Mazars case study

“When your printing works well, no one jumps up and down and sends you an email saying ‘way-hey the printing is working’.

Printing isn’t the sexiest thing in the world, but when your print solution doesn’t work that’s when you really understand the importance of having a good solution like the Digicom and Ricoh MPS.

In our business we sell time and expertise and we have numerous deadlines to hit and if your printer isn’t working it can cause real problems.”

Trevor McCarron, Director of IT & Finance for Mazars Ireland

Challenges

Mazars Ireland is one of the country’s leading professional services firms. Its services include: audit and assurance, consultancy, corporate finance and taxation for a broad range of clients, covering corporate businesses, government and institutional organisations, small businesses and individuals.  The company is part of the international Mazars group and is a member of Praxity, the world’s largest alliance of independent and unaffiliated audit and consultancy companies. In Ireland, Mazars has two offices, with its headquarters in Dublin and it serves clients across the whole of Ireland and internationally.

Mazars was typical of many organisations where print resources had grown over time in a buy-when-needed and ad hoc way. This resulted in around 49 printers, of varying ages and different types, sitting on desks spread across five floors. Because of the nature of its business, Mazars staff often handle sensitive client information, which they need to protect and so having personal, single-user printers helped achieve that, particularly among more senior staff who had their own offices. But this print set up was starting to get expensive, both in terms of actual equipment and management time.

Another issue was waste. Trevor McCarron, Director of IT & Finance for Mazars Ireland, says, “There was a lot of wasted paper found lying in printers every evening after everyone had gone home, which had to be shredded. So we had a number of issues around managing our print – running costs, waste and capital outlay every time someone wanted a new printer.”

However, a building renovation gave Mazars the opportunity to change its office space into a more open working environment and take a new approach to delivering print resources.  Mazars put out a tender which was finally won by Ricoh business partner Digicom because of the comprehensive solution it had proposed. Also, Mazars was already using a lot of Ricoh equipment and Digicom had recommended using Ricoh.

Prior to deploying a solution, Digicom carried out an extensive audit of Mazars’ business operations to determine what print resources it needed and then Digicom developed a solution based on delivering best fit and best value for money.

Digicom Solution

The solution Mazars has deployed is a Digicom Managed Print Service (MPS), implemented and supported by Digicom. It comprises just seven Ricoh Multifunction Products (MFPs) – replacing the previous 49 printers – management software to control and monitor print activity, and support for maintenance and consumable supply. As well as printing, the Ricoh MFPs also include copy and scanning to email or directly into the network.

The Digicom MPS has been rolled out at Mazars’ Dublin office with the other office in Ireland to follow shortly.

The Digicom MPS gives Mazars much greater insight into how print resources are being used across the organisation because the print management application monitors user and device activity in real-time and provides detailed reports. For example, the solution was able to identify and stop a user who had inadvertently started printing an 8,000-page spreadsheet document.

Part of the solution is ongoing support from Digicom to ensure the Ricoh MFPs function well. Remote monitoring using PrintVision of the Ricoh MFPs back to Digicom means that it can replace toner cartridges just before they run out, rather than afterwards.

One or two of Mazars’ existing printers have been integrated into the Digicom MPS for use in the few remaining senior partner offices.

Benefits

By reducing its print devices by over 75 percent and making its print operation more efficient and less wasteful, Mazars estimates that the Ricoh MPS will help it save between 20-25 percent on its print costs.

One of the key benefits of the Digicom MPS is much greater insight and control over how print resources are used at Mazars. The Digicom solution gives Mazars a much more detailed and granular picture of how print is being used across the organisation. On a monthly basis McCarron can see which individuals or departments are the biggest users of print resources.  With this kind of information the company can start to apply new processes, such as more  accurate departmental charging.

McCarron says, “The Digicom MPS is enabling us to stop the situation of people printing something, realising they didn’t need it and leaving it in the print tray. This meant we were using a phenomenal amount of toner, which we have also been able to reduce.” McCarron says that since installing the Digicom MPS it has already started to help the company reduce waste paper which the Mazars estimates to be 15 percent.

The solution’s management application has helped Mazars put in place a number of policies which help to make printing more efficient and less wasteful. This includes being able to set all devices to print duplex and mono as default centrally. “Before, trying to apply these kinds of policies across 49 personal printers was very difficult,” says McCarron. In the past, anybody could order toner, resulting in little control over stock or cost. Not only does Digicom’s remote monitoring ensure toner is only supplied when it is needed, it also means that devices are not out of use waiting for a new toner to arrive. Overall, the Ricoh MFPs achieve an operational up time rate of 98 percent.

The Digicom MPS supports the company’s new working environment, with Ricoh MFPs in central locations across five floors in the Dublin office, so that employees are never far from a print device.  The Ricoh MFPs fit in well with the new open plan office environment because of the Follow Me print capability, where individuals use swipe cards to release print jobs, which allows them to use any device irrespective of its location. The Ricoh MFPs are also quiet and have an aesthetic design. Having one type of device across the organisation means that staff can use any machine knowing that they all work in exactly the same way.

One challenge for Mazars had been changing the culture and work processes from individual to shared print services. A big help was making the change part of the redesign to an open-plan office and planning ahead to ensure the new print solution met user needs. Also, some of the features of the Digicom MPS, in particular, swiping a card before printing a document, were seen by staff as providing at least as good as before, if not more, security and privacy for sensitive information.