Xerox Helps Local NY Eyecare Clinic Somers Eye Center See Savings and Gain Print Efficiencies

The relationship between eyesight and printing is, at first glance, pretty simple: we print things to read and look at.

But in the case of local eyecare clinic Somers Eye Center, located in the historic commuter town of the same name in New York State’s tony Westchester county, the relationship was far more costly – until Xerox came along with new software and printers that saved time, money, and effort and allowed employees to focus on more important tasks.

Like many small businesses across the country and many healthcare providers in particular, Somers Eye Center relies on a small fleet of printers – five, in its case – to produce forms for patients, health records, office stationery, medical guidance, invoices, and other paperwork that its doctors, support staff and patients rely upon.

But Somers’ support staff was frustrated with the unreliability of some of their non-Xerox printers.

“They were causing them some headaches,” says Brendan Del Biondo, a Managed Print Services manager at Xerox’s Connecticut Business Systems subsidiary, who lives not far from the center. Specifically, Somers Eye Center was experiencing printers jamming, devices disconnecting from their wireless network, issues with drivers, and one device that had to be replaced after it wouldn’t work properly, creating extra work for the thinly staffed IT department headed by Somers Eye Center IT administrator Joseph Macchia.

Del Biondo learned of these issues and saw an opportunity for Xerox to help after he and a colleague stopped into the center one day in October 2019 following a meeting with another client nearby.

That spontaneous visit led them to connect with Macchia, who greenlit Xerox to conduct a full 360-degree assessment of Somers Eye Center’s printing devices, usage patterns, and costs.

The assessment involved Del Biondo and his colleague manually downloading files from the printers that showed their usage patterns and having one-on-one listening sessions with employees on the support staff to learn about the pain points they were experiencing.

“It’s really about asking the end-users ‘what do you use this for?’ ‘Do you like this printer?’ ‘Have you had any problems with it?’ ‘What could be better about it?’” Del Biondo says.

Through his process, Del Biondo uncovered that the center was spending nearly $700 a month on printer toner – a cost that the business hadn’t been tracking and was surprised to learn was so high.

On top of that, the center had been ordering new toner manually, costing valuable time for the IT and support staff that could have been spent on more important doctor-and-patient-facing activities.

Guided by Del Biondo’s assessment, Xerox was able to present Macchia and his boss, Somers Eye Center owner/optometrist Dr. Ami Ranani, a brand new system, Xerox^® Managed Print Services, a collection of software that would track print usage at the center, detect printer toner volume across all the center’s printers, even the non-Xerox ones, and automatically order new toner to be delivered to the office when it was low without anyone there lifting a finger. Most importantly for this small business, the Xerox solution was able to cut their toner costs by more than $100 a month, saving them more than $1200 per year.

Oh, and Del Biondo was able to throw in two brand new Xerox office printers, too, a Xerox^® VersaLink^® C405 and a VersaLink C400 color laser printer, to replace some of the older devices that had been causing the support staff trouble.

“They were really excited with the solution, and the cost-savings they would recognize,” Del Biondo says. The doctor was eager to move forward and become a Xerox Intelligent Workplace Service customer.