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 from Oakville, Ontario
Managed Services Solution description
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 billion pages annually.
What makes your Managed Services innovative or original compared to the competition?
The LaserNetworks MPS solution is the most flexible in the industry, providing vendor-agnostic technology coverage, a fully-tailored hardware & software solutions offering, simplified contracting & technology acquisition through its MPSflex program, and unmatched national service coverage to keep our customers working.
What were the benefits of your Managed Services Solution for your client and what evidence can you provide to show this?
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’s 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 IT know-how to incorporate print-related software solutions.
What are the main reasons that your Managed Services are better for the customer than an on-premises solution?
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 environmental stewardship. The evidence here is that the customer signed an extension to its current MPS contract for an additional 60 months based on the workflow improvements experienced during the trial.
How did the Managed Service improve the customer’s ability to server its internal or external clients?
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 increases in efficiency. • 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. Physical paper costs were reduced by over 30%.
How does the solution further your client’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 aids 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 its 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.
