AHOLD Czech Republic, a.s., is a division of the multinational holding AHOLD, based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Today, AHOLD Czech Republic, a.s. operates the supermarket chain Albert and the hypermarket stores Hypernova in more than 280 locations. In 2008, the supermarket stores served almost 200 million customers and employs more than 14,500 people.
OPS has three phases of implementation. The first one is OPS consult, where Konica Minolta analyses and identifies the customer’s environment and needs to then propose the best solution. OPS Consult is followed by OPS Implement and OPS Manage.
Since the year 2000, Konica Minolta delivers printing devices to AHOLD Czech Republic, a.s.. Nine years later, in 2009, Konica Minolta started an active OPS approach with the head office in the Czech Republic. AHOLD has to manage a high print volume of over 3,700,000 pages per month (total company). Almost 1,500 A3 and A4 printing devices from different vendors were on duty, operated by around 2,300 PC workstations. After the printing audit was finished, the client defined the priorities and started a tender. One of the key requirements was a reliable service of delivered devices to supermarkets available for 7 days a week between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., with up to 4 hours reaction time. Furthermore, unified service level agreements (SLA) were required for all devices. As well as this, AHOLD required special printing items such as price labels, delivery notes and invoices.
After the analysis of the current situation, the OPS experts of Konica Minolta developed a concept that included these key points: a complete outsourcing of printing and copying services to favourable locations where printing items could be concentrated, and model proposals for printing devices to meet the printing demands. On top of this, Konica Minolta advised high service level agreements (SLAs) and tools to control the SLA fulfilment. The whole OPS project was done in three stages, each lasting two months, during a total period of 36 months.
Capture, analyse and set up a project schedule – these were the first steps with which Konica Minolta started the optimisation of AHOLD’s head office. After that, the optimisation of the rest of the company was made in three stages, in the same way. First, the Hypernova stores were optimised in 2009, followed by two stages of optimisation of the Albert stores, the first in 2011 and the second in 2012.
Konica Minolta provided complete project management services for the whole implementation phase, starting with SPOC (single point of contact), followed by a complete documentation of the roll-out, including definition of targets and its status and the whole client infrastructure and configuration description, amongst others. The detailed preparation of the roll-out process and a close cooperation with AHOLD Stores IT Services department were especially important for the client. As there were around about 1,500 existing printing devices from other vendors, the roll-out was combined with a buyback of all replaced printing devices by Konica Minolta. In total, 413 printing devices were implemented in 296 locations, 126 of them A3 MFPs and eight production printing devices. Along with the devices, the ePRO Monitor system for remote monitoring of PageScope Enterprise Suite (PSES) software and its NetCare Device Manager application were installed, as well as eCON, which gives access to monitor the complete fleet and to control the SLA fulfilment. The OPS project also included the set up of a unified printing policy, which determines the usage of each device, e.g. rules for size of devices, accessories and settings, scanning connection etc. Moreover, Konica Minolta technicians organised trainings with the IT personnel and print users of AHOLD.
Thanks to service tools such as PSES, ePRO and eCON, the client is able to monitor his printing devices easily via a web portal, e.g. the status of requests for toner or technical support, workload etc. For this, the client has control of printing costs and the ability to maintain the service level agreements by Konica Minolta. Moreover, with the ePRO Monitor solution, AHOLD was able to outsource the entire remote monitoring and management of Konica Minolta PageScope NetCare Device Manager software. The client also benefits from Konica Minolta’s on-site support, which ensures a response and fixing time of four hours within business hours and thus secures an efficient printing environment. Some devices even include service level agreements for the weekend.
“The cooperation with Konica Minolta was on a very high level. The company arranged a really smooth transition from the old fleet to a new one with printing devices from Konica Minolta. The required efficiency and reliability was fully reached. For us, Konica Minolta became a reliable partner not only for a managed printing environment but also as a provider of high quality and efficient software solutions such as PageScope Enterprise Suite”, comments Mr. Vojta from AHOLD Czech Republic, a.s..
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