Success Story
Customer: Merri-bek City Council
Country: Australia
Industry: Government
The Client
The City of Merri-bek lies between 4 and 14 kilometres north of central Melbourne, with a population of 162,558.It is bordered by the Moonee Ponds Creek to the west Merri Creek to the east, Park Street to the south and the Western Ring Road to the north.
The council includes the suburbs of Brunswick, Brunswick East, Brunswick West, Coburg, Coburg North, Fawkner, Glenroy, Gowanbrae, Hadfield, Oak Park, Pascoe Vale,and Pascoe Vale South.
Small sections of the suburbs of Fitzroy North and Tullamarine are also located in the City. Merri-bek City Council Business Solutions Architect Mr Bernard Hoehmann claims, that they have dramatically reduced waste and improved efficiency in their print environment since changing to Toshiba Australia’s Managed Print Service (MPS).
The Challenge
Mr Hoehmann’s role as Business Solutions Architect is to ensure proper risk management and project management process compliance for Merri-bek City Council’s Information Technology; related operational and capital expenditure on major projects and activities.
“We wanted to improve on our print environment as it was inefficient and confusing for users. It also involved a lot of unnecessary waste for the council,” Mr Hoehmann said. He said that they needed some sort of circuit breaker in terms of architecture and vendor relationship to ensure that they achieved the council’s stated outcomes.
“First we needed to get a feel for the marketplace and understand what technologies were available. This process then provided us with the confidence that the current market could fulfil our business requirements. We formulated an overview of what we wanted, confirmed with the vendors that our architectural concepts were achievable and approached the market accordingly.”
The Solution
“There were a number of vendors that were reasonably close. In the end Toshiba Australia was able to provide the council with the greatest confidence that they would be able to assist us in achieving our vision of a highly simplified and efficient printing environment that absolutely maximised the opportunity to reduce waste,” Mr Hoehmann said.
With Toshiba Australia successfully winning the tender over the other participating vendors, it was then time to put into action a plan that would see a smooth introduction of Toshiba’s Managed Print Service solution for the Merri-bek City Council.
Toshiba’s challenge from the council was not only to cut down the enormous amount of print wastage but to also improve efficiency through better hardware technology and software systems — a challenge that Toshiba’s Managed Print Services team was keen to accept and meet — resulting in some spectacular outcomes for the council.
Under the umbrella of Toshiba’s Managed Print Services, Merri-bek City Council took delivery of 84 pieces of equipment including a range of 78 Toshiba e-STUDIO multifunction devices (MFDs) as well as PaperCut software. Toshiba also provided the council with third party devices and services fulfilling a core business requirement of implementing a “single vendor” print management solution.
“Working closely with Toshiba Australia’s Government Account Manager, Brendon Daniel, we designed a two pronged attack to the wastage and efficiency challenge,” said Mr Hoehmann.
“Previously the users printed to a device. The vast majority of corporate print environments are configured this way. Under our new system they now print to an ‘outcome’. This is a very important difference as it frees up the user from having to determine what print settings are required for any particular MFD.”
The Result
Looking at the benefits achieved for Merri-bek City Council under Toshiba Australia’s Managed Print Services is quite remarkable. Mr Hoehmann stated that the implemented solution was overall an excellent one, achieving a dramatic reduction in pages printed.
“Since we went live with the new solution in August 2011, we are now printing over 100,000 pages per month less than before, and achieving more than a 20 percent saving in paper consumption,” he said.
“Our staff have provided very positive feedback on this council initiative. One of the many benefits achieved is that it frees them from the problem of submitting a print job, which could be up to hundreds of pages long, based on settings configured for a previous job.
“The second major improvement is that the users can go to any Toshiba e-STUDIO MFD and use their security pass to activate the printer and collect their job. We had a lot of waste previously caused by people not picking up their print jobs, or simply sending them to the wrong printer. This has now been effectively eliminated.”
So it would appear that implementation at the Merri-bek City Council of Toshiba Australia’s Managed Print Services has been a tremendous success in achieving the key outcomes of dramatically reduced waste and improved efficiency for the council’s print environment.
Merri-bek City Council
90 Bell St, Coburg
VIC, 3058
P: 03 9240 1111
www.Merri-bek.vic.gov.au
TOSHIBA (Australia) Pty Limited
Building C, 12-24 Talavera Road,
North Ryde, NSW, 2113
Australia
P:1300 794 202
New Zealand
32 Lunn Avenue, Mt Wellington
P: 09 570 8530
www.toshiba-business.com.au
www.toshiba-business.co.nz
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