The Client: Louth County Council

The Business Need: Printing, copying and scanning had become a hidden cost to the Council, a complex environment with different hardware and service agreements, where procurement was ad hoc and management impossible, undermining environmental goals as well as cost-saving strategies.

The Solution: An Ergo Managed Print Service consolidated the hardware, relieved internal resources from having to manage it, and turned print and copying into a cost-per-page service that is continually improved and more sustainable.

The Benefits: More control and visibility of the print environment has seen an increase in uptime to 99 per cent, less waste, and a reduction in colour usage which has all contributed to cost savings as well as environmental benefits. Going forward, the Council has a platform that can be used for workflow transformation.

The Business Need
Serving the needs of 400 people across 24 sites, the Louth County Council print and output estate had evolved in a random fashion and was impossible to manage.  Multiple machines from different manufacturers had caused a confusing mix of suppliers, each with their own service level agreements and peripherals. Inkjets and toners were procured in an ad hoc way with people hoarding supplies for their nearest printer.

“At the end of the day we couldn’t put a finger on how much the printing and copying was costing the Council,” said Eugene Mulholland, Head of Information Systems. “Even on a single site it was a nightmare of different suppliers and support contracts.”

He wanted to move to a Managed Print Service with a third-party service provider taking over the management and maintenance of the machines, charging the council on a cost per page basis.

Mulholland convinced his management team that it was about more than the hidden cost of printing. There was also the question of wasted human resources. “Around 14 per cent of all service calls to the IT department were about printers. We were getting to a point where it was impacting on time and resources as well as the bottom line,” said Mulholland, “and we have an environmental and sustainability agenda that also needed to be addressed.”

The Council went to tender and Ergo won, partly based on price and partly because it planted seeds for the future. “We were looking at the bottom line but one eye was on workflow and Ergo presented us with ideas of where this new platform could take us in terms of improving business processes,” said Mulholland.

The Solution
In the first phase alone, Ergo consolidated the Council’s print estate in County Hall, down from 32 printer devices from seven separate vendors to just ten HP multi-function printers, strategically distributed around the Council premises. In addition to printers the multi function machines also replaced copiers, scanners and fax machines.  Typically, six devices would be replaced with one HP machine across the various sites. Models ranged from the HP LaserJet CP3535 to the more heavyweight Color LaserJet CM6049 series, all managed proactively by Ergo.

The technical deployment of the new hardware proved to be easier than the culture change, but Ergo worked closely with the Council on communicating a change programme to spell out the benefits of managed print. While most employees understood the growing need for cost control and the benefits, some departments publish glossy brochures and have a legitimate need for a specialist service.

“People feel protective about their printers and there were difficulties in some offices where there was a desktop publishing requirement and they had been used to specialist printers. We had to make sure they got far more from the machines than average users who just want to print, scan or copy,” said Mulholland. “But we worked through these issues with the help of Ergo and now everybody is happy.”

Some features, like swipe card printing, were an immediate hit. Every employee now has their swipe card enabled to identify themselves at a machine before a print job is released. The SafeCom print management system gives visibility across the entire estate, making it easier to monitor and manage costs.

Other features have also taken off and encouraged personal productivity. Users are now more inclined to scan a document to a folder or send it in an email directly from the printer rather than make photocopies and distribute them manually. And management has been able to introduce more centralised controls, such as blocking the colour printing of emails.

According to Conor Poole, Senior Account Manager at Ergo, the success of the implementation owes a lot to Mulholland and a top-down approach, something he would strongly recommend to other organisations considering a move to managed print.  “He articulated the benefits and got buy-in from senior management, then rolled it out in a forthright manner. It was very much an IT project where the clear goal was to get better visibility, then save money and become more efficient.”

For Mulholland, part of the appeal of the Ergo solution is the opportunity for continual improvement. Every quarter they meet and measure the outputs and compare the final figure to the estimate. Costs for the next quarter are adjusted accordingly. This is a radical change to the kind of customer/vendor relationship that Mulholland has been used to.

“Everybody sees what they never saw before and the incentive on both sides is to drive down the quantity of print. That’s a very significant change in the business dynamic and a real step forward,” said Mulholland.

The Benefits
Louth County Council has experienced wide-ranging benefits from the Ergo Managed Print Service. Principle among them has been cost saving and making the Council more environmentally friendly. Though the chaos of the old infrastructure makes it hard to benchmark improvements, Mulholland has no doubt that significant savings are being made. “Colour is eight times more expensive to print so being able to set mono as default for web and email is an immediate win for us,” said Mulholland.

SafeCom has helped to significantly reduce the waste associated with abandoned or forgotten documents. In the first year, 8 per cent of total print jobs sent to print were never actually printed, reducing the Council’s total printing costs by 11 per cent.

The Council now enjoys 99 per cent uptime and the homogenous environment has put an end to messy procurement and servicing arrangements.

Fewer machines take up less office space. The ratio of employees to printers fell from 5:1 to 16:1 without impacting on productivity. With Ergo managing the infrastructure, the Council’s internal IT department has been freed up from having to deal with helpdesk calls and allowed to concentrate on more strategic tasks.

Going forward, the Council has a platform for improved workflow and is already talking with Ergo about integrating other applications with the service. “The modern networked print environment is about improving workflow and having a future-proof infrastructure that can be leveraged to improve other business processes,” said Conor Poole. “The Council already has SharePoint so it’s a smart way for collaborating and sharing documents.”

If there is single standout benefit that Mulholland would pick, it’s the visibility that the service gives the Council, particularly when you are dealing with typical monthly outputs of 193,000 mono and 45,000 colour prints.

“There is an old adage that says you can’t manage what you can’t count. That’s definitely true with print,” he said. “Now we have access to information about individual usage. The next step is to push costs down in each department, led by section heads and team leaders. We do about 82 per cent mono and 18 per cent colour at the moment. We would like to see that become 85 per cent and 15 per cent over the next year.”

This figure compares favourably with the public sector benchmark, where the goal is a print ratio of 72 per cent mono versus 25 per cent colour.

Click here to find out more about Ergo Managed Print Services