Case Study

C L I E N T C A S E S T U DY
The Hammers hit the nail
on the head
with Altodigital
C L IEN T P ROF I LE
West Ham United Football Club is based in Upton
Park, Newham, London. They play in the Football
League Championship. The club was founded in
1895 as Thames Ironworks FC and reformed
in 1900 as West Ham United. In 1904 the club
relocated to their current Boleyn Ground stadium.
Nicknamed ‘The Hammers’, West Ham United
employs 185 full time, and 517 part time staff
based across 4 sites. The club has an annual
turnover of around £80 million.
LOCATION Newham, London.
KEY TECHNOLOGY Ricoh MFDs, controlled by
Equitrac, with Optimise software.
KEY BENEFITS Rationalised printing fleet, reduced
printing costs, reduced power consumption,
greater efficiency.
WEBSITE www.whufc.com
CLIENT CASE STUDY
To compound the issue, there
was a culture of waste that had
been able to grow unchecked. By casting
light on printing practices within the
organisation we were hoping to challenge
this and rectify it.
BEN ILLINGWORTH
Operations Director at West Ham United FC
WEST HAM UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB
West Ham United FC needed a re-haul of their
existing print infrastructure, with Altodigital’s help
they have achieved significant savings and improved
efficiencies across the club.
THE CHALLENGE
West Ham United needed to save money and make changes on the business side of
the club to ensure the first team squad would have the necessary funds to continue
to develop the team. With this in mind a major exercise was put in place to re-stream
certain areas to ensure the first team still had the money invested in them to ensure a
premiership placing.
Although the players are the public face of WHU, the running of the club involves a
large back office operation with substantial administrative needs. Documentation for
contracts, human resources, tactical team sheets and reports are required on a daily
basis to keep the club moving. Upon inspection, this area emerged as a prime target
for rationalisation and a natural source of efficiencies.
Ben Illingworth, Operations Director at West Ham United, explained: “As a business,
it’s important that we keep every part of our operations as efficient as possible. Our
existing printing fleet was near obsolete and an unnecessary drain on resources.
We were maintaining many more printers and photocopiers than we needed.
To compound the issue, there was a culture of waste that had been able to grow
unchecked. By casting light on printing practices within the organisation we were
hoping to challenge this and rectify it.”
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THE SOLUTION
Having identified a problem, the Hammers invited Altodigital to tender competitively for its print contract
against two other companies. Altodigital subsequently conducted a detailed audit across all four sites to gain
a full understanding of the needs of the business in order to make a full assessment.
Following the audit, Altodigital prescribed a complete overhaul of WHU’s printing fleet, drastically reducing
the number of units by replacing single function devices with multifunctional devices (MFDs) and installing
software to assist with better device management to grant WHU more control over the printing fleet.
On the back of these suggestions, Altodigital were awarded the contract and started work immediately.
Dave Gibson, Managing Director at Altodigital added: “Some of the changes were quite radical so, not
surprisingly, there was some initial resistance. We’ve had to change the printing culture to promote
responsible paper management and usage to make people more accountable for their printing activities.
To manage the transition, we gave staff comprehensive training on devices and placed device manuals on the
intranet. As a company, we do everything that we can to make the changes that we implement as easy and
painless as possible.”
Altodigital has offices all over the country.
Call us and see what we can do for your business:
AYLESBURY 01844 201 744
HOME COUNTIES 01525 218 300
LONDON
02077 400 600
MIDLANDS 01384 286 000
NORTH 01132 443 016
SOUTH 01489 553 368
SOUTH WEST
01934 830 150
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Established for over 35 years, we have focused
exclusively on providing unbeatable office print
technology, and although we are a truly national
operation, our success has been forged around
our unique network of local offices providing
on-the-spot response, rapport and reliability.
To find out more about Altodigital
email learnmore@altodigital.com
or visit us at www.altodigital.com
THE BENEFITS
As well as rationalising the devices, Altodigital’s solution has improved device management considerably.
By installing Altodigital’s Optimise software and print management software Equitrac, Altodigital were also
able to offer dramatic reductions in paper, energy and toner usage. In addition, all devices now print in black
and white and double-sided by default, resulting in further cost and paper reductions.
Equitrac’s Follow-You printing requires users to manually enter their own personal codes on devices to
retrieve printing jobs. This means that classified documents are never left unattended in printing trays. If a job
is unclaimed within 24 hours it is removed from the printing log, the net result being that fewer documents
are printed unnecessarily, seeing a dramatic saving in paper usage.
Equitrac also offers full-transparency of printing costs allowing for the accurate cost allocation and tracking of
every print job. In this way, WHU are able to see precisely where resources are being used and identify areas
where additional savings could be made.
Altodigital’s Optimise, which allows for remote management of the print network, has also been installed on
all of the devices. Optimise ensures greater transparency, giving a full overview of devices providing
knowledge that can be applied to the business. For example, devices can be physically placed where they will
be needed most.
Gibson added: “A key benefit of Optimise is that it allows us to monitor the entire fleet remotely, so that we
can react to problems quickly and ensure that devices are operating properly. For example, Optimise lets us
know when devices are low on toner or when a device is malfunctioning. As a result we can manage
valuable consumables more effectively and take downtime to a minimum.”
Ben Illingworth, WHU, concluded: “The solution has been tailored primarily with cost savings in mind, but
Altodigital were also able to offer us extremely good SLAs, with a guaranteed response time. Our incumbent
supplier was somewhat lacking in this area, so the service came as a real bonus. They also promote
responsible paper management, with the aim of improving productivity and efficiency, helping to limit energy
and paper consumption. Simply put, Altodigital have been able to offer us a competitive, fully managed
well-rounded solution. We look forward to working with them for some time to come.”
SUPPLIERS OF:
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