By Susan Twombly, July 2006
In this video, National Wine & Spirits and HP partner Cannon IV tell how an HP multi-function product (MFP) printing solution offers the potential for a cost savings of 15-20 percent.
 |
About National Wine & Spirits, Inc.
Indianapolis-based National Wine & Spirits, Inc. is the largest distributor of wine and spirits in the Midwest and one of the largest in the U.S. President of National Wine & Spirits, Pat Hurrle, offers a view into the company's 30-year history of serving its supplier and retail partners.
"We sell both liquor and wine throughout the state of Indiana," says Hurrle. "We service roughly 5,000 accounts - from the neighborhood tavern to the large chain stores, as well as package stores and all the restaurants throughout the state. We'll do over $300 million worth of business this year in the state of Indiana. We've been fortunate."
About Cannon IV, Inc.
Cannon IV, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana, is an independent service provider and reseller of HP printing and imaging solutions that help customers improve document workflow and increase efficiency. President and CEO of Cannon IV, Jerry Jones, talks about the company's background and shares Cannon IV's approach to solving customer problems.
"In 1974 when my dad and I started the business, we were selling carbon paper and ribbons out of a garage," Jones says. "The product line has expanded to a point today of being a multi-solution business for printing. One of the things that we have found at Cannon IV is that the customer today wants a solution. They want you to give an assessment to their business, figure out what works, what doesn't work and come back with a total comprehensive, cost-per-page solution."
|
|
|
|
PC Network Administrator for National Wine & Spirits, Jason Teising, talks about the printing issues the company faced. Teising is in charge of National Wine & Spirits' network for the state of Indiana — PCs, phone systems and printing solutions.
"My biggest challenge is trying to get us up to par as far as technology goes," says Teising. "We do a pretty high amount of volume on our color and black and white printers. We started looking at our toner price and cartridge cost, and it was phenomenal. Upper management said, 'We've got to do something about this!'"
"At that point in time, Canon IV offered the performance study for us to really evaluate what we were doing," Hurrle adds.
"We knew that we had a solution for them that could be long term," says Cannon IV's Jones. "They were kind enough to listen to us and we were able to come in and put together an extraordinarily comprehensive package."
"In going through the analysis at National Wine & Spirits, one of the things we found was [the age of] the printers had started to exceed their useful life," explains VP of Strategic Planning & Business Development at Cannon IV, Jim Fall. "The second thing we found was a number of printers that were underutilized. We also found that people within the organization, especially in sales and marketing, didn't really have the capacity or the quality of color printers that they really needed to do their jobs."
Fall was confident in moving forward with an HP printing solution. "HP has a breadth of products that can satisfy the simplest need to the most complex need," he says. National Wine & Spirit's Teising liked Cannon IV's recommendation to reduce printing costs with an HP multiple function product (MFP) solution. "Cannon IV came up with a cost-per-page solution with HP's MFP family of printers."
Cannon IV's Jones talks about the benefits of working together with HP to solve this customer's printing challenges, as well as the advantages to Cannon IV's relationship with HP over the years.
"We've been involved with Hewlett-Packard since 1987," Jones says. "We've modeled our company after Hewlett-Packard. They have extremely high ethics, high morals and their product quality is next to none. They have the ability to be a multi-billion-dollar-a-year company and they come and talk to us as if they're a small business and they want to come together with solutions. The National Wine and Spirits solution happened because we all came to the table as equal parties."
Once implemented, Teising says the HP MFP printing solution started delivering numerous benefits.
"We don't have the printer jams. We don't have the printer down for two days because we need a part, everything's new and refreshed," he reports, noting some remarkable results. "Speed, productivity, reliability, they're all phenomenal. Cost savings seems to be — right now we're thinking we're saving 15-20 percent off what we spent in '05."
National Wine & Spirits' Hurrle expresses his satisfaction with the HP printing solution from Cannon IV. "When you cut costs and you improve the quality of the product, it's kind of a win-win."
Cannon IV's Jones shares what he considers to be key in his company's good relationship with National Wine & Spirits.
"People that have the same type of business ethics and morals seem to come together and those always become your best customers, it's kind of birds of a feather, flock together," he says.
Hurrle agrees: "To be successful in this industry, you really need the right partners and we've been fortunate in that we attracted that."
Jones says people ask him what he'd like to drink to toast the solution. "I simply say, I will drink anything that National Wine & Spirits sells."
|
|
|
Printable version
