Customer Success Story Lincoln County Managed Print Services
The Situation
“No coordination” is the best way to describe Lincoln County’s old approach to
managing its printers and copiers. Many of the County’s 28 departments did their own
thing – they worked with diff erent vendors, secured diff erent equipment, and ordered
and warehoused their own supplies.
The result was astonishing – spread throughout the County were:
• 170 printers – of these there were 54 different models using more than 54 diff erent cartridges. The average printing speed was 15.181 prints per minute (ppm) and only 50 percent of the printers were on the network.
• Of the printers deployed, a sizeable number were color ink jet printers printing color at high cost.
• 30 copiers – 24 different models all using different toner cartridges.
• 18 fax machines – 15 different models all using different toners.
The situation could best be described as chaos, both from a purchasing perspective as well as for the IT department that would often be called upon to fi x problems. With a department of only three full-time technical people and one part-time, it was a challenge for IT not only to provide the service when needed but the expertise on the many diff erent models.
Understanding true costs was impossible. “There wasn’t any individual accountability for printing,” Don Schlising, IT Director for Lincoln County, said. “We had no way to know what the individual County departments were actually printing so no way to track costs. And, because they just ordered the equipment they thought they needed, we had no idea what their printing needs were and if they had the right equipment to meet those needs.”
Waste of stocked supplies when equipment was replaced was also a problem. With so many diff erent models, quite often when a machine was replaced its stocked supplies were unusable.
Pin Pointing Needs Critical to the Right Program
The Situation . . .
The printing and copying needs of Olmsted County’s 20-plus departments range widely. From departments with very sophisticated printing needs to those that only need basic printing functions, Olmsted County’s challenge was to meet the needs of each department accurately. “Unless you really dig in and have meaningful discussions with departments identifying their real printing needs, you might as well be working off wish lists from those departments or lists that generalize all function,” stated Debbie Palmer, Purchasing Manager for Olmsted County.
With numerous County buildings spread out geographically there isn’t a great deal of opportunity to share equipment. Factor in limited budgets and the need to be vigilant in spending taxpayer dollars, and the need for absolutely pin-pointing individual department
requirements is critical. “Our biggest challenges are always going to be money and resources,” Palmer said. “So it really is all about getting the right machines in the right places and then monitoring them to make sure they are doing the right job for us. The key is having a competent partner you trust, and we have that with EO Johnson.”
Juggling Paper
There are many companies with rows and rows and rows and rows of filing cabinets. They are always paper filing everything. Do you lose files? Misplace files? Is your company this way? All of these are dangers when dealing with hard copies of documents.
Almost all new copiers come with scanning these days, so there is really no excuse to lose documents. It’s a simple matter of properly tagging the file and making sure it follows the destination rules.
Many people that have 20 filing cabinets could pretty easily cut this number down, so why don’t they? Change in process can be hard.
For many, many years, copier machines have a standard mounting on the desktop or in schools. They were popular even before some computers. Copiers were used primarily to create black and white copies of the documents, or virtually anything that is on paper.
The first copiers have been produced as large, bulky equipment but because of technological development, there are many copier machines today that a very compact and many more features than their predecessors.
Turning a Copier Refresh Into a Strategic Opportunity
Understanding Utilization
Copier manufacturers may introduce devices that offer more power and more features at or below previous costs from year to year. This strategy creates a powerful incentive for organizations to replace older devices with technology that is similar, yet newer and somewhat enhanced. As a result, organizations may acquire ever-increasing amounts of power without really understanding the true cost associated with their technology decisions.
To fully grasp the price organizations actually pay for the promise of more speed at less cost, it helps to know a bit about how output devices are sold. The fact is that copier manufacturers actually define market segments based on page-per-minute speed. (See Copier Segment Key below.)
According to IDC, Segment 3 and Segment 4 copiers account for about 30 percent of general black-and white office copier placements in the US.1 While these copiers typically support a normal output range of 15,000 to 45,000 pages per month, recent HP data suggests that the average copier in the US actually produces fewer than 8,000 pages per month. In other words, many organizations today may have between two to six times more copying capacity than they actually need.
Turning A Copier Refresh Into A Strategic Opportunity
Calculating the cost of “business as usual”
Most organizations grapple with end-of-lease decisions once every three to five years. Although many key business drivers will have changed in the intervening years, it is common for organizations to follow the same replacement procurement process from contract to contract. Doing so may escalate costs and prevent maximum return on investment (ROI) in these areas:
• Utilization
• Functionality
•Access
• Procurement options
Traditional copier replacement process
Understanding utilization
Copier manufacturers may introduce devices that offer more power and more features at or below previous costs from year to year. This strategy creates a powerful incentive for organizations to replace older
devices with technology that is similar, yet newer and somewhat enhanced. As a result, organizations may acquire ever-increasing amounts of power without really understanding the true cost associated with their technology decisions.
Want Production? Think Multifunction.
What is a Multifunction System?
According to the Multifunction Products Association, a multifunction system (MFP) is defined as “office equipment for paper management connected to a PC or network that handles two or more of the following functions: printing, scanning, copying or faxing.”
Everything You Need In One Device
The newest generation of MFPs provides important office functionality in one reliable device with the capabilities of printing, copying and scanning in full color.
Printing
An MFP works like any other laser printer, but also adds the type of finishing functionality you expect from a copier including stapling and two-sided printing.
Scanning
Revolutionize your office and scan documents into common digital formats like PDF, .jpeg or .tiff formats. These files can be sent to email addresses or to any folder on the network.
