Stable Family Home Trust

The Stable Family Home Trust (SFHT) is a Registered Charity that supports more than one hundred people with learning disabilities so that they are able to lead ordinary lives and experience extraordinary moments.

Jan Mills is Chief Executive Officer for the SFHT which was established in 1980 and was originally set up at the Stables in Bisterne, Hampshire, where they offer the community a range of services including care in residential homes, day services, trips, health and fitness activities, learning support, domiciliary support and assistance in finding and keeping employment.

The aim of the Trust is to give  service users information that is easy to understand so that they can make choices that are good for them, help individuals understand their rights and responsibilities, ensure that they can maintain an independent, individual and self sufficient lifestyle and to make sure that they have a fair chance for a bright future.

The charity depends on reliable and efficient printers, as producing high quality documents is an essential part of their day to day requirements.  One of the charity’s key functions is to produce activity and project packs which are given to  service users to help with their learning and skill development.  They mainly use the printers for general office administration duties and with up to 350 mono prints a day the charity needed machines that could withstand the pressure of a busy office.

With a varied range of 10 old and out-dated laser printers from a number of different suppliers, SFHT found it increasingly time consuming and costly to juggle large quantities of different consumables, manuals and IT support for different manufacturers. Responsibility for ordering consumables lies with the central administration department who keep a steady stock of ink and replenish them when required.

Tired of unreliable laser printers with only basic capabilities, SFHT sought to standardise their fleet to include features such as copy, scan and fax.

The charity’s IT team recommended investing in Epson multi-function printers and were confident that these would suit the needs of SFHT. Many of them had years of previous IT and technology experience and had worked with Epson in the past.  After an internal audit it was decided to replace the units with Epson business inkjet printers as they were considered to be the most reliable to deliver a long-term and stable solution to their needs.

During the evaluation, the Trust looked at print quality, speed of print, colour reproduction and cost savings.  The Trust chose to install 10 WorkForce Pro WP-4525 and WP-4535 business inkjet printers due to their small footprint, excellent cost efficiencies, ease of use and flexibility across a variety of working environments. Epson worked alongside Lexicon Lifeline, a dedicated Epson Print+ authorised reseller, to install the printers across 3 residential homes and the charity’s headquarters in Hampshire.

Sophie Cross, HR Assistant at the Stable Family Homes Trust has been at the forefront of the changes .  She comments: “The most visible difference we have seen is the huge cost savings that we are now experiencing. When Epson told us that the WorkForce Pro printers could deliver substantial savings we were a little dubious, however they completely delivered on their promise and we are over the moon. As a charity we have to be extremely conscious of costs and need to spread precious funds as far as possible. Now that we are not wasting money on buying numerous sets of different ink, those cost savings can be re-invested into our  service users and their needs”.

The WorkForce Pro multi-function inkjet printers are already delivering the SFHT a saving of 25% on their consumable spend over their previous laser printers. The Epson printers also offer a massive 80% reduction on energy consumption compared to competitive lasers – providing significant cost and environmental savings. Ink cartridges are clean and easy to change and the cartridge is the only part that needs replacing, so the process is hassle-free.

The units are fax and network-ready so the staff at SFHT can share and connect across workgroups, with a USB device, and via Ethernet connectivity.

 Along with strong financial benefits the charity is also seeing substantial improvements in other business areas. “Our office administrator is now able to conduct her work efficiently and spend their time more productively as the time used up ordering and managing consumables has massively reduced with Epson” says Sophie.