Aegis Media Pacific

THE CHALLENGE

As Australia’s largest marketing communications group with offices across Australia and New Zealand, Aegis Media Pacific produces vast amounts of printed materials.  These materials include everything from large pieces of client artwork to day-to-day office documents.    

Over time, Aegis Media Pacific found employees were printing increasing volumes of these materials – often because print jobs were sent to printers and left uncollected.  An internal audit revealed this was impacting the bottom line and was increasing significantly over time.  

Although Aegis Media Pacific wanted to reduce this cost, without detailed insight into how much was being printed and by whom, understanding where to start was difficult.  Keen to address this challenge, the company turned to Upstream.

THE SOLUTION

As a first step, Upstream deployed Upstream Connect – software that monitors printing levels across an organisation – to understand how much Aegis Media Pacific was printing.  The audit revealed Aegis Media Pacific was printing over 350,000 pages per month – a volume of paper that’s approximately the same height as an eight story building.  Additionally, almost 40 per cent of the work produced was in colour – representing a significant cost to the business.    

Following detailed consultation, Upstream was engaged to manage 95 per cent of the organisation’s printing and copying equipment.  This included taking on responsibility for managing equipment purchasing and finance, installation and training, paper and toner supplies, as well as ongoing service.      

As part of this agreement, Upstream helped Aegis Media Pacific streamline the number of printing devices in use and determined the best location for devices it was keeping.  Aegis Media Pacific also implemented UTrack – Upstream’s monitoring and control technology that provides a real-time view of who is printing what.      

The UTrack implementation included rolling out ‘Follow-Me’ printing – a solution that involved each employee having their own printing account and swiping an identification card at a printing device before jobs are released.  Employees at Aegis Media Pacific already had identification cards so integrating ‘Follow-Me’ printing simply required installing card readers at each copier and printer.  A key rationale behind introducing this technology was to make employees more conscious about what they were printing so that the number of ‘print orphans’ could be reduced.  

THE RESULT

Working with Upstream, Aegis Media Pacific has reduced its printing output by 15 per cent, and with the other changes has allowed the organisation to achieve cost savings in the region of 40 per cent.  Streamlining the number of devices in use and ensuring those installed are in the best location has also enabled Aegis Media Pacific to reduce the number printing devices needed from 60 to 35.    

Upstream has also helped reduce the pressures on Aegis Media Pacific’s IT team.  By training a number of ‘print champions’ – employees within the organisation that know how to report to Upstream faults and issues with printing devices – the IT team now spends less time addressing printing issues and more time on other tasks.    

Phil Moore, CIO, Aegis Media Pacific commented: “Upstream really understands our environment and the challenges we face, which is why we’ve been able to achieve such significant efficiency and cost savings.  With Upstream, we have a partner that can support our business long-term by enabling efficient and sustainable printing.”      

Dave Boyle, printing solution project manager, Aegis Media Pacific said: “After working with Upstream to reduce printing volumes and streamline the number of devices in use, we commissioned an independent survey to review what had been achieved.  The survey revealed key benefits such as a reduction in the number of faulty printing machines, better utilisation of devices and more efficient processes – through solutions such as automatic toner ordering.  From an administrative point of view, because Upstream acts as a single point of contact, we no longer waste resources on tasks such as ordering toner and manage all costs through one monthly invoice.”