About 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 its national store portfolio, a broad range of products, competitive pricing, a fitting service for products sold, customer service and a strong brand. There are also over 460 stores across the UK with a number of sites also extending across Europe.

Halfords were 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.

Halfords wanted to replace telephone systems with a single vendor solution for all refurbished stores whilst maintaining the systems of older stores. A secure broadband connection was required in all stores was also required to manage energy systems, in order to reduce running costs and make stores more economical.

The Solution

Amillan provided a range of solutions and services to Halfords to address the communications and infrastructure challenges in the business.

As stores were refurbished, Amillan implemented the latest in IP telephony to replace existing systems, standardising them across the UK. This allowed stores to be more easily managed and administrate centrally.

In addition to this, Amillan also installed broadband at 80 sites to support Halfords’ energy management system. Providing the full range of communications and infrastructure allowed Amillan to help Halfords make the full use of their technology.

To ensure Halfords with the piece of mind that systems would continue to work smoothly, Amillan also provided maintenance for all telephone systems. This was made possible by Amillan’s high level of skills and expertise of its engineers.

“Our relationship with Amillan has allowed us to make a gradual migration to new telephony solutions while protecting our investment in existing systems. We work in true partnership and Amillan take a proactive approach in our business, suggesting ways in which we can enhance our performance with better communications.”