Challenge

When Husky looked at its printer fleet, it saw significant opportunities for improved print management and cost savings, especially around toner and other consumables required to keep all those printers running.

The company was investing considerable staff time and money into storing consumables and a supply of toner cartridges beside each printer. Husky was spending $190,000 per year to support its printer infrastructure. The reactive approach to managing the print fleet was also affecting printer uptime, user productivity and increasing the number of calls made to the help desk.

"We wanted to find out if a more proactive approach involving auto-replenishment and just-in-time delivery techniques could improve our printer management and reduce cost," said Gary Gee, Client Services & Desktop Manager at Husky.

Solution

A print assessment performed by Compugen, alongside Husky IT staff, confirmed the potential for cost and time savings. Based on this, Compugen's print consultants recommended the use of Device Manager, a component of Compugen's Web-based Emerge technology asset lifecycle management solution. Device Manager centralizes and optimizes printer alert intervention by automatically collecting alerts from industry standard printer management software such as Lexmark's MarkVision and HP's Web JetAdmin, generating service requests and providing inventory management and auto-replenishment for printer consumable items.

Following the installation, a two-month pilot was conducted using Device Manager, in conjunction with Web JetAdmin, to proactively monitor and maintain 70 networked HP printers.

"The Compugen team demonstrated the systems knowledge required to tie Device Manager to the Remedy system we use for service ticket issuing and to our SAP system which contains our automated PO issuing system," said Gee.

Results

Overall, Device Manager's inventory management and auto-replenishment capabilities allowed Husky to drastically reduce its toner inventory by consolidating its supply to a small, central inventory with a just-in-time restocking process. The project took printer maintenance from reactive to proactive, enabling Husky to do preventive maintenance and activate a support regimen that reduced printer downtime, improved user productivity and saved the company $145,000 each year in toner costs and help desk support. Based on the success of the pilot, Husky decided to put Device Manager into full production for all 400+ printers in its Calgary head office.