Case Study: Churchill Office Solutions: Success with Rapid Assessment Key
Reduce costs, increase sales with Rapid Assessment Key
Churchill Office Solutions
Established in 1985, Churchill Office Solutions is one of Ricoh’s leading office equipment dealerships in the UK. Churchill prides itself on putting the customer first and helping to maximise its productivity and reduce business costs whilst providing first class service and support.
One of Churchill’s long-term customers is a major corporate client involved in recruitment and facilities management. With over 150 high street locations throughout the UK, it has a large fleet of printers at its head office and branch locations.
“The Print Audit Rapid Assessment Key has proven to be a powerful sales tool, it has enabled us to add considerable value to what we do, helping to increase our sales significantly”
Nick Rhodes, Churchill Office Solutions Account Manager
PAE Business
PAE Business provides comprehensive and accurate print tracking, auditing and print management tools that helps dealers and re-sellers to analyse and reduce its customers’ print costs.
The Challenge
Churchill Office Solutions’ large corporate customer had asked if there was a way of analysing its print volume, with the view of reducing print costs in the business.
“A large amount of our customer’s print volume was being routed through expensive desktop printers. The budget for consumables was not centralised and we discovered that they were spending £237,000 per year on print cartridges,” explains Nick Rhodes, Churchill Office Solutions Account Manager.
“Our customer found it frustrating that it could not identify its true cost for printing. There were multiple suppliers and contracts in place with no controls in place to reduce costs and improve business processes. The customer tried to keep a register of all printers but found it difficult and time consuming task to keep it up to date.”
The Solution
Churchill Office Solutions decided to use Print Audit’s Rapid Assessment Key, a plug in and go device that can find printing devices across a network quickly and also easily gather meter readings. Print Audit works closely with all major office equipment manufacturers ensuring it has up to date information on all printers to guarantee accurate results.
“Our customer’s IT Director was initially sceptical that we could find all his devices, due to the vast size of the network,” explains Nick.
“The Rapid Assessment Key can be plugged into any USB port allowing us to view all printers and their locations across the network. The customer then simply enters each printer’s cost for consumables to analyse the total spend.”
The Process
Churchill Office Solutions initially started with a trial at the customer’s head office to convince it of the value and benefits it would gain from utilising this device. “We selected the IP address range on the network which gave us 254 separate network segments. It took us just over an hour to complete the whole process. This was amazing considering the size of the network.”
“A high number of devices that we found were not on the current asset register, many had changed locations since being installed. This impressed our customer a great deal and it felt it was now in a position to regularly analyse their print costs and inventory.”
The Benefits
Churchill Office Solutions and its customer are now taking advantage of the many benefits that the Print Audit Rapid Assessment Key has delivered.
“This innovative solution has really helped our customer to gain the accurate management information to be able to start to reduce costs across the business,” explains Nick. “The next time an audit was run for them it was five times as fast, as the device already knew which IP addresses to scan. Our customer was really impressed with the speed and accuracy of the audit.”
“As a result, a solution is being proposed that will replace many of the existing printers with Ricoh Multi Functional Devices, charged on a per click basis. The customer is keen to have one point of contact and to stop the indiscriminate purchase of printer cartridges.”
“Our customer has now purchased a key itself as it was so impressed with the quality of data and speed of results.”
“By using the Rapid Assessment Key our customer has been able to see the financial implication of running an uneconomical printer fleet.”
“The Print Audit Rapid Assessment Key has proven to be a powerful sales tool, it has enabled us to add considerable value to what we do, helping to increase our sales significantly.We are now able to take a more consultative approach with our customers, helping them to reduce costs and improve efficiency. We are now able to take a more consultative approach with our customers, helping them to reduce costs and improve efficiency”
Nick Rhodes, Churchill Office Solutions Account Manager
