THE CHALLENGE
URS had a longstanding relationship with Upstream and other print providers, but had never consolidated its print management because of the complexity of their printing requirements – and the need to allocate every print job to one of its 15,000 clients.
URS was renting all of its printing devices, managed under varying contracts with multiple suppliers. The day-to-day management of print devices was cumbersome – it required constant monitoring, and was continually affected by issues with the monitoring solution’s external keypad terminals.
Additionally, there are some 100,000 active billing codes that URS can attribute print jobs to. With a manual billing system, assigning print jobs to the correct client was time-consuming and less than accurate.
“We were faced with a software upgrade cost of $50,000 because the existing monitoring software version was no longer supported. We decided it was time to evaluate our entire print management approach,” said Shane Primrose, CIO, URS New Zealand.
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THE SOLUTION
Producing a saving of 20%, the consolidation of rental agreements also created a single point of contact for all print devices – alleviating the day-to-day management of the machines and unburdening the administrative load associated with ordering toner and servicing.
utrack, an embedded monitoring system with proximity card authentication, was implemented to ease client billing issues. Device embedded Java technology eliminated the need for any external terminals. Proximity stickers were added to existing security access cards for instant standardisation across all sites. URS employees simply swipe their card to release a print job – across any office – and select the client billing code from a list. The previous complexity of print administration was alleviated through the real-time monitoring of devices and output.
utrack also offered the ability to import logged information into their ERP system, simultaneously providing an extensive range of built-in reports to be generated directly to a number of programs.
URS also achieved a 10% reduction in print volumes. “We are very pleased with the simple-to-use colour touch screen on the multifunction devices. It has helped to equip our team with the management of their own print output – and this encourages them to think before they print,” said Primrose
“We have saved considerable time – and resources – by implementing a single print management solution. With clever embedded options to improve our operating efficiencies, this is an approach we are closely looking at rolling out over other URS sites”.
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