Situation

Olympus is a global manufacturer of high-tech solutions for medicine, manufacturing, and digital cameras. Olympus Moscow represents Olympus in Russia and the CIS. The company's HQ is in Moscow, but it also has offices in St. Petersburg and other major cities. Olympus Moscow has more than 150 employees.

With the growth of the Moscow business, the volume of printed documents was increasing, so Olympus needed to upgrade the office equipment fleet and implement the tools for efficient centralized printing management. Softline was chosen as the project partner due to its high competencies and many successful joint IT projects with Olympus.

Solution

Since the customer was using Ricoh equipment, Softline supplied him with new equipment from the same manufacturer with an optimal price-quality ratio and functions for solving business tasks. Softline specialists suggested implementing the MyQ printing management system. The customer approved the project after the pilot implementation of the product. Olympus appreciated MyQ's features such as centralized analysis of print jobs from any device regardless of its manufacturer or model; detailed statistics by user or department over any period; and print billing. Softline team connected 8 devices to the solution in the Olympus office with 150 workplaces. The customer's IT administrators were then trained to manage printing policies. Softline experts also provide them with on-demand consulting.

Softline specialists also used MyQ to implement smart card authorization for access to printers. Now print jobs in Olympus are not sent directly to the printer but temporarily stored on a dedicated server. The customer's employees select any device, log in, and then start printing. As a result, copies remain unused or go to print due to human error. Since everyone knows what documents they have to pick up, no "extra" sheets remain in the tray. And since printing is personalized and users have different access rights, it has become impossible to take someone else's documents by mistake.

Results

"The implemented solution allowed the customer to centralize the printing management, evenly distribute the load on the equipment, and prioritize printing following the configured policies. In general, such solutions can reduce the amount of printing by 15 to 30% as it reduces the irrational use of consumables. The client highly appreciated the expertise of our team in managed printing services, and we hope for further fruitful cooperation in the modernization of the printing infrastructure,"—summarized Alexander Petrov, Head of Managed Printing Services at Softline.

"We streamlined and standardized the printing system, which helped us reduce the office equipment maintenance cost. With the billing capabilities of MyQ, we can analyze costs in more detail and flexibly plan the IT budget. Thanks to the training, our administrators have gained enough knowledge to develop the solution on their own. In particular, we have launched a project to implement more granular access right differentiation for printing equipment,"—says Fedor Gubernsky, CIO at Olympus.