Harveys

About the company

Harveys Furniture is the UK’s largest furniture specialist, operating more than 160 stores across the country. As the company sells a comprehensive range of living and dining furniture, it has a continuous requirement for high-quality printing resource. The scale of this need makes it vital that its printers are reliable and robust and that its chosen printing model drives cost savings and operational efficiencies across the business, while at the same time helping to reduce environmental impact and deliver savings in productivity.

The challenge

Harveys’ relationship with OKI stretches back several years. Throughout this period, it has been using colour and mono printing devices from the vendor across its estate. However, Harveys has also had machines from other vendors installed at its various sites. Over time, this approach has proven to be difficult to maintain, both from a logistical and administrative perspective, especially with the company growing rapidly and regularly opening new stores.

Harveys has experienced difficulties in controlling the purchase of various types of consumables. The service agreements and warranties the company had in place offered only limited insight into printing quantities and costs.

Managing the printers themselves was also beginning to become increasingly complex. Harveys had two individual devices installed in each store, so if one failed or reached end-of-life, it was forced to either bring in a like-for-like device or replace both machines.

With each of the printers handling a heavy workload, being used intensively for printing sales orders, the reliability and durability of the machines was crucial for Harveys. Each customer purchase can generate up to seven pages of printing, plus a further nine if the buyer takes out a related finance agreement. Harveys also makes use of the printers’ colour capability to design and produce eye-catching point-of-sale and marketing documentation, often at short notice, to complement in-store promotions.

The solution

These considerations were all key drivers behind Harveys’ decision to standardise its OKI solutions and to establish a central service contract with Printware, an OKI reseller, as part of a Managed Print Services (MPS) offering. This contract was fully bespoke and specifically tailored to suit Harveys’ requirements.

Cameron Mitchell, managing director, Printware, said: “OKI, Printware and Harveys worked together to design the solution. By working as a team, we understood Harveys’ objectives and supported these with the right products, backed by Printware’s innovative MPS.”

OKI helped Harveys to identify this need through a detailed assessment of its existing printer fleet and typical print workflows. Following this assessment, OKI moved to implement suitable devices across the Harveys estate.

OKI installed one ES2632 A4 colour printer and one ES5460 multifunction product (MFP) in each of Harveys’ 160 UK shops, totalling 320 units, along with four of OKI’s high- volume ES3640 A3 printers at its headquarters in Cheltenham. It also implemented printers across a range of associate companies, including: Bensons For Beds, which now has a single ES2632 solution installed across all of its 200 UK stores; Bed Sheds, which has implemented the printer at its 40 UK outlets and Reid Furniture, which had 35 devices installed.

However, the printers themselves were just one, albeit critical, element of the overall MPS solution offering, which also included a range of services including planning, management, ongoing maintenance/support and device monitoring.

The service provision included a four-hour onsite response with repairs guaranteed within two working days, though problems are often pre-empted by intelligent fleet management software, which monitors the estate and can often identify potential issues to allow for preventative actions. The software also enables Printware to manage supplies usage and ensure zero downtime through advance replenishment.

The benefits

Harveys is delighted with its new MPS contract. Under its terms, the retailer has committed to a set volume of both colour and mono printing per quarter, which translates into a fixed cost for that period. If Harveys increases its volumes, it receives an additional fixed cost per page on both mono and colour output.

As part of the contract, the company also qualified for a 42-month service package, which covers parts, labour and service. Harveys expects to achieve a significant reduction in costs over the period of the contract.

Mark Spicer, head of IT, Harveys, outlined the benefits of the new approach: “We were confident that despite the economic downturn, our print volumes would rise over time. We were also aware that consumables costs are increasing rapidly at the moment. It is therefore a huge advantage to be able to effectively cap our costs over the contract period as part of a carefully planned MPS approach and to plan our budget more effectively, safe in the knowledge that there will be no unpleasant surprises.”

Printware provides Harveys with even greater control by providing detailed budget reports every three months, based on the actual print volumes associated with each device, which allows Harveys to extend the lifetime of its printer fleet. If one device is receiving particularly intensive use, while another is being under-utilised then locations can be swapped to balance out the wear and tear on individual printers. As an ongoing improvement feature, the upfront savings this presents are further improved upon throughout the term of the contract.

“Coupled with this, we have the added benefit of receiving brand new, high-quality, robust and reliable printing solutions fully maintained and supported from a single supplier,” Spicer added. “A four-hour response time is built into the contract, so we have the peace of mind of knowing that any problems will be quickly resolved.”

The combination of MFPs and independent printers at each Harveys site adds further reassurance. “Having two solutions means that we can still be up and running even if one device fails,” Spicer said. “Having an OKI MFP at each site also means that any hard-copy documentation that comes into the store can be scanned into the system and captured electronically for subsequent emailing to head office. We no longer have to rely on faxing documents over.”

The future

In the current economic environment, many organisations are looking for ways to understand and reduce costs while increasing their productivity. Having predictable monthly expenses, along with access and insight into usage, greatly simplifies the budgeting process and enables users to obtain the optimum value from their print solutions.

For a successful, fast-growing business like Harveys, which has a continuous and intensive requirement for printed documentation coupled with a need to drive operational efficiencies, the benefits of fixed and predictable pricing, visibility into costs and overall savings on print budgets can be crucial. With its new managed print contract, the company can look to the future with confidence that its in-house printing capability is helping to drive operational efficiency and competitive advantage.

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.