Case Study: HFT Forklifts

The Background

HFT Forklifts LTD are a material handling, equipment supplier based in Rotherwas, Hereford. The team provide forklifts for hire and purchase for a variety of sectors, while also sourcing a number of other power and storage solutions. The team pride themselves on their thoughtful, responsive and proactive customer service. To meet these needs, they needed a communication service that matched their team’s expertise.

The Challenge

HFT previously relied on an ageing Aastra telephone system running on ISDN lines. Openreach have scheduled to switch off these lines by December 2025, so HFT needed to act quickly to prevent disruption. The maintenance cost from their system supplier was increasing year on year and the level of support provided was reducing. The number of engineers from their previous supplier who still knew the system was decreasing and parts were becoming scarce. 

In addition, a lack of maintenance and care from existing suppliers over a number of years meant that the team’s comms room was no longer up to standard. Cable management had become a huge challenge which needed to be solved.

The Solution

With these challenges considered, the team at HFT came to Redline for support. With the ISDN switch-off fast approaching, we recommended a switch to newer SIP lines. 

Redline supplied a brand new fully-featured Ericsson LG UCP call server, 25 new IP desk phones for the office and one operator console. This provided HFT with a reliable and secure way to communicate with their customers, and maintain their excellent service standards. Compared to their previous service, audio quality was massively improved.

We also provided an IP DECT base station with cordless handsets. This provided the workshop and training area with extended coverage, superior call quality and access to all of the system features for the workshop manager. Numbers were ported away from the legacy ISDN lines to SIP trunks future proofing the system for HFT. 

The comms room was completely cleared, and a new comms cabinet was installed together with new network switches and power distribution. Everything was repatched with colour-coded patch leads. This new, well thought out, neat and tidy comms cabinet makes future maintenance, moves, changes and fault finding so much easier for the HFT team, Redline engineers as well as HFT’s IT and CCTV providers.

The Service

While the new systems provided to the team at HFT were fantastic, the real standout on this job was Redline’s service.

The entire installation was completed out of hours over one weekend with no disruption to HFT’s operations. 

This required a lot of planning and design work before the scheduled weekend installation. We’re proud of the great teamwork from our team over the weekend to ensure that everything was completed and operationally ready. With the project complete, our engineers greeted the HFT team as they arrived on Monday morning ready for training on their new telephone system.

If you’d like to find out more about Redline’s communication services, or to learn how your business can avoid the disruption of the ISDN switch-off, get in touch today.