A Christmas Gift from Arena

Our Professional Services Manager, Ian Fox, tells us “we looked at Father Christmas’s entire workflow, investigating everything that happens from the receipt of letters from millions of hopeful children, through toy design and build to the loading of the big man’s sleigh for dispatch on Christmas Eve.”

A lean, green and hassle-free Christmas machine!

The first thing we found was a muddle of different devices for printing and copying, of many different brands and types. Some were very old and expensive to run and Noah, elf in charge of IT, had no idea how much money was spent on print and copy. Noah told us: “I wasted a lot of time ordering toner and fixing devices which had broken down.”

Arena introduced a managed print service, installing a new set of devices and only replacing the machines that were really needed. All are from the same manufacturer to simplify toner supply and servicing, and all are sustainable to reduce environmental impact.

We also installed clever software to track print and copy output - helping Noah to manage the costs. “Printers are set to automatically print on both sides of the paper and elves must enter a password to release their printing. This has helped to reduce the amount of wasted printing through uncollected print jobs”.

“The new Managed Print Service is fabulous! When toner in a printer is running low it sends an automatic message to Arena and we get a new cartridge just in time. The same technology works for servicing so we’ve had engineers visiting us before we even knew there was a problem with a printer. We can track the costs more easily and we get one simple monthly invoice now – a fixed fee that covers everything including toner and servicing.”

Speedy processing from naughty/nice classification to toy delivery

Fred, elf in charge of the Naughty and Nice Team, explained to us that paper was critical at every stage of operations. “We receive thousands of letters and emails from children throughout the year and previously these were stored in filing cabinets that took up lots of space. Now we scan the paper letters into mstore [Arena’s software for electronic document management]. We also attach emails there so they’re all together in one place. It only takes a few seconds to save them and then we can shred the paper - we lose a lot fewer letters this way, and we can find and process them quicker.”

Letters that make it into mstore’s “Nice” cabinet are shared with the toy design team who create drawings and order materials. They save their documents in mstore and share them with the factory and purchasing teams – allocating mstore tasks as needed.

Fred explains; “this all used to be done using paper. We’d mis-file and lose documents regularly and this caused major problems. Now that tasks are allocated electronically we can track our workflow at the push of a button to review progress and see everyone’s outstanding tasks.

"We print a lot less now and once documents are created they are attached to the child’s file in mstore to keep everything together in one central place - we’ve saved so much time searching for papers in our cabinets. Once a document is saved in mstore it can’t be deleted without special authorisation from Father Christmas and this has made everything much more secure.”

Cheerful feedback from Father Christmas

“I thought we had a well oiled machine running here in Lapland but Arena has given us the gift of even greater efficiency. HO, HO HO!”

“The managed print service has taken a big weight off Noah’s shoulders. He tells me that we’ve saved money and gone “greener”- being environmentally friendly is very important to me as I’m a role model for millions of children around the world. Not only this but Fred informs me that mstore is working wonders across the nice allocation, toy design, build and dispatch workflow too!

“The friendly team from Arena were only here for a short time but the wonderful work they’ve done shows how well they have understand the way we work. They are welcome here for mulled wine and Christmas cake anytime. HO, HO, HO!”