Halfords

Halfords is the UK’s leading retailer in car maintenance, car enhancement and leisure, including cycles, accessories and outdoor leisure equipment. It differentiates itself through it’s national store portfolio, broad range of products, competitive pricing, a fitting service for products sold, customer service and a strong brand.

There are over 460 stores across the UK with a number of sites also extending across Europe. Halfords are undertaking a store refurbishment program to keep stores looking fresh and modern and to help attract new customers from the growing number of car and cycle enthusiasts.

The Challenge

Over time as Halfords expanded, so did the portfolio of telephone systems in the stores. With many vendors and different models, the maintenance costs for telephony were spiralling and the administration involved with multiple contracts was tedious and time consuming.

In line with the store refurbishment, Halfords wanted to replace telephone systems with a single vendor solution for all stores. But until the refurbishment program reached every store, older stores would still need to be maintained.

An energy management system was also needed to help reduce the running costs of stores and to make the energy intensive stores more economical in their power usage. This needed a broadband connection into the stores.

With stores all around the UK and in Europe, Halfords needed a technology partner to help the business to move forward into the IP centric world.