Revolutionising printing for CeraCare with a Managed Print Service
Tech-enabled care company, Cera, are committed to creating a world where everyone is empowered to live longer, better lives in their own homes. Cera are changing home care for the better by re-imagining the way healthcare is planned, delivered and received and as part of this, they are committed to putting their Professional Carers at the heart of innovation. Technology enables carers to do what they do best. Care. Using smart technology, they can track and monitor the health of their users, enabling families and medical professionals to have visibility of changes in health and well-being status. Digitisation allows them to identify health concerns, and help users avoid unnecessary hospital visits, all whilst protecting vital NHS resources.
Streamlining to improve efficiency
As a company growing so quickly through mergers and acquisition, and with technology at the heart of the organisations mission to empower people to live longer at home, when Cera were looking at the challenge of their disparate print estate, they looked for a like-minded partner to recommend a centralised approach to support staff across their sites. Mason Barendrecht – IT Project and Transition Manager, talked about the approach for Cera, “With the rapid growth and mix of companies as part of our portfolio, we had a real task to streamline and rationalise our print fleets, improve efficiency and make the printers easy and convenient for our staff to use. We had worked with Nuvem Solutions on a cloud-based server transition and were confident that they had the experience and expertise to support us with this project.”
Following a full audit and review, Nuvem recommended a Toshiba Managed Print Service that would rationalise the printers, minimise paper usage and help Cera towards their objective of digitisation in a sector that is traditionally heavily paper based, without compromising the essential regulations and patient confidentiality. Daniel Lancaster, Director at Nuvem commented on the process, “Cera are focused on using technology to help improve processes with their organisation. We proposed Toshiba MFP’s to replace their legacy and outdated printers, to justify the numbers, allow easy integration to their cloud-based server and provide the essential flexibility and accessibility to print anything from anywhere.”
The smoothest transition
The initial installations were planned, Toshiba and Nuvem worked directly with the sites to get the MFP’s networked and live with minimal disruption. “The whole process was very “hands-off” from my perspective,” commented Mason, “Toshiba and Nuvem liaised with each individual location, providing us with a summary as completed. The transition was so smooth, that it was more like an upgrade. They took the pain out of the whole process, it was seamless.”
As a result, Cera has been able to reduce the number of printers across the estate by more than half and completely centralise the replenishment of toner, taking the workload away from local offices. They also have faster and more efficient technology that is future proofed to grow with the needs of the business, including essential reporting visibility to control costs, address high volume usage sites, and identify which documents need to be digitised next.
Mason emphasised the benefits to the business, “We have progressed from sites with dated technology and lack of visibility and control, to a fully centralised and managed print fleet, with the functionality to adapt and change as we grow into the future. We had locations with 10 printers that we have been able to downsize to one MFP and staff now have the ability to be flexible and agile in their working. The additional functionality allows us to make much more use of Scan to File options, especially as we can use Google Drive in any location. We know that we cannot eradicate all paper, as the Care industry has a lot of regulation around the need for paper copies, but we now have the tools to reduce and monitor, and make changes where we can.”
Sustainability at the core
Sustainability is a key driver for Cera, helping with their mission to want people to live longer lives, it’s therefore a key factor in their choice of partner to know that the supplier has the same values and take environmentally conscious issues seriously. Sustainability is a core part of Toshiba’s corporate philosophy, and this is demonstrated through the Toshiba Carbon Zero Scheme which calculates and offsets the total footprint of a Toshiba device from parts procurement, manufacture and transportation, providing a complete carbon neutral device upon delivery.
Mason summarised on the partnership, “Nuvem and Toshiba have revolutionised our print fleet, it’s a process that has gone from the biggest pain with every new acquisition we make, to the simplest part of the process. We just provide Nuvem with the site details and they do the rest. The service and communication is second to none, with both teams going above and beyond our expectations, they even helped us out with some issues we had on a non-Toshiba printer."
