The benefits
Through OKI’s Managed Print Services, Magee of Donegal has achieved an annual cost savings of more than 25 per cent, year on year.
According to Magee’s IT manager, Gerry Cunningham, the biggest benefit for the company has been the unprecedented level of control it has gained over every aspect of the print function. This has allowed the IT team to save countless hours, which they otherwise would have spent monitoring the stock of the various consumables they were previously using.
“I used to spend a lot of time running around after print problems and trying to monitor stocks of all sorts of consumables when I should really have been doing other things,” says Cunningham. “Shedding that responsibility has been great for our little IT department and the MPS has unquestionably been more efficient and controlled than we could have achieved with what we used to have.”
The company was also able to reduce downtime and quickly address any problems concerning the new devices, thanks to OKI’s expert technical support, which was included with the Managed Print Services agreement.
“We found them very good and very helpful, always at the end of the phone,” says Cunningham. “Since then we rely on the general OKI Help Desk which has been fine any time we needed a bit of help. As for technician visits, they have seldom been required. I’d guess we’ve not had much more than half a dozen over the years, but always promptly if there was an issue.”
Another key benefit delivered by OKI’s Managed Print Services is that the individual operations are dispersed between the weaving, clothing and retail shops, as well as its factory in Ballymena, Northern Ireland.
“Across those locations about 70 employees need access to print,” explains Cunningham. “There are also three separate companies, each with its own letterhead, invoice stationery and so on. We have also moved to a Spindle document management system, which automatically generates the appropriate documents from workflow for each company. On the other hand, the Managed Print Service is invoiced centrally, with the print control software and DCA [Data Collecting Agent] making the allocation of charges between the companies and the cost centres very easy and transparent.”
The annual cost savings achieved, as per the initial MPS proposal, amounted to just over 25 per cent year on year, Gerry Cunningham confirmed.
“Our volumes at the time of the print audit were just under 370,000 pages annually, with about 9 per cent of that in colour – which also accounted for 35 per cent of the costs. That general pattern has continued, with a rise in annual volume and in the proportion of colour printing. We have had a graphic designer on staff for the last year, for example, so we have been exploiting the banner printing and other capabilities of the OKI devices to produce much more in-store point-of-sale and promotional material for the shops.
“We also do nice A5 flyers with special discount offers throughout the year for various events here in Donegal. There are, for example, a bridge congress and several Country & Western weekends that are very successfully targeted. We work with the local hotels on promotion, which has turned out well because the demographic is right, especially for our traditional products.”
