Virgin Active Moves to Cloud Print Management with Toshiba Across 32 UK Health Clubs

Virgin Active was founded in Preston, Lancashire in 1998 and now operates a chain of premium health clubs across the UK and internationally. The 32 UK clubs are supported by a Head Office near St Paul’s in London, employing over 200 staff. From marketing collateral and rotas to training guides and membership documentation, reliable printing and scanning is essential to daily club operations.

The Challenge

Virgin Active had been using Toshiba devices for several years and was satisfied with the hardware — the machines delivered high-quality output, fast scanning, and excellent reliability. However, the underlying print infrastructure was becoming a burden. On-premise print servers were ageing and needed replacing, and the organisation lacked granular visibility into print usage beyond its Head Office.

Staff frequently travel between clubs, yet there was no mechanism for them to print at whichever location they happened to be working from. Print management software had been deployed at Head Office but had never been extended to the club network, leaving a significant blind spot in terms of usage data and cost control.

The Solution

Toshiba recommended migrating the entire print infrastructure to e-FOLLOW.cloud, a cloud-based print management platform that would replace all existing print servers and deliver enterprise-grade security, flexibility, and reporting across every site.

A proof of concept was carried out at Head Office to validate the approach before Toshiba worked closely with Virgin Active’s IT department to roll out the solution across all clubs. Each site received full training and support guides to ensure staff were comfortable with the new system from day one.

The Results

Six months after implementation, Virgin Active was seeing measurable improvements across the business. Staff members can now print securely from any club or office location using follow-me printing — a capability that simply did not exist before. Scanning functionality was also streamlined, with access to contact lists and a full history of scanned documents.

The cloud platform gives management detailed reports on what has been printed, by whom and at which location. These reports help management set print reduction targets and identify processes that could move from paper to digital.

The elimination of on-premise print servers removed a significant IT maintenance overhead, while the cloud architecture ensures the platform scales easily as the business evolves.

Louise John, European Head of IT Service Delivery, noted that the Toshiba team completely removed the stress from the IT department. She described them as flexible, knowledgeable, and proactive, adding that nothing is ever too much trouble and any issues are resolved quickly. She highlighted that the business now has a safe and secure print management platform ideally suited to flexible working.