Case Studies

Challenges

Norfolk County Council, in the East of England, provides a range of local government services to around 800,000 citizens in Norfolk. The Council strives to deliver greater value to those citizens and increase operational efficiency through its commitment to the green agenda.

The Council is also improving services through more flexible and efficient ways of working. As part of a large change programme for Norfolk, it aims to work simpler, better and faster. It is making better use of its office space, resources and mobile technology to support more flexible ways of working.

The Council is also committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 25 percent over the next two years. This is where the Ricoh Managed Print Service is making a big impact. Previously print was managed in a fragmented way, with each department, service area or site organising and buying its own printing facilities so print resources and equipment were not being used as efficiently as they could. There were multiple contracts across the organisation, duplication of resources and devices were not being used efficiently. So the council wanted an effective way to manage and measure its print services and reduce its environmental impact.

Ann Carey, ICT Business Systems & Services Manager, in Norfolk County Council’s ICT Shared Services Resources, says, “Our objective wasto centralise print operationsso we could reduce device numbers. We also wanted more consistency for the printing service and an effective corporate policy on printing, especially around reducing waste and inefficiency. One of the key drivers was to make our print operations more environmentally friendly and improve services, giving better value for money to the community.”

Challenges

Astec Projects is a £30-million turnover construction business based in Reading, Berkshire. Although one of the largest specialist ceilings contractors in the UK, Astec Projects provides a number of other construction services, including facades - now its main activity – glazing, cladding and shop fronts. Recent projects include refurbishing McDonald’s drive-through restaurants with the new green brand facades.

A key part of Astec Projects’ work is design. Of its 109 staff, around 36 are Computer Aided Design (CAD) designers. These designers frequently need to produce and print complex designs and technical specification drawings for various projects. Typically, these designs are printed in black and white.

But there had been an increasing demand to provide colour designs, particularly at the tender and design stages of a project, where high-quality, high-impact presentation is important. Terry Noone, Financial Director for Astec Projects, says, “Although a lot of design work is now produced and shared electronically, there is an increasing need to use printed designs in presentation and tender situations. And the ability to add colour to a design often makes the design easier to use, easier to communicate concepts and easier to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of project challenges.”

However, using colour in wide-format printing is usually too expensive to make it a viable option.

Challenges

The DDL Group, established in 1988 in Cheshire, is one of the UK’s leading direct marketing firms, with a turnover of £2.5m and over 80 staff offering a full range of high quality database management and fulfilment services. The company’s customers range from small, one or two person businesses, to local authorities and large national organisations in the insurance, travel, pharmaceutical and mail order sectors across the UK. 

From the beginning,the company and its founder managing director, David Bingle, have sought to innovate through the latest technology. During the past 25 years Bingle worked with the Royal Mail in trialling the original mail sorting system and set up one of the first outsourced call centres and introduced a number of advanced statistical techniques in the management of direct marketing data.

This strategy is carried through to the printing technology used. Printing is a fundamental part of DDL’s outbound mailing services, which ranges from leaflets and letters through to fulfilment of goods, mailing associated with ecommerce services, and specialist transactional mail, such as insurance policy documentation. 

Bingle says “We’ve always done some kind of personalised printing, but now there is a growing demand for more sophisticated variable data printing, including text and images. We’re always looking around at the latest technology, and seeing what is out there. With the contract for our production printer up for renewal, and an office move imminent, we decided to see if we could improve our existing print capability and, in particular, meet the demand for complex, personalised printing.”

DDL’s clients were asking for increasingly complex levels of personalisation, both with large volume print runs and small volume print on demand and the existing printer software either could not cope with this, or implementation was so difficult and unwieldy it was nearly impossible to use. Without high levels of automation, DDL was limited by its print technology in the number and type of direct marketing jobs it could undertake.

CHALLENGE:
“Traphot wanted to explore opportunities
in interior decoration.”

Started in 1957 as a photo lab, Traphot saw the tide turning in the mid nineties and decided to divert into wide format digital printing, first using inkjet systems. When Traphot’s management decided to explore new opportunities in ultra-wide format printing, the company acquired an 8 colour VUTEk 3360 as early as June 2001, becoming France’s first user of the 3 metre solvent printer. In January 2009, Traphot also invested in a 7 colour VUTEk QS2000 UV-curing printer. Today, the company employs a team of 20 and has an annual turnover of 3 M€.

“We are best defined as an image company”, says Catherine Bresteau,  Traphot’s managing director. Indeed, the company has successfully based its growth in the wide format printing market on its know-how in photography and image editing. “Our prime concern is image quality”, underscores Catherine Bresteau. “Our customers are well aware that by trusting us with their print work, they will benefit from a good adequation between image editing excellence and the best printing technologies on the market. It’s a very unique combination that delivers outstanding results on print”.

As such, Traphot has attracted over the years a customer base of corporate accounts in the luxury and cosmetics industry, including L’Oréal, Lancôme, Cartier and Nina Ricci. The company has also convinced some household names in the entertainment business, such as Disneyland Resort Paris.