Becoming Part of the School Community at Formby High School

In 2014, Formby High School started to look for a new print supplier. After going to tender and making the decision to choose Arena, not only did the school find they now had a reliable print supplier, but also a new member to their school community. Mike Leatherbarrow, Network Manager, told us about his experience of partnering with Arena.

Previously, Mike was doing regular stock and audit checks on all 130 desktop printers located around the school. He wanted a new supplier to be able to help with reducing this number and to provide a dedicated print solution with automated stock control and a managed print service to help reduce this burden on his workload. Arena supported Mike in reducing this to a more manageable number of multifunctional devices.

“The support was there from Arena when we wanted to reduce down the number of printers. Looking back now it seemed quite radical changing from 130 to 40 machines, it meant teachers would have to go out of classrooms, but there’s been no rebellion! It was about getting the balance right and we got it spot on.”

When it came to the end of the lease for these new devices, Mike decided to renew again because of his previous positive experience with Arena. There was also the opportunity to do an upgrade of their print fleet, to provide Formby High with newer models and a managed print service.

“We did the upgrade over half-term and it was brilliant. There was a fleet of 3 Arena vans that turned up which was reassuring for the 40 devices we were having installed in a 4 day week. Arena completed it in 1 day, which was helped by a lot of preplanning and organisation.”

The Arena Service team not only impressed Mike on the installation, but always provide excellent service with any support requirements the school may have.

In addition to having upgraded devices, Mike was now benefiting from automated toner deliveries and a managed print solution, PaperCut.

“Until we had PaperCut installed, we hadn’t a clue what we were printing. Now there is accountability and rules set up, it’s changed print behaviour. Print jobs are defaulted to duplex which has made a difference, and now students have a cost limit on what they can print to control their behaviour and raise awareness and responsibility for what they are printing. All of this will have helped towards a significant reduction in our print costs.”

After receiving fantastic service, Mike wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Arena to other schools. Having delivered on his print requirements, this encourages Mike to think about the possibility of managing their documents digitally with Arena’s own software, mstore.

“I can see how mstore would be useful for subject access requests by not having to search through boxes of paper, especially for requests for deletion. If all documents are central this would be a lot easier to manage.”

Arena aims to ensure strong partnerships with their customers, and this is especially the case for Formby High School. As CSR activities are encouraged across all Arena staff, the opportunity has been taken to support the school with various opportunities. Arena’s workshop manager brought a photocopier to the careers fair to encourage students to get hands on and encourage interest in the Arena Apprenticeship Scheme which creates our highly trained engineers. Various Arena people have volunteered time to help pupils with job interview practice and learn more about the world of work.

More recently, Arena sponsored new inter-form trophies and a new trophy cabinet for the school to be able to display all their many impressive achievements. Appreciation was shown by extending an invitation to their Account Manager to attend their end of year celebration assembly and hand out the trophies to the deserved winners. Mike commented, “The end of year celebration assembly is something we all look forward to and it was great to see your involvement in it. Arena is part of the community now.”