- OKI Customers Achieving Cost Reductions and Enhanced Business Efficiencies through MPS Solutions -

Slough, UK, 25 March 2011: Underlining its strength in what is becoming an increasingly important sector of the business printing market, OKI Printing Solutions has announced growing customer momentum behind its managed print services (MPS) option. OKI customers across the UK and Ireland actively using the approach include Lalor O’Shea, a leading Irish firm of chartered accountants; Hastings Hotels, the largest independent hotel group in Northern Ireland and Harveys, the UK’s largest furniture specialist.

For Lalor O’Shea, the MPS approach has brought extensive benefits. According to J.P. McGee, financial controller at Lalor O’Shea, “if anything goes wrong with our machines today, OKI is contracted to replace them. In addition, we only have to keep a smaller stock of toners and drums because we have streamlined our portfolio. We only have three different types of toner now instead of the seven or eight types we had previously.”

The new approach to printing is also delivering a broad range of benefits to the Hastings Hotel Group. First, the Group had had a complete refurbishment of its printing hardware at no capital cost. Second by moving to MPS, the Group had a fixed and transparent quarterly charge to pay rather than having to spend to meet need on an ad hoc basis. The approach enabled the Group to plan its budget more effectively and make an estimated saving of 30% on toner cartridge purchase costs. In addition, the Group has also made significant savings on new printer, printer maintenance and general administration costs.

Harveys decided to standardise on solutions from OKI and to establish a central service contract with OKI reseller partner, Printware as part of an MPS offering. This contract was fully bespoke and specifically tailored to suit Harveys’ requirements.

Cameron Mitchell, Printware managing director, said, “OKI, Printware & 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 managed print solution.”

OKI helped Harveys to identify this need through a detailed assessment of the furniture specialist’s existing printer fleet and typical print workflows. Once this assessment was complete, OKI then moved to implement suitable printers across the Harveys estate. Going forward, it will conduct ongoing performance reviews of the whole MPS solution.

In the future, in line with industry trends, OKI expects growing numbers of its customers and prospects to migrate to an MPS approach.

“We expect the future of business printing to be increasingly driven by a managed service mindset,” says Graham Lowes, marketing director. “With many businesses focusing on controlling costs and reducing their carbon footprint, there is an ever-increasing demand for MPS solutions. And OKI is well placed to meet this demand by deploying its MPS offering to reduce an organisation’s overall costs while improving efficiencies and ultimately transforming business processes.”