Forkway Group had big ambitions but their potential to grow was hindered by old and inefficient legacy systems
To say Forkway Group know their industry would be something of an understatement. The group, who are specialists in forklift trucks, pallet trucks and materials handling, have over 50 years' experience and proud to be a founding member of the Fork Lift Truck Association. The group have always strived to lead the way when it comes to embracing new developments in the forklift industry – but it was time to embrace a smarter way of working. They knew that for their business to be able to grow fully, they needed a new solution to do the heavy lifting in the business. This is where we came into the picture back in 2011.
In their 50 years of business, Forkway enjoyed growth that led to the setup of three bases situated near London, Leeds and Southampton. But communication and integration between the sites wasn’t as good as it could be, and there was very little flexibility to cater for mobile and remote workers offsite.
The group had strong ambitions and potential to grow the business but found themselves hindered by inefficient legacy systems. They were also vulnerable to cyber crime with no safeguarding against threats.
Forkway needed a modern ERP system that would adapt to their growing business needs. It was critical that this system would be able to speed up the slow connections between their three sites.
They were also well aware of the importance of cyber security and how costly any potential attack could be for their business. Their legacy systems weren’t offering the protection they needed, so they needed to update their security to be able to stop these cyber attacks.
Taking what they’d learned from scaling up in the past, Forkway knew that any IT systems, hardware and infrastructure needed to be able to evolve and be upgraded as the company grew.
With collaborative decision-making being at the core of how they work, they needed to integrate systems to allow workers to cooperate and share information to make things happen.
After working closely with Forkway to understand their needs, we chose Sage 200 as the best solution for their business to replace the legacy system that was no longer serving their needs.
We brought in virtual servers, fast broadband connections and VPN to improve speed, whether in or away from the office.
A secure next generation Firewall provided one network, bringing together the three geographic locations.
We also met all of Forkway’s security needs, with a full data back-up solution and endpoint protection for all PCs and servers.
Forkway are now able to plan for the future they want.
With the three sites now able to communicate and collaborate in a more joined-up way, performance and productivity has gone up significantly.
Remote desktop technology and the implementation of a virtual server has given them all the flexibility they need.
The latest firewall technology has provided peace of mind for protection against viruses, malware and ransomware, as has simplified software upgrades to improve backups and data resilience.
Adopting simplified and consolidated hardware, instead of replacing like-for-like on replacement servers, was also the smarter – and cheaper – move to make.
The success was felt all over the business, with the group reported a return on investment of over £7,000 per year compared to their legacy IT provider.
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