HFT are one of the largest and longest-established charities supporting people with learning disabilities.  They provide services to local councils across the UK, supporting people with the most complex needs to live their best possible life.

As part of a £4million investment by Flintshire County Council, HFT opened a new Day and Community Centre for people with learning disabilities.  This much needed facility named ‘Hwb Cyfle’ supports local people with learning disabilities to develop their skills and increase their independence in a state-of-the-art building, with excellent activity and workshop spaces, sensory rooms and personal care facilities.

Grapevine Connect has been working with HFT’s central services IT team for a while, primarily providing temporary internet services for their remote sites.  When their IT Operations Manager came to us with a problem, we were very happy to take on the challenge.  With HFT’s new day centre due to open in two weeks’ time, their chosen telecoms supplier notified them that they would not be able to deliver on time.  This had huge implications not only for HFT, but the wider community, as without communications HFT would not be able to support families in their new facility and they would be forced to delay the opening for months.

Grapevine proposed the installation of our 3CX hosted telephone system. We would install two Peplink VPN routers (one for voice, one for data) running over cellular internet to enable fast deployment until fixed lines could be installed.  With the two routers in place, Grapevine was able to cater for HFT’s high bandwidth requirements for IT traffic, and provide a dedicated secure connection for voice.

Using a combination of Yealink fixed IP handsets and an IP Multi-Cell DECT Solution (incorporating base stations strategically positioned within the building and rugged DECT handsets), staff are able to roam and take calls from any location within the site.  Grapevine then transferred HFT’s existing phone numbers to SIP and had the site up and running in time for their planned open date just two weeks later.

In addition to the benefits of rapid deployment, the 3CX phone system is totally scalable, so when HFT’s admin team in Leeds needed a new phone system, it was simply a case of installing additional handsets in that location and porting of their numbers.  This enables users to call internally between sites, see presence & centralise their telephony services.  All of which can be managed from a web portal by their IT team with backup & support from Grapevine Connect’s service team when required.