A LOCAL government amalgamation in Queensland bequeathed Scenic Rim Regional Council a hotchpotch of printers and photocopiers.
Set in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range, Scenic Rim Regional Council has about 35,000 residents spread over 4250sq km.
Its three main centres are Tamborine Mountain, Beaudesert and Boonah.
In 2008, when the Queensland government reduced the number of councils from 156 to 72, Scenic Rim Regional Council was formed, amalgamating Boonah Shire, most of Beaudesert Shire and Ipswich City's Mutdapilly-Harrisville-Peak Crossing area.
The council has about 360 full-time equivalent staff and depots in Rathdowney, Boonah, Canungra, Tamborine Mountain and Beaudesert.
"The revenue-generating areas of the northern parts of the Beaudesert shire weren't included (in the amalgamation), so council had to be strongly focused on its financial sustainability and the cost drivers that the organisation faced," Scenic Rim Regional Council corporate and community services director Mark Griffioen said.
Scenic Rim found itself with a large number of printers and photocopiers, from six vendors, to manage.
Dealing with lease agreements, servicing and consumables took up considerable staff time and was extremely costly.
"We had so many printers it seemed like every corner that you turned within the office someone had a printer next to their desk," Mr Griffioen said.
The council decided to look at a rationalisation project to improve the situation.
It asked four vendors to tender for the business with the objective of reducing costs and creating a sustainable print environment.
The vendors were Xerox, Toshiba, Canon and a supplier that covered a number of brands.
"We looked at the after-sales support that we were also going to get, and on all of those factors Canon came out in front," Mr Griffioen said.
Canon Australia recommended that the council consolidate, centralise and secure its print environment, while allowing staff to easily monitor and control how they printed.
"They provided the best overall solution for us and that included the uniFLOW software, the Follow Me printing and their machines at a reasonable price."
The council started installing and using test machines in October and finished early this year.
Canon provided a full-time person for several weeks to conduct training for staff.
The project has reduced Scenic Rim's print hardware from 63 printers and 17 photocopiers to 32 multifunction devices and one scanner.
The uniFLOW software enables rules, routing, statistics and accounting integration with document workflow.
The automatic duplex function had greatly reduced paper consumption, he said. Canon had also helped the council develop a system for "public use of our multifunction devices" with magnetic-strip council library cards, Mr Griffioen said.
When the project encountered a few problems associated with how the network was configured, Canon provided network support to sort them out.
Mr Griffioen said the savings and benefits for Scenic Rim from the Canon installation had exceeded expectations.
"Over the last few months, the council has done analysis of the costs and it looks like we are now going to be saving about $87,000 a year just on the print costs," he said.
"That is not including the paper savings that we are generating.
"We were paying about $220,000 a year just on our consumables and costs for the printers before, so that is a pretty significant saving."
The council will invest about $552,600 over five years in a pay-per-print system from Canon.
Mr Griffioen said communication links between Boonah and Beaudesert would now be the council's main technology priority.
The council must decide in the next six to 12 months whether to sink money into microwave links between its main sites or wait two years to see when the National Broadband Network would be available, he said.
It was also looking at replacing its telephony PABX with a voice over internet protocol system, Mr Griffioen said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.a...frgakx-1226074438436
Original Post