Posted by Tristam Wallace on Wed, Feb 22, 2012 @ 09:01 AM
Peirce College in Philadelphia was facing some commonly seen issues around their print environment. They had an estimated print waste factor of 30-40% based on the amount of paper left in recycling bins near their printers. They had concerns about the security of printed information -- particularly information that had to conform to compliance requirements such as FERPA and Gramm Leach Bliley, such as FAFSA applications, W-2 forms and transcripts. And they were spending a lot of time and money managing upwards of 75 printers and copiers. It was time to re-invent print at the college.
Chris Duffy, CIO of Peirce College, and a set of key stakeholders including Admissions, Financial Aid, the Dean and Student Support staff, set out to gain control of their print environment. By utilizing print accounting software to better understand print usage, implementing Follow-You Printing to provide secure printing for students and staff and adopting the latest print hardware offerings to consolidate devices by more than 1/3, the college is now delivering better print services while saving $150,000 per year.
Read more details of the story and how Peirce College used Nuance's Equitrac Express print management software to help take ownership of their print environment -- controlling costs, securing information and changing user behavior. Download the case study.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Mon, Nov 21, 2011 @ 01:57 PM
When making people aware of opportunities that exist to control printing is your job, it is very exciting when POTUS steps up with a directive to cut waste across the Federal Government...and specifically calls out print waste as one of 5 key areas that he wants addressed!
This month, President Obama signed an Executive Order that will cut waste and promote more efficient spending in government – consolidating agencies, improving efficiencies through technology, demanding more accountability. It’s anticipated that spending across the areas covered in the Executive Order will be reduced by 20 percent – saving billions.
The five areas identified in the Executive Order are:
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Reduce Spending on Travel & Conferences
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Cut Duplicative and Unnecessary Employee Information Technology Devices
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End Unnecessary Printing and Put It Online
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Limit Motor Vehicles
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Stop Swag – or Government Promotional Handouts
On this blog, we’ve often referred to awareness as being one of the major barriers to a change in print behavior, and the resulting waste cuts that can be achieved. This directive will go a long way in helping raise awareness of how much print waste occurs – much of it being unknown – and how much money can be saved by implementing a print management strategy.
Awareness is the first step. Using the right technology – or combination of technologies – is the best strategy to turn that awareness into results. Some ideas that we have to offer government agencies to get started on meeting this new directive include:
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Report print usage to staff – Using Equitrac print management software, agencies can generate weekly or monthly reports that can be emailed to each staff member that shows how much they have printed and how much money those print jobs cost. Just seeing this information on a regular basis helps staff “think before they print” and begin to alter their print habits. Consider taking this a step further by instituting rewards or recognition for the staff that is able to reduce their print spend by the highest percentage and create a little competition!
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Convert paper forms to PDF forms – Using PDF software to fill out forms instead of paper can have a huge impact on print volumes. But it’s not just filling them out that is important to think about. Make it easy to convert items like applications, expense reports, and filings from paper to digital using a PDF product that has form creation capabilities built in. Creating PDF-based forms shouldn’t require IT assistance. By deploying Nuance PDF Converter software to every employee, you can remove paper from the process from the onset – reducing waste AND speeding the processing time.
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Deploy Follow-You Printing – One of the biggest areas of print waste that we see time and time again is the amount of documents that are printed but never picked up, or are immediately tossed in the recycle bin – as well as the needless and numerous amount of banner pages that are used to identify print jobs at shared printers. Utilizing a secure print feature like Equitrac’s Follow-You Printing® prevents this waste – immediately. Using a centralized print server and card or PIN authentication at any printer, print jobs are only released when the user wants them to and is at the chosen printer. No more need for banner pages. No more jobs printed and never picked up. And less frustration to users caused by long lines at printers or a paper jam. Most impressive…our customers that use Follow-You Printing commonly report that 20-30% of the print jobs submitted to the print queue are never picked up. That will help an agency meet President Obama’s 20% goal with little effort…letting you focus on exceeding that goal through your additional efforts!
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Scan more – The earlier that you can get paper-based information converted to electronic formats, the less chance there is of that document being copied. The trick is making scanning easy. Nuance eCopy software makes it possible for any staff to scan using the office MFP, convert paper to usable electronic formats, and distribute it to the desired location.
Many government institutions are already using Nuance solutions to reduce waste. And Nuance is ready to help any government agency learn how print management, scanning and PDF software can be leveraged to meet President Obama’s waste reduction goals. Contact us to request a demo of our products and to learn more about how we can help you meet this new Executive Order to end unnecessary printing today!
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Fri, Aug 19, 2011 @ 09:50 AM
In MPS or print management projects, one of the quickest and most measureable cost savings efforts is focused around device consolidation. It is hard to find an organization today that doesn’t have an excessive amount of personal printers, or old equipment, that can be eliminated entirely or replaced by modern technology.
Our customers are no exception to this:
- KeyBank reduced their print fleet from 12,000 devices to 3,000
- Liverpool John Moores University went from 750 print/copy or fax devices down to 250
- Peirce College had 50-60 personal printers and 15 MFPs and reduced that number to 20 new MFPs
This list goes on and on, and this ratio of at least a 3:1 reduction in devices is very common. And the cost savings are dramatic when you consider how expensive desktop printers are to operate, manage and maintain. The evidence is so compelling that it is hard to believe that every company wouldn’t jump at the chance to recognize the savings and start pulling out every desktop printer in their organization.
What’s stopping them? User resistance. Perhaps you’ve heard one of these excuses:
- “You can’t take my printer, I won’t be as productive”
- “I have this printer because I print confidential information”
- “Why do you want to take this, I purchase my ink and just expense it. It’s not an IT issue or expense.”
- “I only print small jobs on this printer. How much can it really cost?”
There are a variety of approaches to helping overcome this user resistance and paving the way for behavior change. First and foremost is communication. Demonstrate the reason that you are asking to take away a printer. Show reports on how much an employee is costing the company. Talk about the benefits to the environment by printing on more efficient devices. And explain that you are providing new tools and better technology that will actually improve their experience.
It is those tools and improved technology that will really make the case. With more modern print hardware you can deliver a better quality printed page, faster printing for large jobs and offer color printing to the people who need it at a more affordable price. Using secure print technology like Follow-You Printing can alleviate the concerns over confidentiality since no job is released until the user authenticates at the device. And intelligent print rules & routing software takes the burden off of the user to decide which printer is best for each print job…they just hit print and a pop-up window will give them options of where to print the job and the associated costs. A modern print infrastructure will help employees be more productive, documents be more secure, and IT be able to focus on strategic activities…not printer support.
Finally, go back to communication. After six months, let employees know that the company has saved thousands of dollars thanks to their changed print behavior. Let them know about the tens of acres of trees that were not cut to produce paper they would have used. Reinforcing the difference they are making will spread and help continue to drive print behavior improvements.
So…don’t hesitate to initiate a printer consolidation strategy. Most customers that I talk to said that at the onset they had employees who put up a fight. But every one expressed that because they communicated early and often, and implemented the right technology, those grumblings stopped and users quickly realized that change was a good thing. Just don’t expect them to raise their hand and say “take my printer”.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Mon, Aug 01, 2011 @ 10:54 AM
I just read a really terrific article from Rob Mattern, published in the ALA New York Chapter magazine. Mr. Mattern outlined some of the current thinking in law firm design layouts – including dedicated conference floors, flexible work areas and pod work areas – and the accompanying “support services” that are required to support those initiatives. In the article, he defines these as “reprographics (copy) -- both convenience and centralized, color and black & white -- incoming and outgoing mail delivery, scanning, printing, convenience scanning and “light” on-site litigation scanning…”.
It is refreshing to see an article such as this that emphasizes the important of considering print, copy and other reprographic services in the context of strategic decisions and empowering a staff to work more efficiently. There is little question that work environments are evolving, and with that evolution, how the role of devices like multifunction printers (MFPs or MFDs) must also evolve.
A point that the article didn’t cover, however, is that the deployment (or re-deployment) of these devices should be done only after a foundation of reprographic usage data is determined. Without knowing what services are used, how much and by whom, placing these devices in a new firm “layout” will lead to many of the same inefficiencies that exist today.
Matching devices with device requirements sounds like a simple concept, but far too often it isn’t considered and leads to the scenarios that the article pokes fun at…”did you hear the joke about why a law firm has a 100 page per minute copier running 1,000 pages per month?”
To combat this (unfortunately) real issue, the article suggests that equipment fleet leases/purchases should be structured to fluctuate with volume levels. The problem with that is it does not conform with typical MFP vendor contracts. Whether through a traditional lease, or through a managed print service contract, reprographic equipment contracts are typically created based on a set volume at the beginning of the agreement. Instead of trying to right size during the contract, the better approach is to right size before the contract begins. This is very achievable by using print management to perform an assessment of print activity – at a user level. With this knowledge in hand, it is much easier to determine what you will need over the course of a 3 or 5-year agreement...and therefore enter into a contract that is less likely to need to be adjusted mid-stream.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Thu, Jul 07, 2011 @ 10:43 AM
The lifecycle of a paper document used to be pretty simple. A document originated on paper (like a form) or was printed out. That document than lived in a labeled file folder and was stored in a drawer, filing cabinet or even offsite storage -- depending on how often it needed to be accessed. When information from the document was needed, it was retrieved from storage -- copied if necessary -- interacted with, then returned to storage when completed. This was a repeatable, known process and worked fine...although using paper as the permanent record often led to very slow, inefficient processing of information and is prone to errors and loss.
A number of years ago, electronic document management changed the nature of paper from a permanent record to a medium for short-term interaction. Paper storage isn't completely a thing of the past -- particularly in regulated industries and government -- but many of the permanent records of information are now kept electronically.
While you would expect that this change in workflows would reduce the amount of paper that is generated, this isn't occurring. Instead, the evolution of paper from a permanent record to a medium for short-term interaction with information has just changed how paper is used -- not how much.
In fact, this shift has resulted in a document being printed far more times from its electronic master, compared with legacy paper filing systems. Why? There is a preference by many people to use paper to interact with information. So, when a document is needed, there is no existing paper record to hold. Instead, users print the document, use it, then most of the time discard it. The next time it is needed...you guessed it, it is printed again...and discarded again.
This may evolve over time as tablets and mobile devices make people more comfortable working with information on screen vs. paper...but we aren't there yet. So, with most business processes still reliant on paper output for records, transactions or simply for better readability (Gartner, 2011), the best approach to is to help users print smarter with print management. Apply print policies to ensure that when a document is printed it is printed securely and to the most cost effective device. Track print usage and let users know how much they are printing and how much it costs...they'll be surprised at how many times they print and we've seen dramatic decreases just from that awareness. And give them the tools to make better printing decisions...like pop-up alerts that recommend a re-direct of print jobs to more efficient printers.
Even as its use as a permanent record is declining, paper isn't going anywhere...but the use of paper can be managed with significant cost, security and workflow improvement results.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Wed, Jun 29, 2011 @ 01:07 PM
One of the common "wow" features of our software that our customers share with us is the power of the reports that Equitrac generates. Whether the data is used to create management-level visibility of the costs of printing, help users understand how much their print activity costs the company to help change behavior, or to determine how to best deploy print hardware, our reports reveal some very useful information.
I thought it might be helpful to convey some of the different information that we make available in reports. There are nearly 100 pre-designed reports available with our products, and it is easiest to talk about them in categories.
Accounts: Reports in this category provide data about print accounts (allocated by department, business unit, students, etc.). Details include:
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How, when and where accounts are being used
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Account balance and transaction histories
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How accounts are organized
Analysis: Reports in this category are designed to help maximize device usage, including:
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The current status of the device (online, offline, jammed, etc.)
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When and how often they are being used
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When and how often they experience faults such as paper jams or toner outages
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Total and percentage usage of color, monochrome, single or double-side printing, application, account or network user
Detailed activity: Detailed information about the documents that users are creating.
Summary activity: The number of color, b&w and monochrome pages created by accounts, devices, applications, user, organizational structure, and so on. Summary reports allow you to summarize the information by date range, device, user or transaction type.
Total activity: The number of color, b&w or monochrome in single- or double-sided pages by: account type, billing code, device, user account, application or device/user location.
Of course, reports themselves don't change a business. But, the data revealed is a powerful tool to measure, understand and improve printing.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Thu, Jun 23, 2011 @ 02:03 PM
In a webinar we held yesterday with Park Hill School District, the school's director of IT referred to Follow-You Printing as "magic". He was referring to the fact that it "just works" and that users really don't have any clue what is happening behind the scenes.
I thought about the term "magic", and I think it's a great term to describe one of the largely unexpected benefits of Follow-You Printing. Using pull printing can reduce printed output by 10-20% on average...without your users ever knowing it or consciously changing their behavior. It is like gaining an extra 5 miles per gallon without changing your driving habits.
The secret behind the magic is simple. When you add Follow-You Printing to your print workflows, print jobs are sent to the Equitrac print server. The workflow for the user doesn't change...they just hit print. But, the print job stays in the print queue until a user releases it at the printer by authenticating. Print, then retrieve...nothing new there.
But -- and we see this with almost every implementation of Follow-You Printing -- a sizeable percentage of documents that are printed never get retrieved. The reasons for this are countless...a newer version was printed, the user got distracted and forgot about the document, the user realized they didn't need to print it, etc. Without Follow-You Printing, all of these documents would have been printed then likely discarded immediately.
The staggering part of this is the amount of documents that get submitted to the server but aren't printed. Liverpool John Moores University told us that on many devices it was up to 25% of the jobs. Park Hill Schools showed a range of 5-15% depending on the printer. And we've heard many more stories in the 10-20% range.
Think about what just a 10% drop in print volume could mean to your organization. Follow-You Printing can kick start a print management program -- with no impact to users -- and arm you with the data to create awareness of wasteful print habits that will lead to long term, significant savings. If you can save 10% without changing behavior...imagine the savings that come from adding that to a conscious effort to print more responsibly.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Thu, Jun 16, 2011 @ 08:41 AM
This morning, Nuance announced the completion of the Equitrac acquisition. We are all very excited to officially be a part of Nuance and for the terrific opportunities that await us, our partners and our customers.
This is a major milestone in the process of integrating the two companies. However, if you are a customer or partner, we want to emphasize that there is no change to the existing contacts or online resources that you are accustomed to. It is business as usual. Nuance is committed to the full range of Equitrac products and partnerships. And we will continue to keep you informed of information related to the integration of the Equitrac business with Nuance as it becomes available.
What is not business as usual is the impact Nuance now has on the market. With the addition of Equitrac, Nuance brings an unmatched set of people, products and intellectual property to help organizations win the battle over paper. Nuance’s full portfolio of solutions will speed and optimize the way office workers create, edit and share documents in organizations of any size across the globe.
The benefits of incorporating the Equitrac business into the Nuance Imaging group cross over to both customers and partners alike, and sets a new standard in the print management, cost recovery and scanning marketplace. With the completion of the acquisition, Nuance now offers:
- Complete Document Automation Solutions –Nuance is the first and only software company with integrated and complete document automation solutions for printing, scanning and workflow – from the desktop, to the MFP, to mobile devices, and to enterprise applications.
- The Most Robust and Global Partner and Channel Network – We have strong distribution and channel partnerships with nearly every MFP and printer vendor in the world, including Brother, Canon, Dell, HP, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Samsung, Sharp, Xerox and more.
- Unrivaled Sales and Customer Service – The sales and support team is the most experienced in the industry for print and scanning solutions, and is also by far the largest team dedicated to delivering unrivaled levels of service to our customers and channel partners worldwide.
While today marks the completion of the 34-year story of Equitrac as a business entity, it is really just the start of a new chapter for the Equitrac portfolio of products. As we begin this new chapter, the full Equitrac team wants to thank the more than 25,000 customers, business partners and, of course, all of the employees that have helped make Equitrac a success. Equitrac has become synonymous with helping people print smarter, and our products are now part of a larger portfolio of solutions that will help organizations increase cost savings and office productivity through overall document workflow improvements.
It is no surprise that the industry reaction to the acquisition has been very positive. Bringing together best-of-class solutions and people creates immediate opportunities for our customers and partners to take advantage of, and it paves the way for continued innovation in office technology. We look forward to working with all of you as we create the next chapter.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Tue, Jun 14, 2011 @ 12:58 PM
The Wellington Academy in the UK is a shining example of state of the art education. It's new building was designed and built to epitomize the future of education in the 21st century -- a building that makes people think differently about learning, about teaching and about what schools look like.
The organization of printing and other aspects of academic administration were not overlooked in the new building operations. The school knew they needed to gain better management control over printing through tracking and reporting, and they wanted to ensure that they were printing jobs in the most efficient way. They also wanted to make print workflows as easy as possible -- and made the move to biometric authentication for printing to address that need.
Whether biometrics is on your technology roadmap or not, the best practice and leading edge approaches that Wellington Academy is taking to deliver and manage print services are lessons that every school will benefit from.
View the video case study below to hear how this new integrated solution from Xerox, Equitrac and BioStore has enabled Wellington Academy to make smarter printing part of a 21st century school.
Posted by Tristam Wallace on Fri, Jun 10, 2011 @ 08:59 AM
I recently had the chance to talk with the staff at Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia (MTSA) and was reminded of something very important: saving money doesn't have to be the primary objective of a print management deployment.
MTSA is unique in some ways, but like many schools in others. The school has been around since 1950 and is the only single-purpose, regionally accredited, anesthesia-specific, graduate degree-granting school in the U.S. It has a small student population of up to 216 enrolled students in its 28-month program.
Even with a structured cirriculum and small population of students, MTSA still faced some common printing challenges. The process for student printing and copying required use of a specific swipe card that needed to be manually purchased and re-loaded at the library by the students. This process and the necessary technology had become outdated, and furthermore, created situations where students were unable to print during times when the librarian was unavailable – a common occurrence during weekends. In addition, it required the librarian to serve as a “card salesman”, which prevented her from doing more productive work. As a result, students were becoming increasingly frustrated with the painful process of having to continually purchase the copy cards.
To help solve this problem and deliver a better system for the students, MTSA made a bold decision -- stop charging students for printing that was necessary for them to complete their coursework.
Instead, they decided to allocate a set number of pages for each student to print or copy each quarter, depending on what year of school they were in. As a school with a set curriculum, it was easy for MTSA to determine the correct number of pages to allocate.
After discussing this new process with their office equipment provider, XMC, the school decided to implement Equitrac Express to handle the tracking and accounting of student printing. Equitrac Express allows MTSA administrators to assign a PIN number to each student and allocate the number of pages that each student can print or copy each quarter. Software was installed on the print server, the 2 MFPs to allow for walk-up copies, and on the desktops in the school’s computer lab as well as each students laptop.
With the software installed, students are now presented with a pop-up window when they print from a computer. They enter their PIN and retrieve the print job from the selected printer. For copying, students enter their PIN code at the MFPs control panel to unlock the copy function of the device. Each page printed or copied is deducted from the student’s account.
This new print and copy process is much more convenient for the students and has eliminated the problem of not having access to print and copy resources 24/7. And while students now have greater access to printing, the school has not had a single instance of a student exceeding their allotted print amount through abuse of the new "free printing" process.
An additional benefit of the software is the ability for the administration to quickly view detailed reports of print activity. As MTSA looks to refine their print and copy processes, this reporting will provide them with the ability to quickly assess opportunities to implement further control on print and copy.
For MTSA, providing print and copy services to their students in the most efficient, convenient way possible drove their decision to implement print management. It is a good reminder that there are many reasons to take a strategic approach to print/copy services and to deploy the technology to support that strategy. So whether you are looking to improve print workflows, make printing more secure, support a green initiative, or even just gain an understanding of your print usage -- print management can help deliver the results that you are seeking.