United Response are an established charity with an excellent track record in supporting young people and adults with a range of mental health needs and disabilities – which include learning disabilities, autism, acquired brain injury, sensory impairments and dementia – to live the life they choose. They help with things like day-to-day living, finding a house or a job, education, and activities in the local community.
They were founded in 1973 with just one service in West Sussex and now support around 2,000 people, working in 400 locations across England and Wales and employing about 3,500 staff.
United Response understands that everyone has bespoke and individual needs and has an ethos to support people with learning difficulties and mental health issues live as independently as they can. The charity operates from its head office in Croydon and has additional sites throughout the UK, including 60 registered care homes. Paul Dixon, Purchasing Manager, spoke about the differing needs across the locations, “We have a network of satellite offices, many acting as central hubs supporting a wider area and our hybrid working arrangement allows the staff to use these, as required. As an organisation we are printing less post pandemic, but still heavily reliant on materials to support our activities, in particular individual care plans, training materials and tailored documentation. Each office has their own specific requirements in terms of printing and scanning, dependant on the area that they serve, and it is essential that we have appropriate technology to manage print demand.”
When the print contract was due for renewal, having experienced some reliability issues with their existing estate, United Response looked at an alternative supplier. Paul talked about their objectives, “As a charity we have a very clear need to keep costs to an absolute minimum, but we also want the flexibility and adaptability to fit in with our hybrid working model, so staff can print at any of our hubs. Reliability is a must have across the whole organisation and the proposal needed to also take into consideration that our offices all have different requirements in terms of print volume and scan functionality.”
Impressed with the knowledge, attitude and experience in the Healthcare sector, United Response selected Nuvem Solutions as their managed print partner to transition their estate. Michael Woodcock, Director, explained their approach, “Our mission is to be the most customer-focused provider of print and document solutions in the UK and we do this by listening and understanding. We start by asking what the core objectives are and look at how we can achieve them by having a thorough audit of how each organisation operates. For the charity, the overriding goal was to reduce costs, without compromising functionality. Having a partnership with Toshiba we have access to the widest range of reliable and innovative products so we can recommend the right specification MFP or printer for each site.”
Nuvem took the time to visit every site, connecting with the service managers to identify which devices would be a best fit for them. Even though the charity tries to reduce print as much as possible, there is always going to be a need for printed documentation to support their activities. With their comprehensive knowledge Nuvem put forward a proposal that would save the charity over £29k per year on their print contract and remove the burden of printer issues from their internal IT team, freeing up their time to tackle other areas.
With the first sites transitioned, Paul concluded on the project, “The new Toshiba printers and MFPs have given us a platform to help further reduce printing and the cloud based print management software has removed the need for print servers, enabling us to secure, control and monitor printing at head office. The devices are fast, easy to use and with the fully managed print service, we no longer need to worry about re-ordering of toners. By partnering with Nuvem Solutions we have made a massive saving of £29k per annum which is less than half what we were paying previously. I have been so impressed with their pro-active approach, they are focused and concise and want to give us value for money and I am very much looking forward to working with them and Toshiba to transition the rest of the charity’s sites.”
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