Case Study: Finding the Perfect Solution for Hörmann UK
Background:
Hörmann is a family business and Europe’s leading supplier of gates and doors. After significant growth in the UK, they now occupy a total of 1300 square meters at their Leicestershire site, in the East Midlands. Hörmann have always been aware of its responsibility to the next generations, this includes responsibility for its employees.
With a mixture of personnel on site from shop floor to administration and customer service, the company has always provided its employees with a coffee and vending service, managed by the same supplier for many years. However, the service levels had dropped significantly, leaving them with old, empty, and unreliable machines and very dissatisfied employees on site.
The Challenge:
The management team at Hörmann were concerned about the impact on production and the moral of their team, especially for people returning to the workplace post covid. Hörmann also wanted more modern solutions with post covid considerations to make the workplace safe, but pleasant for their employees.
The additional challenge of several different equipment leases meant current equipment had different expiry dates and was difficult to manage.
The Solution:
East Midlands Vending Ltd were able to offer a new Vending service to the whole site, placing machines with Fresh Coffee beans in the locations where quality was paramount, with a consideration for a quicker solution in the higher volume areas.
Post Covid, East Midlands Vending offered a complete cashless system to all the hot drinks and snacks and cold drinks machines, removing a ‘risk area’ from the business. The use of smart cards allowed Hormann to allocate a monetary allowance to every member of staff as a thank you for their commitment during these difficult months.
In addition to the Smart card, Staff can also interact with the machines with a range of cashless options, including credit card payments and mobile payments. East Midlands Vending also offered the site a mobile app, enabling every member of staff to engage with the machines and services in a new, very modern way.
East Midlands Vending worked with the existing lease expiry dates, to ensure a continued service, supporting existing equipment, with deep cleans for short periods of time as required, this saved Hörmann both money and disruption.
For Hörmann the icing on the cake really was the pricing. They wanted an affordable service to fit their budget but it was important to reduce the current retail pricing for their employees. East Midlands Vending achieved both these criteria.
Results:
East Midlands Vending were able to provide a solution, on budget with no compromise on service. The range of snacks and cold drinks is far better, even including some healthier choices and a great range of top quality, branded hot drinks, all with a completely cashless system, removing the cash and covid risk from the shop floor.
Feedback from employees has been overwhelmingly positive, with responses saying that they find the new system convenient and easy to use, and there has been great engagement with the mobile App and the fun way to achieve extra credits. Only a small percentage of employees expressed concern about the switch to a cashless system, but the introduction of the pre-paid smart cards and employer incentive has really helped address this. Technology changes brought on in the past few years has also helped to promote the cashless service.
‘East Midlands Vending have been a great partner to work with, understanding our business and our team, and flexible thought the process. We’ve gone from a poor-quality, unreliable service to excellent service levels and innovative solution, perfect…’ Eliot Buckby – Hormann UK
Overall, the switch to East Midlands Vending has been seamless, saving us management time, whilst reducing our budget and boosting moral in the workforce. Great decision all round.