Truck Manufacturer

Challenge

This truck manufacturer spans the continent, encompassing operations at 23 locations across the U.S. and Canada. To keep its business running, employees print, fax and email millions of documents a year. But in recent years, the company’s printing requirements were out pacing its available resources. Its fleet of printers and multifunction devices were aging and increasingly prone to breakdowns. “The average device was six years old and there were a lot of service issues,” said the company’s IT manager of document services.

Fixing faulty printers was an expensive and time-consuming process that took employee time and attention away from its core business objectives. And while many of the printers were connected to the company’s network, none were equipped with the software needed to track usage and costs—or had advanced features that would help reduce waste and boost document security. Overall, the company had limited visibility into the performance of its output fleet. “No one had access to operational data from the fleet. We didn’t have any way to capture, analyze or report that information,” the IT manager said.

Improving performance called for restructuring the company’s entire printing operations. But the company first needed to phase out an administrative approach whereby individual departments “owned and operated” its output devices. “People were very territorial about their printers,” she said. With little sharing or consolidation of output resources, the company was stymied in its effort to trim operational costs and deliver better print services to employees.

Solution

The company figured it could reap savings by rationalizing its print environment, and it turned to longtime partner, Lexmark, for advice. “A local Lexmark team started by conducting a detailed inventory of our operations and making specific recommendations about how we could best deploy and optimize our printers,” she said. “Our goal was to establish and deploy a ‘print less’ solution that would cut back on the volume of pages we printed and save money over the long term.”

Key initial steps for the company included centralizing management of the printing environment and refreshing the printer fleet to include a more efficient mix of single-function and multifunction devices. “We took everything that was outdated and broken and replaced those devices almost immediately,” she said. The company now has about 900 Lexmark color and monochrome printers and MFPs installed and Lexmark proactively administers the fleet under a managed print services contract. “We have a check-in every other week with Lexmark and we review operations,” said the IT manager. “Then we have a monthly business review and a quarterly business review with management to discuss our progress and map out or future objectives and plans.”

Results

The company’s front-line employees and department heads embraced the new printing environment. “Everyone embraced the new solution,” she said. “Managers were happy that they wouldn’t have to support the cost of output from their own budgets anymore.” Users said they liked having access to more multifunction devices with advanced features like scan to email.

Through the managed print services agreement, Lexmark proactively monitors the entire fleet of devices, and provides Next-Business-Day break-fix support. Lexmark technicians perform remote diagnostics and dispatch field engineers when necessary. “It was a great opportunity for us to improve our customer service and start controlling our costs,” she said.

The Lexmark printers automatically trigger orders for new toner cartridges when toner gets low and ships them directly to that device’s precise location, ensuring that no printer runs out. This capability, part of Lexmark’s consumables management program, has relieved managers of the headache of tracking and ordering printer supplies and avoids the overstocking of costly toner cartridges. “Managers would frequently order two or three at a time just so they didn’t run out,” she said. “Then, we had shelves of wasted supplies that were left unused.”

With Lexmark’s Managed Print Services, the company now collects valuable information about the condition and utilization of its output fleet. Managers go to a web portal to find data that informs fact-based business decisions about printing volumes and device performance. “Moving to a managed solution from Lexmark will help us achieve our long-term cost saving goals through optimization and increased fleet visibility,” she said.