Manchester Metropolitan University

• Consolidate separate unmanaged print, copy, fax and scan devices across student andstaff areas into a single “right sized” managed environment to make significant financial and carbon savings.
• Regain control across student and staff communities to give full visibility of usage across print, copy, scan and fax within a single solution, accurately charging students for usage and allocating staff usage to cost centres.
• Give the university the business intelligence it needs to understand how the system is being used, allocate quotas for print and copy related to job specification.
• Deliver a sustainable solution that will provide significant financial savings for the university, and significantly reduce its carbon footprint and promote environmental stewardship.
• Improve the level of service and satisfaction for students and staff using print, copy, scan facilities at the university. 
  
  

• Reduced the need to dispose of electrical equipment now and in the future
  
  • Since the print devices are now leased from HP on a primary term of 3 years, it is now HP’s responsibility as the lessor to dispose of the devices at the end of their life according to the WEEE directive.  HP’s policy is to reuse and recondition the devices, which in itself is better for the environment than disposing of the devices in a landfill waste site.

• Rationalised the number of printer models within the estate, from in excess of 45 model types to 5. This means the supplies used in the devices are now standardised, which has enabled more manageable consolidated deliveries.  Consolidated deliveries have the effect of a reduced number of deliveries to the university, hence the university is responsible for lower associated fuel costs.  The target is to reduce the overall fleet from over 2000 devices to less than 500 devices.

• Before the new solution was implemented there were just a few scanners in the university’s estate.  Now there are now 220 scanning units as part of the MFD devices across the campuses since the print devices are multi-functional i.e. they print, scan and copy.  In order to encourage less printing, the university doesn’t charge for scanning.  

Dave Lee, MMU’s Business Analyst comments: “From the business intelligence reporting we now have we can see that scanning is being used a lot more, and from conversations with students it appears many are taking the opportunity to scan pages from books and store the documents on their smart phones.  This obviously reduces the amount of paper we use and it is something we couldn’t have done before the new solution was implemented.”

• Given the university business intelligence around departmental print, copy, fax and scan usage as a result of the new technology.  This allows the team to identify if and where a department may beusing too much paper and toner and they can tackle these issues in the right way - to understand if they are using the technology appropriately and if they can help change behaviour if necessary to reduce overall paper and toner usage through training – both usage and environmental.

• The nature of the print solution means that the print jobs are stored in the university’s ‘cloud’.  The new infrastructure behind this has dramatically changed.  Before the solution was implemented the university had 1 or 2 servers dedicated to print technology in each of its 7 campuses.  Now the centrally managed system runs from just one physical server on one campus which hosts a number of virtual servers.  This has the on-going effect of reduced power consumption across each of the campuses, as well as reduced equipment cost for future refreshes.

• To date, 220 Hewlett-Packard (HP) Multi-Functional Devices (MFDs) have been deployed into the university, each enabled with a SafeCom swipe card reader for user authentication.  The SafeCom software incorporates an environmental meter, the ’save-o-meter’, which is visible on the MMU website and displays in real-time the exact environmental savings being made by the new solution.  This has proved to be a powerful tool for the university’s environmental team to present the benefits of the university’s investment and has promoted to the users the importance of “think before your print”.
  
  One aspect of the SafeCom software solution is that after a user has sent a print job to the print cloud a timer is then started and if the user does not go to a device to “pull” the print job from the cloud then the solution takes the view that the print job cannot be that important if the user has not released the print job within 3 days, so automatically deletes the print job. This has led to significant print and paper savings which form part of the “save-o-meter” results.
  
  

Helping and preserving the environment

• Given the university an automated solution that automatically deletes users’ print jobs if they are not collected from the devices within three days.  As a result waste printed paper which we call orphan documents and which were typically left on the out trays of devices have been eradicated.  This and other jobs that are typically sent to a printer but not important enough to be collected has lead to a reduction in paper disposed of in paper recycling bins.  Furthermore the measured results from go live in the summer of 2011 have been exemplary:
  
  • 721,688 sheets of black & white pages deleted before printing due to non-collection of print jobs.
  • 207,383 sheets of colour pages deleted before printing due to non-collection of print jobs.
  As a result of the 564,026 sheets of actual paper not being printed:
  
  • 33.84 trees have been saved, since it takes one tree to make every 16,667 sheets of paper we use
  • 15567.12kg less CO2 has been emitted into the atmosphere, since the production of one sheet of paper we use emits 27.6g into the atmosphere.
  • 5640.26 m3 less water has been used, since the production of one sheet of paper we use takes 10 litres of water.
    
    
• The reduction in number of pages printed has had the natural impact of using less toner and wasting less toner.
  
  
• The flexibility of the solution also offers the university great savings, now and in the future.

Dave Lee, MMU’s Business Analyst comments: "We can now see a machine’s duty cycle per month.  If the machine is being highly utilised we consider putting a second machine in that location to reduce the wear of the one machine, this way the equipment will last longer.  Similarly, we can see when a printer is under-utilised and move it to a more appropriate location to get best use out of it.  So far we have moved approximately 10 printers to better utilise our estate"

• The new solution also offers the university the option to rearrange the printing estate to suit different times of the year, without buying new equipment.  

Dave Lee, MMU’s Business Analyst comments: “The printer is a logical unit that can be moved – using the SafeCom swipe readers we can move a whole suite of printers.  For example, at ‘clearing time’ we can move a suite of printers into the clearing room, where previously we would have had to buy in a number of printers for that purpose and then they would have been under-utilised for a number of months per year”.

• The savings the university is seeing also extends to its staff.  Before the solution was implemented it would take a member of staff around a week to generate a report to identify which departments to charge how much print usage to.  Now as a result of the business intelligence reporting available it takes a member of staff just 5 minutes to generate the same report.  What’s more because the SafeCom software is integrated into the university’s SAP system, all charging is done automatically.  This has resulted in staff now spending time on work that forms part of their actual job description, instead of spending time generating print reports.

• DTP has just deployed into the university the first part of its final phase of implementation, where it is replacing staff desktop printers with multi-functional devices usable by staff and students.  Using DTP’s auditing and project management skills the university is realising a 10:1 reduction in the number of printers deployed.  As well as the benefits already outlined around less printed pages, reduced paper and toner consumption, this phase is also expected to reduce the university’s energy consumption due to the rationalisation of print devices.
  
  

Customer satisfaction

One of the indicators that the solution is well-liked is the usage statistics it can now monitor. 

Dave Lee comments, “Speaking to students they seem to really like it.  With our previous solution we didn’t have any scanners and copiers for student use, now they’re at every device.  Local copy shops used to be busy with students, now that doesn’t seem the case.  As a result of the new solution we can now more accurately cost copies, which means we are now far cheaper than the local copy shops.”

An exemplary solution

The new digital print technology deployed in this project between DTP and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) has not only saved the university vast sums of money, it has revolutionised the print strategy of the
university, enabling it to offer better facilities to its staff and students, with less investment, and a resulting impact on the environment far less than its previous solution.  Is the team at MMU happy? 

Dave Lee comments, “We estimate savings of around £200,000 per year on paper and an unknown amount on equipment costs, probably around £300,000 per year.  That adds up to a very successful project implementation in my eyes.”