Shelbourne Motors

About the company

Shelbourne Motors is a family-run company based in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland which has been in business since 1973. The company sits on a seven-acre site and has five separate buildings situated throughout the location. Its new car franchises include Renault, Toyota, Nissan and Dacia. The company offers Fleet4U, their own contract hire and leasing company, a vehicle rental business and boasts over 180 used cars at its premises through its core franchises and Autoselect, its used car supermarket.

The challenge

Shelbourne Motors’ IT partner, Supplies Team Solutions, first made the business aware of the cost savings that were achievable by looking at their printing costs in more detail. The car company was unaware of how much money it was spending on printing, faxing, scanning and photocopying. According to Managing Director Caroline Willis, it would often order hundreds of cartridges from different vendors, many of which would go unused as it was unsure which cartridges were needed for what machines.

“We had no idea of how much money we were spending, it was never even touched upon,” says Willis. “We were more concerned with the paper than the cartridges and the ink. We had too many machines and it caused confusion during the ordering process.”

As Willis says, another problem in the company’s spending was the fact that it had 29 devices from eight different manufacturers throughout its site; most of them individual photocopiers, printers and fax machines. If one of them had technical problems the company would just buy another one to replace it.

The solution

OKI was introduced to Shelbourne Motors by Supplies Team Solutions, who were intent on finding the business a better way of arranging its printing requirements. When OKI came on board it initiated an audit at the car sales company. It went back to Shelbourne and was able to reduce the amount of machines they were using from 29 to 16, nine of which were multi-function printers (MFPs).

“We agreed with OKI’s assessment of our print issues,” says Willis. “They were able to reduce the amount of machines we were using and solved our ink and cartridge problems.

“They did the sums and we looked at the individual offices and what the requirements were and whether they needed faxes, scanners, colour and the ability to print business cards. We asked that each office had a printer allocated. There were a few changes at the last minute because we hadn’t thought of a few things we needed and OKI were very flexible about that.”

The benefits

This added up to substantial cost savings for the company, which Willis described as a “reality check” in terms of its spending in this area. Shelbourne had previously been spending £15,000 on its print bill, while its new annual spend with OKI was forecasted at £11,500.

“When you add it up the cost savings are considerable,” Willis says. “Not only has Shelbourne Motors seen significant cost savings but the deal has also seen them benefit from a myriad of other advantages such as remote monitoring of cartridges, maintenance, recycling of consumables, helpdesk and the peace of mind that any issues or concerns will be addressed immediately.

“OKI monitors the cartridges and when one is nearly finished another arrives in the post. It’s great because we now do not have to keep masses of cartridges stocked. OKI sends them to us on a per-needs basis. They also held extensive training sessions with all our employees to demonstrate how the new MFP devices worked.”

One of the interesting issues that OKI had to surmount with Shelbourne Motors was that one of the car franchises had a licence protected arrangement with another printer brand so there wasn’t an automatic certainty that OKI could be used within that franchise. The issue was solved when the franchise took an OKI machine for a “test drive” and, duly impressed, gave the thumbs up for the OKI product to be rolled out across its site.

“OKI said if it had to put in different printers and brands it would facilitate that rather than lose the entire deal,” Willis says. “But that didn’t happen as the franchise was happy with the OKI machines.”

Willis is also enthusiastic about the new print and network setup as it allows all the buildings on the forecourt site to be linked together. “As we had separate buildings we never had the link where people could print to machines in different buildings, she adds “Now we can and the print is held by the machine until a code is entered to print the actual document.

“We can also monitor colour prints and turn off the colour option until someone actually needs to print in colour and that’s driven costs down too. In addition our contract is based on per printed page and not the amount of ink or cartridges we use and that’s another cost benefit. We’ve also stopped paying huge maintenance bills as that’s included in OKI’s service level agreement.”

The future

With installation complete, would Willis recommend OKI?

“Yes, we’ve had a great experience with OKI and the cost savings are substantial. People don’t realise until they sit down and analyse what they spend on print just how much money it can absorb. Companies tend to look at other areas but rarely at printing costs. And it’s an area they need to look at.”

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.