Howdens Joinery.
Howdens Joinery is one of the UK’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of kitchens and joinery products. Established in 1995, it is a trade-only business selling to industry professionals. There are over 560 Howdens Joinery depots around the UK, providing over 350,000 inspirational kitchens each year.
Experience with distributed IT estate management and support
Track record of several successful hardware rollouts
ISO accreditation and
expertise in managing
security processes
Availability of engineers countrywide
Project Overview.
With the unprecedented growth of Howdens, the dot matrix printer solution located on their front counters didn’t provide the speed and functionality the business required. As a longstanding Kalamazoo IT customer, Howdens sought our help in finding a solution to facilitate the needs of the customers, builders, joiners and contractors who would be affected by paperwork output speed.
The Challenge.
Working with Lexmark, we provided regional installation teams to roll out hundreds of printers to the 560 depots nationwide. Our monitoring service provided Howdens with alerts, reports, counts and automatic replenishment of consumables both during and after the installation.
The Solution.
We loaned Howdens different printer models to install in their mock depot in Northampton. We used this method to eliminate a few printers, settling on a short list of three. After further evaluation, Lexmark came out a clear winner among the tested printers, so Howdens ordered a minimum of two printers per depot — over 1,100 printers total.
After a carpentry team made small adjustments to each depot counter, our engineers outfitted all the depots with the new printers. The rollout project involved regular updates among all parties to work out the logistics.
The installations were successfully completed across the company, and Howdens now also uses our managed print service, whereby we monitor each printer remotely. The monitoring software advises us when a depot’s printer is running low on toner, and we automatically send a replacement cartridge to that depot. Likewise, in the event of a fault such as a paper jam, roller error or print smudge, we are notified of the problem and provide a solution over the phone or send an engineer if field support is required.
“We’re really pleased with our new managed print solution. Our printers are much quicker and quieter than previous models, and they give us the output quality that we wanted. Any call-outs are responded to in a timely and professional manner, and we are happy with our investment.”