Grand Hotel

About the company

The Grand Hotel lies in the leafy, seaside suburb of Malahide in north county Dublin and is one of the county’s most famous establishments. Its location, a 15-minute drive from Dublin Airport, and its seaside setting make it a popular choice for both business and leisure travellers.

With 203 rooms to cater for its business/leisure mix, the hotel is one of the busiest in the country. In addition to its own immediate work with guests, the Grand Hotel is also the headquarters for a small group of sister hotels.

The challenge

Printing is one of the most important technical aspects of the Grand Hotel’s daily operations. From the critical front desk service that produces, among other things, bills for clients, to the back offices where staff rely on printers for their daily duties.

The Grand Hotel wanted to reduce its increasing print bill, refresh its existing range of aging multi vendor, multi contract printers and increase device reliability for critical functions such as front desk and reception operations – all under one contract.

The solution

The hotel was introduced to the idea of Managed Print Services (MPS) through OKI IT partner Netspeed. After initial meetings on how MPS could work for the Grand Hotel, it decided to go ahead with plans to implement OKI’s offering.

According to Ernie Brenner, chief financial officer, the Grand Hotel, going down the route of MPS presented no risk at all. “We had heard about the idea of managed print services and thought it was a no-brainer,” he said. “OKI presented us with a plan and we decided to go ahead.”

The first phase of the changeover to a service-oriented print structure was for OKI to complete an assessment of the hotel’s printing and document activities. Prior to this, Brenner had done his own personal audit and was interested to see if the OKI stats and figures would match his own. “We looked at our general printing costs, as well as how much money we were spending on toner cartridges, and compared that to an MPS package,” he said.

Like many other businesses, the Grand Hotel had numerous printers from different manufacturers that all operated under diverse contracts. It required a more streamlined set of printers that cost less, were more efficient and could all be operated under one service level agreement. “We previously had various toner cartridges from different vendors all with different contracts. Our storeroom was ‘choc-a-bloc’ with a variety of printer cartridges from multiple vendors.

“OKI’s figures on how we could save money and improve efficiencies matched our own, which impressed me, so we decided to go ahead. We were also attracted to the level of service OKI offered, as well as its ability to upgrade our printers while introducing scan and print to the desktop and colour printing – all of which we didn’t have before.”

The benefits

According to Brenner, adopting MPS has reduced the Grand Hotel’s printing costs by 30 per cent and introduced several efficiencies. “We had over 44 printers, faxes, photocopiers and other devices.” he said. “Since adopting OKI’s MPS, we have reduced this number to about 25. We have a large number of single offices so we could not reduce individual machines by as much as an open plan area. We managed to upgrade a number of offices and provide them with multi-function devices with extra functions, such as desktop scanning and copying, which previously weren’t available.

“Where possible we took out individual printers and provided one central multipurpose device enabling additional features and benefits to our users. Our front desk is the critical area as we need to be able to print there at all times and we need machines that are fast, reliable and hardwearing as they are required take paper of different weights.”

OKI is unique in being able to offer a decentralised concept within its MPS solution that other A3 copier vendors cannot.

Brenner and his staff are delighted that the hotel now has a fleet of devices that are “modern and up-to-date” rather than “troublesome and expensive.”

Commenting on the Grand Hotel’s relationship with OKI, Brenner said he has nothing but praise. “All of our issues are sorted straight away. The contract is reviewed every six months and all of OKI’s cost estimates for us have been accurate.

“The printers themselves are very robust and communicate with OKI directly when the toner is running low. Administration is made very simple because of OKI’s ongoing management process that handles this and other potential issues. We rarely have any trouble with them now and OKI responds to any difficulties online and can repair them remotely or with a quick visit if required. In many cases OKI has solved the problem before it even occurs.”

The future

Brenner said the Grand Hotel will continue to work with OKI and that it couldn’t be happier with its reduced printing bill and lower running costs. The Grand Hotel recently renewed their MPS contract with OKI to include a complete equipment refresh, also adding the Marine Hotel in Sutton to the agreement.

“The end result of the whole process is lower running costs and reduced management time on the devices, in addition to improved uptime and service level agreements over our previous devices,” said Brenner. “We feel we are now future-proofed and we’ll continue working with OKI. We’ve recommended them, very happily, to other hotels, and we’ll be looking to maintain our relationship with OKI in the future.”

The OKI Smart Managed Print Services programme encompasses a range of tried and tested methods and tools to establish the current state of an organisation’s print related costs and processes before OKI create a professional bespoke proposal to suit individual customer specific requirements. Our sales and engineering staff work closely with our key partners to offer Managed Print Solutions with maximum customer value.