When Sussex Coast College Hastings found the relationship with its print service supplier was breaking down, it sought to find a new supplier. In Ricoh, the
College found a partner that it could trust and work with
Name:
Location:
Size:
Activity:
Sussex Coast College Hastings
Hastings, East Sussex
2,000 students, 500 staff
Education
• Existing print service unreliable and delivering a poor service to users
• Lack of support and cooperation from a ‘them and us’ supplier effectively. The result has been a print solution that has enabled the College to provide its users with a high- quality and reliable service.
• Integrated Ricoh Office and Production Print
• Delivers a significantly improved service for users, especially students
• Enhances print facilities with innovative features like anywhere, anytime mobile printing
• Customer-Ricoh partnership delivers a more reliable, effective print operation
• Provides a better, high-quality print finish than previous equipment
• Ricoh expertise, experience and project management capabilities ensure effective project deployment

Sussex Coast College Hastings (SCCH) on the south coast is a general and tertiary further education college offering 6th form, apprentice, vocational and degree courses to a broad range of school leavers and mature students. SCCH has three locations in Hastings, including the main site at Station
Plaza in the town centre and a specialist automotive training centre.
SCCH is responsible, among other things, for providing a range of support services to students and staff. It recognised the importance of print as one of these key services and, a few years ago, introduced a managed print operation across all of its campus sites. However, SCCH was getting a poor level of service from is print equipment and print service supplier. As the contract came to an end problems increased.
Phil Barnes, Head of Facilities and H&S at Sussex Coast
College Hastings, says, “The print system we had in place was, in itself, fine but what was starting to develop and what I didn’t like was a them-and-us situation where our supplier was saying ‘that’s not our problem it’s something to do with your systems’.”
When the contract was up for renewal, SCCH started looking for a new supplier. The College put out a tender and created a shortlist. Following a visit to Ricoh’s offices and a product demonstration, the College decided to hand the new contract to Ricoh.
“We chose Ricoh for a number of reasons, price being one of them, because Ricoh is very price competitive. But that wasn’t the only reason. We were impressed with the Ricoh equipment and also with what we were hearing about the way Ricoh operates - particularly the partnership aspect - from other Ricoh customers,” says Barnes.
SCCH has replaced its existing print system with a Ricoh
Office and Production Print solution. There are 35 Ricoh
Multifunction Products (MFPs) networked, but distributed across the College’s three campus sites. The print devices are located in administration offices, teaching staff rooms and in areas, such as learning resource centres, where they can be used by students. The print system uses Equitrac to provide a variety of control and management capabilities. It enables
Follow Me printing so that a document can be sent to any device and printed when a member of staff or student uses their personal swipe card to call up and print off the document.
Equitrac allows the College to set print policies, such as duplex and mono printing, as default for all MFPs across the estate. The College is also starting to use Equitrac to provide detailed reports on print activity, such as how individuals or groups use print resources, type of print used and overall print volumes.
Ricoh’s @Remote software helps the College manage the print devices by providing detailed information on device performance, toner levels and will even warn if there is a possible fault so that a printer can be repaired before it stops working. @Remote also helps with SCCH’s overall environmental policy by reporting on and helping to reduce print device energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
SCCH has a central reprographics room where a new Ricoh digital mono press has been installed. This is used for high-quality, high-volume printing, such as prospectus booklets and syllabus documents. The Ricoh press has been integrated into the enterprise-wide Ricoh print solution. It complements the distributed MFPs by handling print work that is either too large or complex for an MFP, and can often be more cost-effective than an MFP, especially for high volume print runs. The reprographics room is also the central management and control point for the entire Ricoh print solution across SCCH. From here, SCCH manages the Ricoh solution with support from Ricoh if more technical help is required.
Although SCCH has only replaced one print system with another, the impact on the printing experience, specifically for teachers and students, is significant because it is much more stable and reliable.
Barnes says, “Our main concern is providing a high-quality, reliable print service to all our users, but to students in particular because at the end of the day they are our most important customers. I want to make sure that whatever continued overleaf www.ricoh.co.uk

they need to print - be that a simple essay document to a full colour piece of graphical art work - they can do it and that it is good quality. That’s what the Ricoh solution enables us to do.”
On one occasion, the College’s previous print system failed and was out of action for four days as SCCH negotiated with the supplier about cause and responsibility for the problem.
In contrast, on the few occasions when SCCH has needed help with IT issues that affected the Ricoh solution, Ricoh has reacted immediately and come in to work in partnership with SCCH to resolve the issue.
“I don’t know if the issue was ours or Ricoh’s and these days it doesn’t really matter because in contrast to our previous supplier, Ricoh’s approach is completely different. It sees the relationship as a partnership and if there are problems both organisations come together to sort them out as a single team,” says Barnes.
As well as better reliability, one of the other ways in which the Ricoh solution is improving print services at SCCH is by providing new and innovative features. For example, the
Ricoh solution provides anytime wireless printing - improving the quality of service and simplifying the mobile print experience for students and staff using laptops, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. This includes a simplified user experience, ensuring seamless mobile printing on campus. From anywhere on one of the three
SCCH campus sites, a teacher or student can send a document to print and then go to the nearest printer and use their swipe card to print out.
Barnes also highlighted the fact that the Ricoh devices produce better quality print output than devices SCCH used before. He says, “I’ve noticed that the print we’re getting from the Ricoh devices is much better and so have staff and students.”
Barnes adds, “As well as providing SCCH with a high-quality and reliable print solution, one of the ways Ricoh stood out was in managing us. Ricoh’s expertise and experience and its rigorous project management ensured that together we were able to deploy the solution quickly, efficiently and effectively, and I’m not sure we could have done that on our own.”
• Ricoh Multifunction Products
• Ricoh Pro 907EX production printer
• Mobile & on-demand Printing
• Equitrac
• @Remote
“Our main concern is providing a high-quality, reliable print service to all our users, but to students in particular because at the end of the day they are our most important customers.
I want to make sure that whatever they need to print - be that a simple essay document to a full colour piece of graphical art work - they can do it and that it is good quality print. That’s what the Ricoh solution enables us to do.”
Phil Barnes, Head of Facilities and H&S, Sussex Coast College Hastings www.ricoh.co.uk
2014 Ricoh UK Ltd. All rights reserved. Replication of part or all of this document requires the express written permission of Ricoh UK Ltd.