How print & scan solutions are improving processes in the public sector

Understanding print & scan challenges to find the right solution

It is no surprise that during the pandemic, businesses had to adapt, change, and monitor their processes more than ever before. This is no different within the public sector. Historically, the public sector relies on document management solutions, providing efficient, cost-effective, and simplistic approaches in day-to-day tasks. And with the continued shift in digital transformation, the need for remaining efficient while driving down costs is a necessity.

Knowing the exact requirements of a business, and how to successfully facilitate them, can sometimes become a minefield. As public sector organisations undertake their digital transformation initiatives, typically there are two key drivers – operational efficiency and enhanced customer service. This is where our extensive vendor partnerships and internal expertise come into play. We work closely with our vendors and resellers to facilitate requirements to an exact measure, within healthcare, education, legal, and more.

Brother print solutions helped free up more time for patient care

Within healthcare, information is constantly being exchanged between doctors and nurses, as well as their patients. This highlights the industry’s reliability on an efficient and effective print management solution, ensuring information is transferred quickly, with ease. It is, therefore, just as important to evaluate current printing processes and the effect they are having on productivity. How often are you having to change toners? How frequently do you require technical support? It may be time to upgrade.

This is exactly the outcome the East London surgery, Fullwell Cross Medical Centre in Ilford came to. They found themselves replacing toners on a weekly basis, breaking off from their duties to locate and install replacements. This meant precious time away from seeing patients and, in some instances, a possible increase in patient waiting times. With frequent toner changes required, stock levels were high resulting in storage requirements, as well as additional work to monitor and maintain these necessary levels.

As well as the time taken to receive technical support, the surgery knew something needed to change.

The solution came from Brother. To streamline the ordering process, the surgery has signed up to the Brother Print Service (BPS), which enables automatic reordering of supplies using web-connected printers. Under the new agreement, the surgery now enjoys the reliability and quality of Brother

“It’s essential that we optimise the way our clinical staff spend their time, and a GP or practice nurse having to take time out of their busy schedules to change a printer toner or speak to technical support is clearly not a good use of resources.”

Genuine Supplies with better visibility on costs. This allows staff to get back some of their valuable time, as well as the release of pressure in stock management.

Giving the surgery greater peace of mind, Brother are also assisting with performance by monitoring the usage of the devices and outlining the best way to manage hardware to maximise its lifespan. “It’s just so much easier. We are always looking for ways to enhance the patient care we deliver and a big part of this is removing, or at least minimising, anything that keeps staff from focusing on patients,” said Mr Andrew Watson, Practice Manager.

Canon print solutions helped a pre-school become more efficient

Enabling richer learning experiences is something at the top of every education facility’s list. Providing agile and more personalised learning experiences can however prove tricky, with the limiting budgets and closer regulations now in place. Canon has several ways to help you deliver an inspiring and seamless student experience by differentiating your educational establishment, evolving your technology offering, and transforming your internal processes.

“Canon’s technologies and services are there at every step of the journey too, helping people communicate, educate, collaborate, diagnose, and protect.”

The Enchanted Wood Preschool turned to Canon with a need to find a cost-efficient printing solution that will provide high-quality output and reflect the professionalism of the preschool team. Their pre-existing document management system struggled - providing poor quality print outs, high print costs and a lack of wireless print connectivity.

Identifying a clear need for a print solution that’s utilised for efficiency and driving down cost, Canon leaped to the rescue with the MAXIFY series. Improving ease and reducing turnaround print times, the series substantially enhanced the preschool experience for children and parents allowing for high-quality prints with wireless printing connectivity.

This digital transformation from Canon provided a simpler and easier to use system, and a more sustainable means of output through the eco-driven inks and toners – cutting cost and time.

Canon scan solutions helped reduce the carbon footprint

Now more than ever, providing the finest learning experiences to students is exceptionally important to universities. With the major setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, digitising the way they work is a necessity. Luckily, the tech-savvy nature of many university students has meant digitisation is met with open arms, so long as the university can attract their initial attention to join.

This move towards a more streamlined document management solutions does, however, come at a cost. The expectations for the latest technologies being readily available is on the up, meaning the budgets to facilitate these needs must too. Canon, however, helped the University of Glasgow to combat these issues.

“Around half of all universities in the UK have already chosen Canon to help them make cost savings that can then be re-invested to expand the services and experiences offered to students.”

The University of Glasgow enlisted the help of Canon to deliver excellence in learning for their students by driving efficiencies while reducing their carbon footprint. The main challenge was the sheer size of the campus; a historic site with 30,000 users required a strategic approach, not to mention the environment targets in place and the current poor user experience.

The answer was a strategic, fully Managed Print Service which could be rolled out across the whole university, all from the help of a digital transformation. What did this setup consist of?

• Canon’s Managed Print Services allowed the university to reduce its carbon footprint by optimising technology to cut waste, energy, and paper consumption.
• imageRUNNER ADVANCE range: This range of intuitively designed multifunction printers enhanced the university’s user experience, increased workflow efficiencies, and provided maximum security across campus.
• MFD Solutions Canon uniFLOW software: uniFLOW is a software platform designed to bring the full value of Canon multi-functional devices, allowing the university to administer one system with one set of user accounts and one database.

The results speak for themselves. The university saved more than £5.5 million over 5 years with 59.7% less electricity usages, teamed with secure access and a reduction of more than a third of their CO².

Kodak Alaris scan solutions helped streamline the process

The future of healthcare is shaping up in front of our very eyes with advances in digital healthcare technologies, such as artificial intelligence, VR/AR, 3D-printing, robotics, or nanotechnology. But this doesn’t mean the need for historic technologies is slowing down either. The future of healthcare relies on a positive working balance between people and technology, with healthcare workers embracing new technologies to stay relevant.

As with many other verticals within the public sector, the shift towards a digital way of working is the biggest step taking place, and this was the case for the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (UHPNT). UHPNT is committed to creating a single, secure digital health record for every patient, accessible from any location, at any time. The key to achieving this was to set up an in-house scanning bureau.6

Rob Harder, Head of IT Infrastructure and Support Services said that there were two significant drivers to begin replacing paper with digitised records:

“It’s key that we achieve this objective in line with the Government’s plans for transforming the NHS by achieving a paper-free health and care system. In addition, the volume of paper case notes was about to exceed our warehouse capacity.”

The need for a solution is further solidified from Health Record Manager, Vanessa Bennett:

“Over the years, activity in the hospital has increased significantly. Patients are often treated across multiple departments. We needed to address the problem of paper notes only being in one place at any one time. Our storage facility is off-site, and if a patient was admitted as an emergency, retrieving their paper notes out of hours could be an issue. Electronic information is much more agile and can be accessed at any time day or night.”

Kodak Alaris worked closely with the Trust to confirm and identify the capabilities of the hardware and software to support the Trust’s scanning strategy. Kodak Alaris helped with streamlining the scanning process, making sure the appropriate metadata was captured, and ensured the software was configured to identify the barcodes the UHPNT uses. All of which was integral in helping the project in terms of making processes more efficient and effective.

The Trust has been delighted with the quality of the scanners. Since becoming fully operational, they have scanned almost 24,000 case note volumes.

Midwich can help with your print and scan requirements

At Midwich, we take pride in our print and scan offering, enabling the perfect solutions within multiple public sector environments. With an extensive range of additional services over and above the supply of equipment, our Document Solutions business is structured specifically to support customers to win in the public sector.

Our successes are further solidified within the public sector because of our relationships with many leading OEMs including Brother, Canon, and Kodak. This is an integral part of our prosperity with our resellers. Working closely with the vendors’ in-house channel teams, Mark Wysocki, Divisional Manager, Print explains:

“Our end goal is to ensure our customers are successful and so we engage with the OEMs early on in the process, make them aware of opportunities, and secure their support too.”