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OKI Provides Practical Support and Peace of Mind at Oak Furniture Land
Oak Furniture Land is the UK's largest retailer of real hardwood furniture. Currently running 84 showrooms and still counting, its mission is bold and seemingly watertight – to provide customers with 100% solid hardwood furniture at a price that can’t be beaten. It focuses on quality – “we never, ever use particle board or MDF”- and then cuts out expensive middlemen by designing its products itself and manufacturing via exclusive contracts.
To maintain its leading market status, Oak Furniture Land is always seeking ways to get the best possible quality product or service – at the most competitive price. Yet, when it first began working with IT reseller, AMC Print Solutions it had a combination of Xerox and Ricoh printers, involving a mish-mash of contracts and consumables.
Like other retailers it needed devices in its stores and back offices for printing receipts, finance documents, point-of-sale (PoS) materials and other paperwork. It also needed to be able to scan documents such as finance agreements and file and manage them centrally. Yet, space that isn’t dedicated to sales is always at a premium, so there was little room for multiple machines.
A further criteria was that printers had to be “well-built and robust”, according to IT manager, James Billet. Showrooms are busy and the machines endure a certain amount of heavy-handed treatment. “It’s clear that some printers are better made than others and we wanted to make sure that our chosen brand would be able to withstand the rigours of a hectic store, for example.”
Finally, Oak Furniture Land wanted to make the maintenance and repair of printers, together with the replenishment of consumables the responsibility of the vendor and reseller: “With 84 showrooms, there’s bound to be machines that are down, or low on toner at any given time. We wanted to be sure stocks would be replenished automatically and that any repairs and maintenance needed could be seen to immediately,” says Billet.
As Paul Harland of AMC explains: “We usually have to take the lead on explaining managed print services and its benefits to customers – and suggest we audit their print estate to enable us to design a more streamlined solution. However, being the proactive company it is, Oak Furniture Land had already looked at the MPS concept and decided that this would be its best solution.”
Billet adds: “Paul Harland of AMC gave us a selection of different makes of printer to consider and OKI’s device was obviously the sturdiest. Now Oak Furniture Land’s printers are gradually being replaced by OKI models on an ongoing basis.”
Each showroom has an OKI ES7470 smart MFP that deals with the main bulk of work with small mono B412s as a back-up. The ES7470 provides seamless integration with existing systems using OKI’s sXP smart extendable platform to offer secure document management and output. Combining print, copy, scan and fax in one device means a reduced footprint.
As part of the MPS deal, everything is under the one straightforward contract; consumable ordering and replacement is automated – as is maintenance. “We know there’s a problem before they do,” says Harland.
Oak Furniture Land now has a sturdy fleet of printers maintained as part of a managed print services arrangement. Strong enough to put up with heavy treatment, and via a VPN with back office can be used to scan and store documents. Toners are replenished once down to 30% - “With our legacy printers it was 10% and we did run out on several occasions,” says Billet.
While inevitably Oak Furniture Land will enjoy cost savings from this new agreement, Billet says that it’s more about peace of mind. “As we are busy over weekends and bank holidays, our maintenance agreement covers these times. So we can call out an engineer at any time with a guaranteed four hour turnaround.
“Paul and the team at AMC make it very easy – it’s just one quick direct call if we have a problem; there’s no big call centre or hoops to jump through, we get straight through and anything can be fixed right away as part of the all-encompassing MPS contract.”
“We are still opening new showrooms and with over 80 – and the same number of printers or more, we can’t really look after them all ourselves, so this is the best solution by a long way,” adds Billet.
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