Guide to managed print services pt4 – rationalisation

For Tony Brown, IT director at Warwick-based meat product manufacturing company Tulip, spam is something of an occupational hazard. Tulip is the UK’s leading pork manufacturer, and produces and sells bacon and other processed meat products under brands including Danepak and supermarket own labels. It also sells Spam and Stagg products for Hormel Foods International in the UK.

In the same way that the company’s abattoirs have been streamlined using technology - the company offers visitors to its web site a virtual tour to illustrate the point - the company’s print management strategy has transformed the way in which it does business - and saved a six-figure sum in the process.

Having grown dramatically through acquisition over the past decade, Tulip found itself in a situation where it was operating across 18 sites, each running different print systems, buying different print consumables and generating significant administrative overheads.

“We didn’t know who was buying what. We had a huge number of suppliers. It wasn’t efficient and certainly wasn’t cost-effective,” Brown says. “At one site we had seven different printers from six different suppliers all sitting on one bench.”

An informal benchmarking exercise estimated the company was spending the best part of £250,000 a year on toner and inkjet cartridges alone. That, combined with the significant IT management overheads and a desire to simplify the management of the estate, propelled Brown to consider a radical overhaul of Tulip’s printing systems.

Ricoh was eventually selected over other suppliers “because it offered the scalability and the hardware tailored to our needs”, Brown explains. A year down the line and the project is nearly complete. Following a series of ‘surgeries’ around the business to gauge print requirements at each site, 500 old printers were replaced with 250 new devices, and where possible new Ricoh MFDs offering print, copy and scan functionality. “We didn’t just rip out printers and replace them. We rationalised and have gone from a ratio of one printer for every two users to one printer for every seven staff,” Brown says.

Print volumes, meanwhile, have reduced by an impressive 20 per cent, thanks largely to double-sided printing capability and a ‘print on hold’ functionality that requires users to log into the printer to retrieve their documents. The security benefits this offers has, Brown says, “removed the emotional need for individuals to have their own printers because of concerns that confidential documents will be seen by others”.

The IT management burden has also been reduced. “Previously, we had the equivalent of two people working full time on print-related issues. Now we have no one.”

Not only do annual savings amount to around £100,000 for the business, but Brown says the new system has also improved the way in which print services are delivered. “Scanning to email has been one of the biggest improvements. We’re moving towards document management and it’s changing our working practices.”

The new print management strategy also sits perfectly with Tulip’s corporate social responsibility strategy; the reduction in print volumes has been mirrored by lower power consumption and emissions.

“The logistics of the first implementation were a bit painful; some of the printers were too big for the spaces available,” Brown explains. “But Ricoh has learned from the experience. We’ve avoided most challenges by involving people from within the business. It has taken some selling to senior people, but the benefits speak for themselves.”