Keeping a lid on printing costs

By deploying Canon solutions, MindTree has been able to reduce the number of printers that it uses as well as the number of unclaimed print jobs. By Nivedan Prakash

MindTree is a global IT solutions company specializing in IT services, independent testing, infrastructure management and technical support (IMTS), knowledge services and product engineering including R&D services, software product engineering and soon in the mobility space.

Since it works with many global customers and has to uphold a high level of trust and accountability, confidentiality has always been important for it. To this end, it has to sign non-disclosure agreements with its customers.

Sudhir Reddy, CIO, MindTree, said, “Earlier, we had a situation where we were using a lot of printers at MindTree. With our operations expanding, whenever a particular floor or department needed a printer, it would put in a request and somebody would provide it with one. This was on an OPEX model where the printer was delivered by a vendor with a fixed component as well.”

Since MindTree was using network printers and employees would sometimes delay in collecting their printouts or even not claim them at all, this was leading to the risk of information leakage. Also, the printers were slightly primitive and did not have the required software components. For instance, they could not handle scanning and copying; secondly, there was no unified driver; and lastly, there was no secure printing option or option for generating reports as to which user printed how many pages, as there was no accounting capability.

“With the current set of printers and scanners, we were unable to produce an audit trail or track the print, scan and copy activities. Software components were missing in the previous solution and it was not centralized. Earlier, the job used to go from a PC to the printer and since it was not integrated with the central domain active directory, we would know which machine had printed but were unable to track the user,” added Reddy.

Looking for an alternative

According to Reddy, in his prior work experience at other companies, printing had been optimized with the use of a multifunctional printer-copier that was integrated as well as secure. It was decided to take a look at what MindTree was spending in toto on all of its printers and whether it would make sense to bring in a printer-scanner-copier all-in-one machine that would cost the same or less. The company was looking for additional features and the benefits that these would bring to the company.

Although all of the company’s printers had been purchased from a single vendor, that vendor had not educated the company in terms of what was available until Reddy and his team took up the challenge and came up a solution.

“We went out and saw what we were spending annually. Then we floated an RFP asking for a few items to be delivered in terms of functionality. These items included printing-copying-scanning, secure printing, print anywhere option, the ability to actually integrate printing with the Active Directory, having a single driver, and consuming less paper and less electricity amongst the other issues that we needed to solve. Three vendors were considered and Canon won the RFP and it has been able to deliver all the benefits at the same price that we were paying for the erstwhile network printers,” asserted Reddy.

The solution

During Canon’s evaluation of the workplace situation at MindTree, it noticed that the company had 60 network printers located across different offices. Due to the absence of a systematic way to track usage, it was hard to impose meaningful controls over the large employee base.

Apart from unnecessary printouts and single-sided printing, uncollected printouts or faxes were also common at the machines, acting as a significant contributor to the increase in printing costs. In addition, all these problems were hindering the company’s efforts to go green.

After analyzing the company's concerns, Canon proposed three solutions—imageRUNNERs (the multifunctional printers), uniFLOW and eCOPY.

uniFLOW enables users to print and collect documents from any imageRUNNER device. This makes printing more flexible and provides additional document security by ensuring that only an authorized user can activate and collect the printout by walking up to the device and punching in a code.

Reddy pointed out, “uniFLOW allowed us to go ahead with centralized printing. Today, anybody inside the building can send a job to the [printing pool] and they can go to any of the 42 printers and take their printout. It is more convenient and productivity has improved.”

Security received an additional boost from eCOPY ShareScan Essentials that has provided the necessary audit trails to ensure accountability on the scanning paths of all confidential documents. Embedded within the imageRUNNER device, it secures document imaging. Staff can authenticate themselves with a single sign-on and distribute documents directly to their network file folders and the Document Management System. With this, the company is able to account for every document that is scanned or distributed, who’s done this, to whom it has been sent, when and how it was delivered etc.

MindTree started the deployment in October 2009 and by November it had replaced 46 printers with 30 imageRUNNERs. During the implementation, the focus was to get everything right. Therefore, the company had to do extensive testing before the deployment could take place.

“We had to ensure that people understood, in the simplest manner, as to how the entire process works. We put up a user chart poster right behind the printer that was co-designed along with Canon. We also published the metrics in terms of cost and energy savings,” pointed out Reddy.

Reaping the benefits

By letting users authenticate and retrieve jobs, MindTree has reduced the number of printouts that are forgotten and left behind in the tray, or even accidental multiple printouts which are often thrown away. Reports are also generated by the company, with details about who prints what, how it is printed (i.e. duplex, single sided), with which devices and how much it costs the company. With such reports, it is now possible to analyze the data and show users how much has been printed in each department.

“33% of the jobs that are sent to the printers don’t get printed today. 48 hours later, we delete those jobs from the memory. Unless you go the printer and enter your login and password and select the job to be printed, the printer will not print it,” said Reddy.

At the same cost, the company is now able to provide additional functionality including scanning and copying. Thanks to the security features of the new solution, others can't take a look at a print job, as it requires a login id and password to access the same. The number of printers has been consolidated from 46 to 30. Moreover, scanned documents only go to the concerned employee’s e-mail id, which adds a layer of security and ensures an audit trail.

“Lastly, it gives us granular reporting, audit reporting and cost-based accounting. We can also implement control centrally, wherein quota management is possible. We can set quotas for an individual or a category of individuals and enforce these across the organization. Employees have a single sign-on. Now that the printing system is integrated and everyone has a used id that is required to print the pages, we can pinpoint the exact user. With the help of MIS reporting, we now know who the top ten users of the printers are and since the data is made visible, people are more careful now,” concluded Reddy.

The company can now go ahead and implement department-wise costing, which was not possible in the past. Besides, it can also restrict the number of pages per user. All these things are possible with software-enabled printing.

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com