About the customer

Norfolk & Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the biggest Teaching Trusts in the country, with more than 12,000 staff. The Trust operates a number of hospitals including Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital (N&N), which is the main hospital, and a smaller facility in Cromer that deliver world-class services to patients in the North Norfolk region.

N&N attracts some of the leading clinicians from across the country and has a diverse workforce representing 94 countries from across the world. The Trust offers a range of specialist services such as cancer care and radiotherapy, orthopaedics, plastic surgery, ophthalmology, rheumatology, children’s medicine and surgery, and specialist care for sick and premature babies.

The challenges

Outdated print estate

N&N’s print estate had become outdated, consisting of a mixture of older model Multi-Function Devices (MFDs) and printers. With over 800 devices scattered across the hospital, N&N also realised it needed to reduce the overall size of their print estate to help control the amount of printed material.

The hospital was looking for a suitable replacement fleet to ensure it could maintain high printing standards while reducing costs, improving sustainability though leveraging the latest print technology.

Knowledge sharing

Communication between different Trusts is vital for any hospital, as sharing knowledge, experiences and patient feedback is essential for improving efficiency across the board. To ensure the hospital could communicate effectively with internal staff, patients and other NHS colleagues, it needed a new, coherent system in place that could help deliver this.

Colour print budgeting

Finally, N&N had a problem in controlling colour printing. Colour print is ten times more expensive than mono printing and their current solution made it difficult to monitor and control colour volumes.

Commenting on the challenges, a spokesperson at N&N said: “There was often a lot of issues when printing because of a lack of print management and the capability to easily restrict colour printing.

It was important to find a new system that could easily control and restrict colour printing." The Trust were running at circa 18% colour and working in partnership with Kyocera and their own internal processes have reduced this down to 7%. Kyocera now uses NNUH as an exemplar of what is achievable when discussing solutions with other Trusts. The MyQ software has reduced wastage, ensured on going GDPR compliance and reduced the number of print queues, offering a much more robust process."

Why Kyocera

After going out to tender and considering a number of MFP and printer solution providers, N&N chose Kyocera Document Solutions UK to help overhaul its print environment.

The customer said: “Kyocera ticked all the right boxes in terms of sustainability, cost-effectiveness and ease of setup. We wanted to ensure minimum downtime when setting everything up, so the timeline was rigid – the team knew this and catered to our every need.”

N&N continued: “The performance of the devices and Kyocera’s reputation made the decision to replace our outdated and disorganised equipment easy.

The print management technology installed fitted into our sustainability goals and has allowed us to keep costs down. Picking Kyocera was a no brainer with their green credentials and commitment to quality and service.”

The solution

After a four-week proof of concept, the existing devices were replaced with a mix of ECOSYS and TASKalfa printers and MFDs. The new Kyocera devices were delivered with MyQ software to solve the issues around the queuing of jobs.

The customer said: “As a result, the transition was smooth: in total it took around four months to deploy everything. We faced challenges during this time given we had 650 devices to change, but Kyocera got around this by deploying in some cases after hours.”

The Results

Kyocera’s new devices and systems have had a significant impact on N&N’s print activities. The MyQ software now enables colour and mono printing to be separated into two queues and gives the IT team control over who can print in colour and who can’t. As a result, the project has delivered an initial cost saving of 23%. Because the hospital now has full control over colour print, it is also saving a further 25% per quarter in print and copy charges.

As part of the new solution, N&N has an on-site engineer, meaning any issues can be fixed almost immediately.

N&N said: “Response times have been quick. Even during Covid, there was an on-site engineer that would offer support at 3am if needed. The Kyocera team has also reduced pressure on the hospital’s IT team by taking the hosted solution off-premise.

Previously the print solution and print services were all managed by our IT department, which was a drain on resources.

From a collaboration standpoint, the fact that Kyocera now manages the hosted solution 24/7 has enabled all three of the acute hospitals in Norfolk and Waveney together with the mental health Trust, (Norfolk and Suffolk Mental Health Trust, James Paget and Queen Elizabeth at King’s Lynn) to join the same data centre. This makes for more efficient IT operations across the board and easier liaison between the different Trusts.