Annodata's managed service shows Al Rayan Bank the route to efficiency
Al Rayan Bank PLC makes sound investment with Annodata.
Key points
- Significantly reduced printing waste & cost.
- Enhanced security.
- Provided the capacity for business growth.
- Increased visibility & control of printing.
About Al Rayan Bank
With branches across the country, Al Rayan Bank PLC is the UK’s only wholly Sharia compliant retail bank, operating without interest. By banking with Al Rayan Bank, Muslims are able to save, expand their businesses or buy their own homes without compromising their beliefs. The Bank depends on its printers to maintain daily operations, printing often highly sensitive documents.
However, an ageing fleet that lacked control and visibility was no longer able to support Al Rayan Bank’s needs. Due to this, the Bank selected Annodata to design a print solution that would meet its requirements.
The challenge
Al Rayan Bank’s IT estate consisted of a complex mix of contracts and suppliers, having been allowed to grow organically for many years, resulting in significant management challenges and making it difficult for the IT team to maximise investments. Faced with these issues, the company set about consolidating its portfolio of suppliers and updating its service contracts to ensure that they could fully support the business.
During this exercise it became clear that its print estate was no longer fit-for-purpose and needed to be overhauled. Matthew Glover, Head of IT & Change Delivery at Al Rayan Bank, explained:
“In our head office we were maintaining five multi-functional devices (MFDs) which were not meeting our requirements; we had little visibility over what was being printed and by whom. Confidentiality was also a risk as we needed to avoid a ‘print and sprint’ situation: sending a job to the printer and then racing to collect it safely. As a regulated bank, we must always be vigilant that documents cannot end up in the wrong hands.”
“Annodata immediately recognised what our pain points were and had the flexibility to design a solution that could meet our requirements.”
Matthew Glover, Head of IT & Change Delivery at Al Rayan Bank
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The solution
After putting their solution to tender, three different providers were in the running to replace Al Rayan Bank’s incumbent print solution. However, of the three, only Annodata was able to offer the exact services the Bank required.
Matthew continued: “We had already held a good working relationship with Annodata for several years, having sourced our IT hardware from them. But we were keen to make sure we got best value from our new print supplier and opened up the tender process. Annodata immediately recognised what our pain points were and had the flexibility to design a solution that could meet our exacting requirements.”
Annodata rationalised Al Rayan Bank’s MFDs down from five to four, replacing them with Canon devices complete with the manufacturer’s print management software PaperCut. PaperCut’s PIN-release function means that print jobs are never left unclaimed on the devices, significantly improving security. A further benefit is that Al Rayan Bank is given more visibility and control over who is printing what, allowing for better cost management and allocation.
The entire solution is backed up by Annodata’s industry-leading SLAs, which specify that, in the event of a device fault, an engineer will be dispatched within four hours to rectify it.
The result
Since moving over to Annodata’s new print solution, Al Rayan Bank’s print outputs have improved, largely because of the use of PaperCut. Jobs that are left unclaimed get erased from the print log after 24 hours, resulting in healthy savings on paper and toner.
“PaperCut has been an enormous help for us, having helped us to save money and improving our security. Before rolling out the solution, Annodata took us through the software to ensure we fully understood the features and the benefits. It has given us much more control, visibility and flexibility, so we are looking to roll it out to all of our branches and offices across the country.”
However, one of the biggest benefits is the trusted relationship that Al Rayan Bank has cultivated with Annodata.
Matthew explained: “We absolutely made the right choice by going with Annodata. They are very competitive and we know that they are looking after our best interests. Because they are vendor agnostic, they were able to present us with a broad range of options and design the right solution for us. The fact that they already looked after other parts of our IT estate came as an added benefit, meaning that we could streamline the number of suppliers and reduce the burden of supplier management for our internal IT team.
“Our IT is no longer on the back foot, so we can now set the gears in motion to take on more ambitious projects, such as moving our London office’s managed print service to the cloud. We know that Annodata will be there to offer valuable advice and support before the solution is rolled out,” he concluded.
