Beesley and Fildes is a large builders, plumbers and timber merchants with eight sites located across the North West of England. The company stocks a comprehensive range of products in all of its branches and has a strong reputation for product and service quality.
The scale of the operation means that Beesley and Fildes has a constant requirement for high-quality printing resource. Historically, while printers were bought centrally, the company had solutions from a broad range of different vendors installed across its individual sites. As there was no central service contract, Beesley and Fildes small in-house IT team was regularly stretched to capacity in providing maintenance and support.
This was one of the key drivers behind the companys decision to standardise on solutions from one print vendor and to establish a central service contract. Beesley and Fildes now has a total of 40 OKI ES4300 mono A4 printers located across its sites. The company primarily uses these to print business documents such as invoices, credit, delivery and picking notes, as well as for general office administration.
As Paul Coulthard, infrastructure manager, Beesley and Fildes, explains: With the disparate mix of printers we had previously, we had no agreed service contracts, and so I spent much of my time travelling from site to site and having to maintain all of the printers personally.
Coulthard is delighted with the new contract with OKI. The company now pays a fixed price per copy rather than having to purchase consumables up-front. And OKI reseller, The Sharples Group, supplies the toners and drums and the service needed to support them.
We calculated that it made economic sense to pay in this way if individual machines were printing more than 1,000 copies a month. Most of our printers regularly exceed this figure.
The new contract has also allowed us to save considerable sums on toner cartridges and drums which we found were previously thrown away even when they were not completely empty, Coulthard adds. Not having to worry about the logistical problems involved in ensuring that the right stock quantities are sent to the right depots at the right time has been another key benefit to Beesley and Fildes, enabling it to focus its attentions more strongly on core business issues.
Beesley and Fildes is now also able to budget for hardware more accurately. There are no longer any unpleasant surprises caused by the sudden need to replace a faulty printer.
The company can also predict how much it is likely to pay in the future in running costs, by tracking the average print run per machine in previous months. It now knows that for the duration of the contract it will not have to replace another printer as they are now all maintained under warranty.
High Performance Printing
While the service and support contract was a primary driver for Beesley and Fildes to implement the OKI solutions, the printers have provided a broad range of other benefits since installation. Service continuity is a key consideration for the company so it is critical that chosen machines are robust and dependable.
We have found the ES4300 to be a hard-wearing business machine capable of handling the high-volume print runs which are typical at Beesley and Fildes.
The printers come with two trays already installed, which enhances our productivity by ensuring a faster throughput of paper, adds Coulthard. In addition, they are also resilient to dust, which is another important consideration for us. In short, the ES4300 is a very reliable machine. And on the odd occasion where there is an issue, we can be certain that an engineer will be out to fix it on the same or next day.
The scale of the Beesley and Fildes operation and its requirement for distributed printing brings with it a related need for efficient print management. Consequently, the fact that the OKI solution incorporates remote device management is another key benefit, enabling the company to monitor and control the usage of its entire fleet of printers from one central point.
Peace of Mind
For a business like Beesley and Fildes, which has a continuous and intensive requirement for high-quality printed documents, reliability and continuity of service are inevitably key concerns.
The robust ES4300 printer from OKI gives Beesley and Fildes confidence that these critical issues are being addressed, and the flexible service contract on offer provides additional reassurance.
As it looks to the future, Beesley and Fildes can focus its attention on sustaining and growing the core business, safe in the knowledge that the companys in-house printing portfolio is more efficient than ever and, rather than being a drain on internal IT resources, is now a significant competitive differentiator.
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