(Image provided by Lancashire Business View)

The situation

Established in 2003 and based in Euxton (Lancashire), Studholme Bell are a customer centred Chartered Accountancy firm which takes great pride in developing longer term relationships with their clients, by giving them a great service with a lot of fun thrown in along the way.

The firm has grown steadily due to it’s strong reputation and passion for helping their clients achieve greater tax efficiency and profitability. And this growth has developed the need to upgrade their printing solution, to provide the extra functionality and security required to support their ever increasing client base, in today’s digital world.

Customer objective

Founding Director & Chartered Accountant, Alex Bell said. “Over the years, our team has expanded to support our growing client base and we hadn’t really thought about how the right printing and scanning solution could really help us”.

“We had a number of desktop printers dotted about, and didn’t really have a strategy in place of who printed to what and who scanned from where. And as the team grew and the economy advanced, so did the need for a cost effective fast secure printing & scanning solution. So, we thought it was time to reach out for help and bring in the experts”.

Our solution

After our technical manager (Paul Bolton) sat down with Alex and his team, and discussed together what the business needed from the new technology. It quickly became clear the solution would require the latest Konica Minolta photocopier equipment with secure printing.

But lets be clear, it was never about saving money. Although consolidating 4 desktop laser printers down to a single floor standing multi-functional device (photocopier), will certainly save them plenty anyway.

For Studholme Bell it was all about the functionality, and how the new technology would support the business and their clients securely in this digital world.

So, between us, we agreed that we would go with one central floor-standing multi-functional device (photocopier), set up secure printing for each team member, set up scan to email functionality for each team member and set up the device to allow direct scanning in to their client accountancy software.

Financial and operational result

Financially, Studholme Bell will definitely save plenty of money. Reducing from 4 desktop printers to just 1 large multi-function device (photocopier) and implementing secure print (team members must put a code in to collect their printing) to keep printing waste to a minimum, will have a dramatic effect. Unfortunately, we can’t say what the actual pound note savings will be, but we can estimate at least a 60% saving against their old printing solution.

Operationally is where it’s really at for Studholme Bell though. The secure printing function is massive for them, their clients can be assured their documents are securely printed, and can’t be mixed up with anybody else’s by mistake. And both the scanning to email and scanning direct to their accountancy software functions will improve their efficiency in spades and save the organisation loads of time, which in real terms is a hidden money saver too.