in a very, very positive way,” Gohn shares.
Looking to the Future
As Wolfgang continues to grow, Gohn sees digital transformation as their next major challenge: “The ability to fully automate business processes that are scalable, effective, and understandable, and the ability to really analyze real-time data back into human beings, I think is probably the biggest thing that I see at this point.”
When asked if there’s an opportunity for BIG to help with that challenge, Gohn responds without hesitation: “Oh, absolutely.”
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