Summary
Founded in 1980, NK Fencing is one of the leading fencing companies in Ireland and Great Britain. Employing more than 150 people across four locations throughout Ireland, the business has expanded to include NK Coatings, NK Sports, NK Automation, NK Steel Fabrication and NK Holdings under the wider NK Group.
Having been a Barclay Communications customer for more than 12 years, initially for business mobile services, NK Group later partnered with Barclay Communications to modernise its landline infrastructure and improve communications across the organisation.
The Challenge
With employees spread across multiple locations and sales and contracts teams regularly working away from the office, maintaining effective communication between departments was becoming increasingly difficult.
The business needed a solution that would allow teams to communicate more efficiently while providing better access to information across the organisation.
NK Group was also experiencing rising telephony costs, particularly due to frequent calls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Traditional landlines lacked the flexibility needed by a growing organisation and adding or removing users often involved costly engineering visits and lengthy setup processes.
Key challenges included:
- Improving communication between multiple locations
- Supporting mobile and remote employees
- Reducing expensive cross-border call charges
- Increasing flexibility and scalability
- Improving access to business information
- Enhancing productivity across departments
The Barclay Solution
Barclay Communications implemented a hosted VoIP solution designed to connect employees across all locations while providing greater flexibility for office-based and remote teams.
Using the Collaborate application, employees could access business communications from anywhere, allowing mobile workers to remain connected to office teams as though they were sitting in the same building.
As Simon Ferguson, Associate HR Director at NK Group, explained:
“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.”
The new solution helped bring the company’s Belfast and Dublin operations closer together through free internal calling between locations, improving collaboration and information sharing across the business.
The hosted platform also enabled rapid scalability, allowing users and extensions to be added quickly without expensive engineering visits or additional infrastructure costs.
Business Outcomes
The introduction of Barclay VoIP delivered significant operational and financial benefits for NK Group.
Improved Communication Across Locations
Employees can communicate instantly between offices, factories and field-based teams, improving collaboration and reducing delays.
Reduced Telephony Costs
The business has significantly reduced call costs, particularly between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, while benefiting from free UK calls and lower international call charges.
Greater Flexibility for Remote Workers
Sales and contracts teams can stay connected wherever they are, improving responsiveness and access to support.
Enhanced Business Integration
One of the most valuable improvements has been the integration between the VoIP platform and NK Group’s SAGE business management system.
This integration allows users to:
- Automatically dial customers from reports
- Instantly access customer records when calls are received
- Reduce manual administration
- Improve customer service response times
As Simon highlighted:
“Our favourite functional improvement is the integration of the new VoIP system with our SAGE business management system.”
Improved Resilience
The hosted system includes a mobile SIM backup solution, ensuring communications can be restored within minutes if connectivity issues occur due to cable damage, severe weather or other disruptions.
Simplified Scalability
Because the system operates through the existing network infrastructure, adding users, devices and locations is straightforward and cost-effective as the business grows.
Customer Testimonial
“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.
Barclay VoIP calls are significantly cheaper than other landline services and it offers free UK calling and major savings on international calls.
All of these benefits increase productivity, efficiency and customer service for our business.
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.”
Simon Ferguson
Associate HR Director, NK Group