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How Office1 Consolidated EOHI’s Document Management With a Custom Solution

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18%

cost reduction year-over-year

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Innumerable

hours saved for IT and upper management

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Increased

productivity due to external IT support

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About Employee Owned Holdings, Inc.

Employee Owned Holdings, Inc. (EOHI) is the parent company of Hydraquip, Supreme Integrated Technology, GCC, and more. The 100% employee-owned business specializes in hydraulics and pneumatics.

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Background

It started with copiers.

“Copiers are the redheaded stepchildren of many companies,” says Janet, former Director of Corporate Operations at EOHI. “They’re considered the hot potato nobody wants to take responsibility for. Prior to my engagement with Employee Owned Holdings, corporate services had already had several rounds of conversation as to whether the copiers should be centralized at corporate services or whether it should be decentralized, where each individual company managed it on their own.”

Having multiple contracts led to inconsistent services and an unoptimized workflow among the branches, which hurt productivity. It also meant that EOHI wasn’t getting the best bang for its buck since some contracts could offer more than others. In 2018, when EOHI acquired three new facilities in a volatile market, the right solution became increasingly important. It just so happened that one of these organizations already had a pre-existing relationship with Office1. So when Albanese — who played a key role in the acquisition — had to determine what to do about copiers, she began a conversation with Office1.

One of the issues EOHI encountered in the past was that despite being a small- to medium-sized business, there weren’t many companies set up to support a distributed company spread out across the Gulf Coast, the West Coast, and Oklahoma.

“A lot of companies are set up with a business model where it’s only local,” she adds. “We didn’t have a lot of buying power, and it certainly made for a very confusing and loosey-goosey infrastructure when it came to managing the copiers.”

When Janet outlined these pain points to Office1, she invited them to come up with a solution — one that would ideally not pull her away from her many other responsibilities.

“I told a Technology Consultant of Office1, ‘If you want our business and can come up with a program where you manage this for us, we would be willing to listen,’” Janet says. “That’s exactly what he did. This strategic partnership with Office1 led us to be able to consolidate our copiers across all our facilities to enter into a very attractive agreement where Office1 replaced our entire fleet of copiers with new copiers from coast to coast.”

Header Icon The Pain Points

  • Decentralized document management
  • Multiple vendors across markets
  • Small, underresourced IT team
  • A lack of consistent services and solutions across branches that hurt productivity
  • Multiple contracts for similar services that didn’t offer the same value
  • Uncertainty because of volatile market
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Innovative Solutions

As someone who wore many hats, Janet knew she needed a company that could take the lead. Office1 built a custom solution that was hard to refuse.

“An Office1 Technology Consultant managed the entire organization for removing old copiers,” Albanese says. “He contacted the people who owned the outstanding contracts or even the services that were still charging us a nominal fee on a monthly basis for several years. We didn’t even have that equipment anymore, or we weren’t using it.”

An Office1 Technology Consultant then got these providers to agree to let Employee Owned Holdings out of its existing contracts. While Janet reviewed contracts and did her due diligence, it was reassuring to have Office1 step in.

“They are the subject matter experts,” she says. “They are familiar with their competition. They are familiar with what their competition does and how they operate...."

 

 

"We’re the hydraulics and pneumatics subject matter experts. So it made perfect sense for the people who had the expertise in the field to drive the program.”

For the contracts that Office1 couldn’t end, the Office1 Technology Consultant also had an answer: Office1 bought out the remaining contracts so EOHI could switch over to a single source.

“I don’t believe Office1 had a program similar to this before,” Janet adds. “For this to make sense, they had to change their business model. I don’t think they had a program where one person could be responsible for an account that went from coast to coast. They were willing to adjust their business model to accommodate our needs.” 

By owning EOHI’s document management, Office1 could optimize workflows by decreasing redundancies, managing supplies, providing cost-saving suggestions, and more.

Header Icon Key Initiatives

  • New machines and technology
  • Biannual training sessions to keep the team apprised of technologies and processes
  • Offboarded old vendors
  • Bought out old contracts and consolidated existing contracts
  • Replaced equipment from multiple vendors, giving each facility a uniform experience
  • Created optimized and uniform imaging and document workflows
  • Supplies management
  • Proactive maintenance and monitoring of patches, software, and hardware issues from Office1’s remote help desk to ensure uptime
  • Concierge-level service, with Office1 driving the project from start to finish
  • Responsive customer service available to the entire team
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For this to make sense, they had to change their business model…. They were willing to adjust their business model to accommodate our needs.

Affordable, Robust IT Services

EOHI had a two-person IT team that focused on cybersecurity and other top priorities, but the duo was stretched thin. When Office1 started working with EOHI, it was able to fill in the gaps and provide robust IT services by handling all things imaging-related, patch management, networking, and more.

Up to this point, the IT team could only be reactive. As problems sprung up, it would address them. However, unexpected problems can lead to longer downtime and disrupt employees. Office1’s remote help desk proactively maintained and monitored patches, software, and hardware issues to ensure optimal performance and reliability of technology as well as more uptime.

“Our companies didn’t have the resources to organize all of this,” Janet says.

Once again, Janet told Office1 that it would need to take the lead. Since the IT team was so small, it was impossible for the duo to expand their responsibilities. “Our Office1 Technology Consultant established a relationship with our IT team, and I told him up front, ‘Your expectations from our IT team have to be minimal,’’ she says. “‘You need to do as much legwork on your own as possible,’ and he did.”

At Janet's request, Office1 also began conducting trainings so that people could understand the new pieces of technology.

“The Office1 Technology Consultant was able to accommodate this and able to make this happen, and this was a new process for Office1, too,” she says. “They send out meeting invites every six months or so just to get everyone back on the same page.”

Excellent Communication

For EOHI, Office1 became a reliable source of information. Albanese could provide her team with Office1’s contact information and have them each reach out with their questions.

“If anyone had a problem, a challenge, a question, we were told them to reach out directly to Office1,” Janet says. “Office1 was our single-source contact for our entire fleet of copiers and that made sense to me. It was a true supplier partnership.”

This arrangement worked well for EOHI employees, who felt empowered to contact the experts and who had positive experiences. “Some of the most critical people were very pleased with the fact that they could go directly to Office1 and pleased with the assistance they received,” she says.

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The Bottom Line

Working with Office1 has saved EOHI about 18% in expenses year-over-year, but Janet says that the true impact is difficult to quantify when it comes to time saved and productivity.

“There’s no way to calculate what we saved in man hours and extra effort in keeping up with all of these accounts,” she says. “Office1 created their own role and our partnership. They are problem-solvers. They are heavily invested in their supplier partnerships. They are trustworthy. They’re forward-thinking. They tailored the program to our needs and followed through on their promises. It wasn’t like they came in and just helped us maintain; they improved our overall ability to conduct business.”

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18% cost reduction year-over-year

Innumerable hours saved for IT and upper management

Increased productivity due to external IT support

Limited downtime

An imaging strategy that went from reactive to proactive

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