“As there’s no scripting to maintain, the general day-to-day running can be handled by our help desk.
Which then, in turn, makes us more productive, because we can then concentrate on other things, rather than something as basic as printing.”

– Matt Jacobs, IT Infrastructure Team Leader Covers

Loyal Timber and Buildings Customer Relies on Process Fusion for an Effective Upgrade and Migration to Amazon Web Services

Covers Timber and Builders Merchants have been in business for over 175 years and operate 15 branch locations across the South of England.

They supply a wide variety of materials, including timber, insulation, flooring, plumbing and tools – more than 25,000 product lines – to trade and retail customers.

They have a vast array of technology offerings, some of which include managing client print services with help desk assistance and on-site technician support.

The Challenge

Covers has been a long-time customer of Process Fusion. In 2012, they enlisted UniPrint Infinity’s universal printer driver solution to combat business-critical issues that were the result of remote desktop services printing.

“We just couldn’t print properly. We had problems with standard Windows printing to the point that it was unusable. So I had to look for software that would solve that problem. And that’s where UniPrint came in,” said Matt Jacobs, IT Infrastructure Team Leader at Covers.

“In the past, I’ve played around with other universal print drivers. I can safely say that UniPrint Infinity is a lot easier to use and set up. All these others probably still do the job, but from a setup point of view, UniPrint was far more logical to me.”

Fast forward eight years to June 2020, where Covers was looking to upgrade from UniPrint Infinity V9 Print Management to the UniPrint Infinity V10 platform.

They also wanted to update their server infrastructure from Windows 2008 to Windows 2019. Additionally, they needed to migrate their server hosting – which included its UniPrint servers – to AWS. Not only that, 300 users had to be redirected to the new servers.

White Paper: Achieve Secure Cloud Printing for Microsoft 365 and Azure

The Solution

Covers needed to seamlessly keep everything working as is – allowing staff to print emails, documents and customer receipts – while upgrading to V10 and moving their users and servers over to AWS. A flexible and supportive service from Process Fusion has been pivotal to its continued success.

“Because of the way UniPrint is licensed, it’s locked to an IP address and server name. You can’t run two implementations of it, even when you’re in a migration scenario like we are,” said Jacobs. “UniPrint has been very good in allowing us trial keys to keep our new version working alongside our old one as we migrate people over.”

Jacobs worked with several people in the Process Fusion team, including Patrick Johnson, Partner and Strategy Manager, who is also based in the UK.

“That’s been really helpful because someone’s available UK-time if there’s a problem. Robin in the support team has been really good, as well. Even pre-upgrade, I’ve had help from them to best prepare things before we move across. I wouldn’t have been able to get this far without their help.”

Key Benefits Include:

• 30% reduction in help desk support calls
• Reduced the installation and onboarding of new users printer mappings from one hour to five minutes
• 14% reduction in printing costs
• 80% fewer printing-related support issues

The Results

By December 2021, Covers had migrated the bulk of its users over. All of the counters in their 15 branches now print through UniPrint Infinity V10, with about a dozen or so users also on their remote app servers.

“So far, all the terminal servers are looking good and printing’s looking reliable. UniPrint 10 is rock solid,” said Jacobs. “It just works. All I can say is thanks to Process Fusion for its flexibility, because there are lots of other cogs in this machine that we’ve been handling at the same time.”

System upgrades and migration projects aside, Covers has come to rely on Process Fusion’s services for all their printing needs over the past decade.

“We’ve had support that has gone over and above. We’re saving time and money, because we wouldn’t be able to print without it. We wouldn’t be able to give customers their receipts, which is quite important.

“The icing on the cake was the centralized management of it. We were able to map printers in a more simplistic way. With PrintPAL, you just set it and walk away. It’s all GUI-based, so you don’t need to script it.

This translated into a huge reduction in the time it took Jacobs to install and onboard new users’ printing mappings – from one hour to only five minutes.

Covers has also slashed their printing costs by an estimated 14%. But a reduction in time spent on printing support has proved to be the biggest advantage, with 30% fewer help desk support calls and 80% fewer printing-related support issues logged.

White Paper: Achieve Secure Cloud Printing for Microsoft 365 and Azure