A revolution in how people print and scan at Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) has been led by colleagues at NTW Solutions. An array of old and out of date printers and scanners have been swept away and replaced by an integrated system using modern efficient high tech machines.

CNTW is one of the largest mental health trusts in the UK with over 7,000 staff who require access to printing facilities across 350 different buildings over a wide geographical area. NTW Solutions was established by CNTW in 2017 and provides services to the Trust as well as other NHS organisations and beyond.

The existing system had grown over many years with a large variety of different devices of varying quality and many were outdated and expensive to run. Ordering of toner and other replacement items as well as organising maintenance was a significant burden for staff locally. The system had not kept pace with changes in the way the Trust works with increasing need for scanning and sending of items with staff relying on slow and out of date flatbed scanners.

Introduction of the new system was led by NTW Solutions and delivered a range of improvements including:

• Saving money with more efficient devices
• Delivering better quality with faster and more user-friendly printing and scanning devices.
• Increasing efficiency with printers ordering their own toner when they run low
• Allowing effective control of the system by introducing default black and white and double-sided printing
• Vastly improving security with a two-stage secure print policy as standard
• Improving the environment with reduced paper and toner usage
• Ability to understand and control costs of the system by understanding where costs are being incurred

Following a competitive tender process, XMA Ltd were selected as our delivery partner, the result was deployment of Kyocera print equipment and PaperCut Print management software. This allows secure follow me anywhere printing allowing people to print from their devices and retrieve the printing from any printer across the organisation.

The project was a huge task split into ten phases with a full audit of all devices in existence across the estate with the subsequent planning and roll out. A standard list of ten devices was deployed depending on local need.