Trend

Outsource that printer

Many Indian organisations are outsourcing their printing needs to cut printing and maintenance costs and to avoid getting stuck with obsolete printing technology, says Abhinav Singh

Although the cost of a printer may be low, the cost associated with its consumables is very high. We do a thorough assessment of an organisation’s printing needs before installing any print device L V Sastry Associate Director Xerox Global Services Xerox Modicorp	The most difficult issue for IT managers is obsolescence as product life cycles are shorter in the printing domain and maintaining obsolete products translates into higher cost and time resources utilisation S Thomas Suresh Anand Business Head and Chief Technology Officer WeP Peripherals

There was a time when UTI Bank used to print its chequebooks on internal security printers, a process that normally took about ten days to execute. Chequebooks could not be personalised and a large quantity of blank stationery had to be stocked in UTI Bank’s 300 branches. By outsourcing its printing requirement for chequebooks to Xerox Modicorp, the bank has been able to offer personalised chequebooks to its depositors within 24 hours.

Salil Krishna, senior vice president, Central Processing Unit, UTI Bank, recalls, “Xerox has installed its NPS 180, a micro ink magnetic printer which can print 180 pages per minute. One page has three cheque leaves, which translates to 540 cheques per minute. This has improved the turnaround time of the printing process.” You no longer find bundles of unused chequebooks lying at UTI Bank’s 300 branches, helping the bank save on real estate rentals. Moreover UTI Bank can make changes to its chequebook format instantaneously and it keeps a minimal inventory of 100-150 chequebooks at its branches. By outsourcing its printing requirements it is also able to send personalised mailers to clients. All this has been made possible by business printing outsourcing. Let us take a closer look at what drives organisations to outsource their printing needs.

Lower TCO

Organisations incur considerable expenditure while purchasing printing equipment. Then there’s the ongoing cost of consumables. C S P Rao, chief manager, IT department, Union Bank of India, says, “We went in for WeP’s ‘Print and Save’ offer and found that by outsourcing our printing requirements we were able to have speedy printing and better management in terms of tighter controls on what is being printed.” Enterprises have been able to save 30 percent on printing and the cost of purchasing, maintaining and managing their printers by going in for business printing outsourcing. L V Sastry, associate director, Xerox Global Services, Xerox Modicorp says, “We have observed that although the cost of a printer may be low, the cost associated with its consumables are very high. We do a thorough assessment of an organisation’s printing needs before installing any print device. This helps an organisation utilise our services in an efficient manner.”

Optimal printing

There have been cases in some enterprises where it has been found that printing in large quantities was taking place for unofficial purposes. By outsourcing printing requirements, each and every printout is documented and a complete record of the number of prints is maintained thereby reducing overall costs and wastage. It needs to be observed that printers come with varied warranties. Keeping track of these warranties and entering into annual maintenance contracts (AMC) consumes a lot of an organisation’s time and money. R Ramachandran, general manager, IT- Tata Finance says, “We had printers across 54 branches in the country and the task of maintaining and managing printers was a tedious one that required additional investment. We did not know how many pages were being printed across branch locations. By going in for the ‘Print and Save’ service we have successfully done away with printer management headaches and the overall cost has also come down as there is transparency in the printing system.”

Guarding against obsolescence

Printer purchases are amongst the last in an enterprise’s IT purchase cycle as product benchmarking and comparison becomes a time-consuming exercise. S Thomas Suresh Anand, business head and chief technology officer, WeP Peripherals says, “After purchasing a printer, organisations soon find that it is getting obsolete and needs to be upgraded. The most difficult fact for any IT manager is obsolescence as product life cycles are shorter in the printing domain and maintaining obsolete products means time and money.” It is a fact that consumables are the heart of any printer and the older the printer, the higher the cost of its consumables as they too have a shelf life.

Onsite printing

Of the many options for business printing outsourcing, the onsite printing option (when the printer is installed at the customer’s site and the complete printing operations are managed by companies such as WeP Peripherals and Xerox) is exercised by most organisations. Customers want to see the proof of printing on the spot and they can order reprints as required in this scenario. The other option is to go in for offsite printing. Vendors offering business printing outsourcing solutions have set up their print centres, catering to offsite printing. For instance, WeP peripherals has five print centres in the country and Xerox has 22 catering to offsite printing.

Customer confidence up

More organisations are outsourcing their printing needs. Vendors ensure that proper security parameters are in place in case a customer asks for them. Recalling one major printing assignment involving the printing of examination papers for an educational board, Sastry of Xerox says, “We undertook an exercise where we had to deliver one crore prints under the surveillance of security cameras. We had to collate and staple the prints and successfully deliver them to various exam centres.”

Lakhs to millions (of pages)

Anand says, “We have scaled up to handle one lakh pages per day per print centre and plan to scale this further to 10 million pages per day. We are adding close to a hundred customers on a yearly basis.” WeP has 850 customers availing of its Print and Save service. The company is also working on a new concept—print on the move technology, which will help customers use this service while on the move anywhere in the country. A customer will be able to get the printout at the print centre that is nearest to his location. WeP is planning to have more than 10,000 printing points across 100 cities in the next few years.

Business printing outsourcing is an important trend and a lot of value-added offerings centred around this concept are expected to gain momentum.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com