Konings prints worry-free from now on, everywhere

"A local partner who can compete on a European level, that's what we were looking for for Konings. There is a reason why 'We think globally and act locally' appears on our website," says Joris Claes, Group ICT Manager at Konings. After a somewhat difficult collaboration, we were looking for a partner who not only delivers everything on time and solves problems well, but also one who was located near Zonhoven."

VanRoey was therefore an obvious choice, so time for a conversation. "From the very first meeting, we were convinced that we had found a new partner in VanRoey. Together we then came to the decision to quietly start our partnership with a few printers under their management, although this quickly became quite a few more," says Network System Engineer Erik Mannaerts.

From SME to (award-winning) major player

That start-up was certainly not inconvenient, as Konings has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. CEO Joris Brams was even awarded 'Limburg Entrepreneur of the Year' in 2020. Two factories soon became six, located in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and England. Although the ambition to expand further is still great. In this, Joris Claes notes a general trend: "Konings used to be smaller, a typical SME. Then you quickly keep everything in-house, but when your company is quietly growing, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep that up."

So a partner who can support your company in this is not to be underestimated. Especially when other plants are also being taken over. Joris Claes explains that "such plants work with their own supplier and equipment at the time of takeover, but it is of course much more interesting if a company can adopt the same approach across the board. As a company, you then really need someone who can support you at all locations and coordinate the whole thing."

And it is just that which is much easier with a local partner. "The proximity of VanRoey means easy and smooth contact for us. Our contact person is also always there for us and if you ask a question, she deals with it immediately. Problems are solved, ongoing issues are followed up quickly and any errors are dealt with properly. In short: In VanRoey we found a partner that is not only customer-friendly and local, but also fast and efficient."

More efficient printing

Besides smooth management and efficient maintenance, there are some other interesting benefits to the cooperation. "Thanks to VanRoey, we can command a reasonable price from the bigger IT players such as HP. But printing itself has also become a lot cheaper." Konings used to work with a cost per page, now we have moved to a fixed cost per toner. And that appears to have been a good move. "Our service contract is now determined based on how many toners we consume per year, rather than on the number of pages. On our printed matter there are often only a few lines of text, so this arrangement suits us much better. Now we have the latest devices and a lower printing cost," says Erik Mannaerts.

Of course, those toners also have to get to the right place, be it the Netherlands, France, Belgium or England. But we have an efficient solution for that too: "As soon as a toner is almost empty, this is automatically passed on to HP. They then put in another order which then reaches the right plant." These toners also have a sticker on them with all the necessary information about the specific printer, so the employees at that plant immediately know which printer they need to work with. "And so we keep working on this uniformity across the printer parks, in the meantime we are looking forward to our next steps," says a satisfied IT Manager.

Security

"What next step we have in mind? Well, new printers are not only nice and pleasant to work with, but they also offer a sense of security. And that is not to be underestimated. You hear something about leaks and other cyber threats so often that you soon sense that you had better secure your business properly." Indeed, things can go wrong very quickly, but with the right approach you are well defended against such threats, think of encryption, for example. "With this next step, we would like to fully exploit the advantages of the new HP printers in terms of security," Joris Claes reveals.