Leading UK and Ireland fencing company, NK Fencing, has invested in upgrading its existing landline services and switching to a VoIP hosted telephony solution through The Barclay Communications Group.
ABOUT NK FENCING
Founded in 1980, NK Fencing is one of the leading fencing companies in Ireland and Great Britain. Employing over 150 people across four centres throughout Ireland, the company portfolio includes NK Coatings, NK Sports, NK Automation, NK Steel Fabrication and NK Holdings – known as NK Group. The company has been a customer of Barclay communications for over 12 years beginning with a business mobile account and later moving its landline account across.
CHALLENGES
With staff located in multiple locations across Ireland and many employees traveling to and from sites, communication between departments was becoming an issue. Finding a system that allowed staff to share, track and manage information was a key decision maker in switching to a hosted platform.
In addition, costs for the company had escalated dramatically due to the high call charges between Northern and Southern Ireland on traditional landlines. This, along with the lack of flexibility in the current system was frustrating and effecting the productivity of the business. As a growing organisation, NK Fencing needed the ability to easily add and remove users from its system without expensive setup and engineer callout charges.
THE BARCLAY VOIP SOLUTION
Barclay VoIP offered NK Fencing a solution to all of the problems they were facing. Simon Ferguson, Associate HR Director at NK Group says, “Barclay VoIP has given “freedom” to our out of office sales and contracts teams providing them with instant access to back office support, just like they were based in the office next door.”
Barclay VoIP’s services are not fixed to a specific location, allowing users to incorporate mobile devices as an extension of their office phones. The Collaborate application makes on-the-go working so much easier for staff that are in and out of the office on a regular basis. It gives back office staff the ability to contact staff no matter where they are and vice versa. “This is a major benefit for us in information sharing and business flow, increasing efficiency between all departments and factories of the business. It has brought our Dublin and Belfast operations closer together with instant access between the locations on internal “free of charge” numbers,” highlights Simon.
A major benefit of switching to a hosted solution is the dramatic reduction in cost to the business. This can be seen in both physical bill reductions and also as an effect of an overall increase in worker efficiency within the business. “Barclay VoIP calls are significantly cheaper than other landline services and it offers free UK calling and major significant savings on international calls.”
FEATURES
A hosted VoIP solution offers much more than just significant cost savings for businesses. The endless amount of features available gives additional advantages. “VoIP offers us more than just voice, with a wide selection of additional features, such as video conferencing and BMS integration.
“Our favourite functional improvement is the integration of the new VoIP system with our SAGE business management system. Sales teams no longer need to take down numbers and type them manually into their handsets. A simple “follow up” report sends the required information to their desk phone which automatically telephones the customer.
“Another key benefit of the system is, when a call is received, the VoIP system recognises the number from our SAGE system and allows the sales team to access account and quotation information instantly.
“All of these benefits increase productivity efficiency and customer service for our business”
IMPLEMENTATION AND MAINTENANCE
The implementation and maintenance of hardware and software comes at a lower cost than that of traditional systems. Maintenance of the system is carried out in the cloud, meaning faster turnaround and a more streamlined service.
The Barclay VoIP system uses an internet connection, allowing for an unlimited number of lines. Adding additional numbers to the system takes minutes and as the VoIP handsets run over the buildings computer network additional, expensive cabling costs are saved. “For those remote locations in our factories we can run the phone through the same network port the computer uses. It makes scalability a walk in the park,” emphasises Simon.
The system also increases reliability for businesses. “Over previous years we have had telephone cables cut by contractors working locally and also outage due to storm damage resulting in telephone outage for days. With the Barclay VoIP platform we have a mobile SIM card backup system that has our phone system operational within 5 minutes of any disaster.”
“We would highly recommend switching to Barclay VoIP. The product and features available have made a real difference to our productivity and we are seeing real cost savings since implementing the system.
“The team have been great from the initial sale, through to installation and after sales support. Switching to a hosted solution was a great move for NK Fencing.”
