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Telstra people working in office buildings are now saving more time, paper and money than even before. But this hasn't always been the case.
Back in 2003, Telstra realised it had a problem with inefficiencies in printing. In August of that year, an extensive review was undertaken of its entire fleet of printers. It revealed the company had 8,863 'stand-alone' devices and was operating at a user to device ratio of 3:1. It was also spending about $15 million per year leasing office equipment.
With the inefficiencies brought to light, Telstra made an immediate decision to reduce the number of suppliers and devices across the organisation, and ultimately the cost of printing. It turned to Canon for help to achieve this.
The two companies joined forces to create a dedicated MFD (Multi Function Device) Implementation team. This group developed national processes and built IT delivery tools for the implementation of the fleet management solution. As part of this streamlined management, decommissioning of old and deployment of new devices were implemented in line with finance, IT & security requirements.
Between July 2004 and June 2005, the team audited 150 buildings and installed 1059 imageRUNNER MFDs - which photocopy, fax, scan and collate all documents from just one machine - to every commercial office site. During this time, about 6,500 printers, 1,200 photocopiers and 1,100 faxes were progressively replaced. Remote printing solutions were also delivered to 35,000 desktops and the team conducted training sessions for over 25,000 Telstra users.
The result is that Telstra now has a low cost, digital integrated printing platform that delivers a reduction of 40% on the cost of printing. The user to device ratio has increased 3:1, to 18 users to 1 machine (18:1). An uptime rate of 98.1% has been achieved on multi functions across the entire fleet. Telstra has also been able to boost efficiency in fleet management through the increased visibility of office printing assets.
Telstra also now has greater control over the purchasing of printing devices across the company. It has reduced service, maintenance, IT support, toner and paper costs, as well as improved helpdesk processes and documentation.
"Telstra's approach to strategic sourcing is enabling us to dramatically cut costs and improve the quality of service - for the benefit of customers, investors and the community," said Warwick Ponder, Telstra spokesman. "By completely rethinking the way in which we source output devices and fleet management services, we've opened the door to substantial savings and seamless service. World's best practice is our benchmark for the management of these strategic IT assets."
Further to the efficiency gains, Telstra has made a significant contribution to a greener office with the use of default double sided printing and the provision of toner cartridge/bottle recycling through Close The Loop and Planet Ark. This program has delivered a diversion of 10.9 tonnes of waste that would have otherwise ended up as landfill since implementation began.
Canon's contract was completed in late 2005 and the efficiency gains delivered to Telstra since then have been significant. It is estimated the company will save around $8.7 million per year. Not a bad result considering how things looked 18 months earlier!
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