Church

BACKGROUND
Based in the heart of Haringey, North London, The Gospel Centre Christian church is a base for the local community, with over 150 members it is one of a growing number of churches introducing colour to freshen up means of communicating

CHALLENGE
At the church it is essential to communicate regularly with members, maintaining interest of younger individuals through consistent and interesting literature. Ruth Hones, Church Administrator has been with the Church for 11 years and wanted to add creativity, creating colourful and visual materials. She was aware that at another London church, donations from visitors went up by approximately 75% after colour materials were introduced. Previously, the church used, “a time-consuming” inkjet Printer for colour printing and a black and white photocopier that “Broke down more than it worked”.They had suffered high print costs and were getting through a full cartridge printing only one large print run. The Church also experienced problems with skewing paper and smudging ink. Regularly they would have to pay for colour images to be printed professionally onto church materials.
Reliability of their technology was a problem, maintenance was an issue and they would regularly have to call out engineers, wasting time and resources.

SOLUTION
Eighteen months ago the church was fitted with a fully networked Panasonic MFP. Ruth Hones now creates high quality full colour bookmarks, calendars, information packs and leaflets. Church newsletters and magazines have evolved over time becoming an important and appreciated method of communication. “The quality of images created using the Panasonic Multi-Functional Device is brilliant. We can use images chosen from the internet, even images taken using a digital camera, meaning we can change and adapt the newsletter easily.” said Ruth.
With a restricted budget, it was important the church could manage their Document Workload, whilst cost effectively communicating in full colour. Ruth was able to implement the password protection feature on the MFP, allowing her to accurately monitor departments printing levels. This meant the Gospel could claim back any costs allocated against the MFD. “Knowing who, how and how much is important to us to ensure the Multi-Functional Device is only used appropriately.” explained Ruth.

A Sunday Bible school regularly use Church technology requiring literature and lesson plans. The Duplex Printing feature, halves the amount of paper used making it simple and straight-forward for literature to be quickly produced in an environmentally friendly and cost effective way. Sam Hones, IT co-ordinator often prints words and images onto OHP paper, projecting it onto church walls. Cleverly ‘tiling’ images he has produced huge, mesmerising works of art up to 85cm x 96cm. These innovative ways of communicating have set in motion a new and bright approach to decorate the church.

“No smudging occurred as it had with the inkjet, tiled images can now be placed in windows or on walls and look like a perfect poster image.” Ruth said.

Instead of having separate MFD and laser printers, the Church chose the networked option, enabling a workgroup to share resources and registered and authorised users to print from any networked PC, even reducing overheads. The Multi-Functional Device has been networked to a computer making it easy for members literally “take over from home”. Having such a reliable and high quality solution means that users can “Take over the machine and not even be with it,” commented Sam Hones.

CONCLUSION
Print quality of has improved dramatically and the diversity of materials at the church has doubled. “Going from black and white to colour was the original wow”. Ruth said, “The Multi-Functional Device covers everything we do here, it literally ‘trots’ out the workload.” Before the MFD it would take them a day to put one leaflet together, cutting and sticking paper. Now, it’s a quick and simple process and the printer does the time consuming jobs.
The key benefits for the Church have been the ability to copy and print in colour. Also, not only have the costs been reduced significantly, workload has lessened so they have time to be creative, producing double the materials at the same cost. For Ruth, being able to add images is in-dispensable “We just didn’t do it before now”. “We would have to buy in or use a generic low quality, uninspiring image. Now we have colour, we can create anything!”