Print review rescues water retailer from paper flood

Following an internal print review and subsequent print technology implementation, Victorian water retailer South East Water has dramatically reduced CO₂ emissions, cut the amount of paper used per person and removed headaches suffered by its IT department.

South East Water is owned by the Victorian Government and is one of Melbourne’s three metropolitan water retailers. The company provides water and sewerage solutions to deliver sustainable and innovative outcomes for the community.

As part of an internal review, South East Water found that printing was an aspect of the business that caused significant headaches for the IT department. It was the organisation’s third-biggest IT issue by the volume of calls placed to the help desk. With more than 120 non-standardised printers, scanners and fax machines, there were a fair few issues in managing all the different makes and models, too.

South East Water sought expertise around management of its print fleet. After testing the market for managed multifunction print services, South East Water selected Canon to provide recommendations on how it could achieve its objectives for its print and document management environment.

Canon implemented its uniFlow and eMaintenance products at South East Water. Now, the water retailer’s printing costs can be closely and accurate tracked, while preventative maintenance ensures the machines are always operating at their optimum, and consumables are automatically ordered in a timely fashion.

With the solution’s ‘follow-me printing’ functionality, the business is able to monitor and control its print fleet by changing the behaviour of its employees. One of the solution’s key features is the print-release function, where all employees must swipe an identity card before their print job is released. Any print jobs that are not released within 24 hours are automatically deleted.

“Before introducing follow-me printing, employees would often print something out and then get called into a meeting or simply forget about it, leaving paper stacked up next to the printer to be recycled or to go straight into the bin. Now those print jobs never see the light of day, with staff only printing when they really need to,” says Stuart Brockwell, IT operations manager, South East Water.

This identity card-based system has also increased document security. One of the concerns associated with consolidating the print fleet came from employees who dealt with confidential information and relied on having their own printer for security. But now, print jobs are only released when the employee is present and swipes in for access, removing the need to ‘print-and-sprint’ to the machines.

With the new system, departmental and individual printing habits are visible to the business too, down to the level of print costs per user or department. By issuing print usage reports and attributing the associated cost to every department, awareness of the financial impact of printing has increased dramatically. Simple options such as setting all printers to black and white and duplex by default has also significantly reduced paper usage.

The system has allowed South East Water to reduce its number of print devices from more than 120 to just 15.

“Since the implementation, we have halved the energy consumed by our print fleet and reduced annual paper usage by 2100 sheets per person, per year,” Brockwell says.

Overall, the print system has resulted in a 60 tonne reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions. Also, printing has dropped from third to fifteenth place in help desk issues by volume.

“The consolidation not only achieved the project objectives, but it gave our IT team peace of mind. We no longer have to worry about managing our print fleet and are able to concentrate on our core business,” Brockwell says.