Helping a construction company slash site office costs
It is typical for construction companies to set up site offices at each of their work sites to manage operations. Each site functions fully like a regular office, with management, engineering and admin staff seeing to the day-to-day details of the operations. The site office would have its own print equipment, commonly a photocopier device and some printers.
Our customer wanted something further than the typical print system which limits and stops specific types of document printing from printed. Instead, they wanted to create a print network across all their site offices and link it directly to the head office to provide granular data and analytics of the entire company’s true print usage.
Problem
Site offices work in silos and each office / project is given a print budget. At the end of the day, the headoffice can only get a report of how much money was spent on printing and whether there was an over or under budget. However, there is no true report of what exactly was printed, what needs to be printed, who was responsible for incurring what costs.
Document printing limitations such as who gets to print colour prints have already been put in place, but print costs are still escalating, hence the company wishes to get to the root of the problem.
At a glance
Problem
Customer wanted to slash their print costs on an organization level and needed granular data of their print network.
Solution
Implemented the PaperCut NG solution to start tracking and consolidating print data across all sites.
Outcome
Transparent Big Data about the company’s actual printing needs was being obtained and we were able to devise strategies to slash print costs.
It is too difficult to get actual print information across all site offices and consolidate them together for an accurate report.
Solution
Papercut NG implementation
PaperCut NG was installed in the headoffice and all site offices to silently monitor the usage of the users. PaperCut NG was sufficient to perform the function of print tracking and reporting, exactly what our client needed without over-bloating them with unneeded features.
Several analyses were run:
- Comparative print volume analysis. This helped identify which sites and equipment were under utilised and assisted the administrators to decide which equipment stays and which ones should be moved to an area where it is needed more.
- List of users with individual print volume. This report identified users who were pushing high print volume or have multiple accounts.
- Report on the common types of printing typically requested across the sites. This report allowed the company to know if they need to invest in larger A3 photocopiers or can save cost with A4 printers at certain sites.
Outcome
True data and immediate cost savings
Through the users print volume, the company was able to detect high volume users and fix the leak. One example was where they identified a quantity surveyor printing a lot of full colour prints. Turned out that he was printing certificates and hand delivering them out to the customers. This staff was then instructed to email the PDF certificates instead, saving not just the print cost but also the costly manpower cost of hand delivering the certificates.
With the comparative print volume report, the company was able to identify that some sites had very low volume of print and did not need so many photocopiers on lease. They off-hired a few equipment to streamline operations.
Through the reports, the company also realized that the users have a habit of printing out entire emails and filing them. Staff was then given a print budget each and instructed to only print the portions that they need.
The PaperCut reports have been a tremendous help to the construction company in slashing their costs. They look forward to continuing PaperCut NG to manage their internal print costs and build a new.print culture
