Each year, our sister publication Computer Dealer News hosts the Channel Elite Awards to recognize IT Solution Provider for their innovation, leadership, and commitment for creating value for their customers. As Canada’s leading IT channel publication, CDN invited solution providers to submit their best work to nine different categories for 2013’s awards. Here, we present the case studies these award nominees put forward to us. Find out who the big winners are on Sept. 11 when CDN presents them at the CEA Awards Gala.
Learn more about CDN’s Channel Elite Awards 2013
Nominee: LaserNetworks Inc. from Oakville, Ontario
Describe the solution or service provided
LaserNetworks is North America’s largest dedicated MPS (Managed Print Services) provider, pioneering the printing and imaging services industry in 1996. Through the LaserNetworks MPS and MPSflex programs, customers receive a fully tailored service, supplies, hardware and software solution to meet current and future business needs. Today, LaserNetworks manages over 1,000,000,000 pages annually.
What makes this solution original and innovative?
A Toronto-area private school engaged LaserNetworks to conduct a print Assessment for them as they were not satisfied with their current level of control of student and staff printing and copying. After a thorough investigation of the school’ print and copy infrastructure a Secure-release printing solution was determined to be the best option for tracking print costs on a per/student/staff basis as well as offering many benefits in cost reduction and environmental stewardship. PaperCutMF was installed on all MFDs and their print-servers. Integration with Active-directory allowed both staff and students to print and copy only once authenticated by pin-code. For most school systems, tracking and accounting for print at the staff/student level is not common. The contract was awarded to LaserNetworks because they were the only respondent to the print RFI that suggested software-based control solutions. Most MPS providers only provide toner and service to print devices and LaserNetworks is one of the few that have the expertise and I.T. know-how to incorporate print-related software solutions.
What were the benefits to the customer’s sales, revenues, and/or efficiency? Provide measurable evidence.
There were immediate benefits to the Toronto-area private school in terms of financial savings, user satisfaction and their sustainability goals: Cost savings: • They experienced an immediate reduction in total page output of over 20%. Most of this was due to the complete removal of waste-pages produced from multiple versions of the same document, items forgotten at the printer, etc. Jobs are only released from the MFDs when the student/staff authenticate at the MFD interface through the PaperCut software. Colour reduction was even higher, nearly 40%, due to PaperCut policy-settings that ensured all email bodies were printed in Monochrome instead of colour. Additional savings were experienced by forcing duplex printing for all student printing. The amount of physical paper costs were reduced by over 30%. User Satisfaction: Students and staff no longer had to wait in line at an MFD or printer to retrieve their print jobs. If one MFD was backed up, student and staff simply found another device in the area, entered their PIN code and the job was printed there. PaperCut allows users to print to the “print cloud” and they determine the device to release the job at any print enabled device within the school. Users enjoyed the fact that they didn’t have to call I.T. to have additional printers added if they moved locations or classrooms. Sending jobs to the print-cloud allowed students/staff the added benefit of being able to use any printer in the school’s two physical campuses. They could send a print job from one location and retrieve it from another location at a time of their choosing. I.T. was happy that if a printer experienced downtime that it no longer impacted users ability to print. Users simply retrieved their jobs from an alternate device.
How did your organization achieve customer satisfaction and how was this demonstrated by the customer?
LaserNetworks provided exemplary customer satisfaction by taking the Toronto-area private school beyond just managing machines and helping them to understand and improve their workflow. By understanding the flow of documents through the school, LaserNetworks helped find additional savings and areas of enrionmental stewardship. The evidence here is that the customer signed an extension to their current MPS contract for an additional 60 months based on the workflow improvements experienced during the trial.
Describe the benefits of this solution to your organization in terms of new skills, certifications, products, and services.
The direct benefits to LaserNetworks of helping our customers to understand and improve their document workflow through the use of Assessments and software are many. With the growing number of ways to access documents through BYOD and the influx of Tablets, offering and managing software solutions to our customers is critical. Projects such as the one conducted at the Toronto-area private school have accelerated our expertise with managing document workflow. Document workflow solutions are now a viable and growing part of the LaserNetworks product portfolio. By Assessing our customers’ workflow and offering tangible software solutions to improve them, we have seen a dramatic reduction in competitive forces.
How did the solution improve your customer’s ability to serve its internal and external clients?
LaserNetworks has increased its wallet share with the Toronto-area private school by adding software and professional services to our contract. We also earned the privilege of providing our customer Managed Print Services for an additional 60 months. The customer has benefited by giving students and staff more control over what they print, greater access to alternative methods of document access such as on their Tablets, and dramatically reducing measurable Sustainability metrics such as number of trees and carbon consumed in the production of pages. As mentioned previously, the benefits were measurable after the first 30 days: The customer reduced their Annual tree-consumption related to printing from 211 to 164 trees. The customer saw Carbon emissions reduced by over 25% due to improved device utilization and the ability of the software to universally shut down all print devices at night. Cost savings have also been achieved due to the dramatic decrease in efficiency and cost savings: They experienced an immediate reduction in total page output of over 20%. Most of this was due to the complete removal of waste-pages produced from multiple versions of the same document, items forgotten at the printer, etc. Jobs are only released from the MFDs when the student/staff authenticate at the MFD interface through the PaperCut software. Colour reduction was even higher, nearly 40%, due to PaperCut policy-settings that ensured all email bodies were printed in Monochrome instead of colour. Additional savings were experienced by forcing duplex printing for all student printing. The amount of physical paper costs were reduced by over 30%.
How does the solution or service go above and beyond industry norms and expectations?
Most MPS providers are happy having their customers print as much as possible. LaserNetworks has gone above and beyond the norm by actually helping the Toronto-area private school to print less. And the solution allows us to work with our customer on a quarterly basis to find additional areas of print reduction and increased use of digital/Tablet based access to documents for students and staff.
How does the solution further your customer’s green or environmentally friendly plans?
The students at the Toronto-area private school were some of the biggest advocates for reducing the environmental impact of traditional learning aides in the form of printed pages. LaserNetworks enabled them to easily experience the following environmental footprint reductions with little or no loss in ease of access to learning content: The customer reduced their Annual tree-consumption related to printing from 211 to 164 trees. The customer saw Carbon emissions reduced by over 25% due to improved device utilization and the ability of the software to universally shut down all print devices at night.