Midland Heart is one of the UK's leading housing and community investment organisations and was formed through the merger of Keynote Housing Group and Prime Focus Regeneration Group.

Midland Heart manages over 31,000 properties in the Midlands, which provide homes for people who are unable to compete in the open market.  These include homes to rent, part buy or own outright, supported housing and sheltered accommodation.

Midland Heart combines housing provision with social and economic regeneration, taking a holistic view of community projects to improve the quality of life for the whole community. It is one of the largest housing and community investment companies in the UK, investing over £100 million each year and managing housing assets worth over £1 billion.

One of the key challenges faced by Midland Heart is to increase its operating efficiency to release additional funds for investment. Before the merger, Prime Focus approached several companies to tender for conducting a full survey of its printing and copying requirements. NRG won the contract to complete the survey and were later awarded the sole supplier contract for the group.

Midland Heart receives Government funding and therefore qualifies for the OGC contract, specially negotiated by the Office of Government Commerce. NRG won the tender because it was the most cost-effective of the suppliers to offer OGC terms.

Pete Jones, Facilities Manager, explains: “NRG completed the audit of our existing facilities,analysing print and copy volumes on our old machines.  They then anticipated our futurerequirements which also involved moving from six sites into one brand new office.  They made recommendations to reduce the number of desktop printers and photocopiers and move to networked multifunctional devices (MFDs) which can print, scan, copy and fax.”

NRG then began the installation process, replacing old machines with new MFDs as contractswith the previous suppliers expired. Pete Jones comments: “The installation has gone verywell. NRG was very responsive, the engineers came in regularly and all the equipment wasdelivered on time. There were no delays and no hassle.  We have a good relationshipwith our account manager, Lawrence Brickliffe, who helps everything run smoothly.”

Midland Heart has four new colour machines – one on each floor – which are used mainly for management information and presentations, so board papers, performance tables, graphs, etc. can be presented in a clear and professional way.  The multifunctional devices replace separate copiers, printers and fax machines previously used throughout the organisation. An audit of recent volumes has demonstrated the predicted requirements and subsequent cost savingsachieved by the introduction of MFDs. Pete says: “It was a good piece of intuitive work.We are hoping that the new contract with NRG will continue to show significant cost savings.”

“The move to MFDs has required a big cultural shift within the organisation,” adds Pete.“We realised that there was a lack of protocols between departments, which sometimescaused conflict between users sharing devices. Departments are now talking to each othera lot more about how to manage large print jobs.  They have their own PIN codesfor accounting purposes and each department is allocated its own output bin on theMFDs.” He concludes: “The next challenge is to review the requirements of the other parts of the merged organisation, which were formerly the Keynote Group.  We need to see how we canmove forward more efficiently."