Case study NZZ Media Group benefits from innovations in printing HP printers and Managed Print Services help reduce costs by 50% Industry Media Objective Reduce costs and outsource printer fleet management and maintenance Approach At the end of a tendering process involving multiple providers, the company chose HP and Bechtle IT Services IT matters • Reduced pressure on the IT department thanks to the Bechtle Managed Print Services contract Business matters • Lowered printing costs by 50% • Reduced paper and consumable costs by 15% • Achieved further cost savings through Level Pay payment model • Enabled mobile printing, including external equipment and employees’ private devices • Improved printing processes due to the flow technology of certain HP multifunction printers • Delivered a scalable solution that can be adapted to the needs of NZZ at any time “In my mind, the biggest advantage of the new solution is the enormous cost savings. Today, the printer fleet costs us just 50% of what it did previously thanks to consolidation and standardisation - and that’s just the direct costs for the devices.” – Renato Isler, head of client management at NZZ Media Group A complete, hassle-free package NZZ Media Group has cut the costs associated with its printer fleet by more than 50%. Highly efficient multi function printers from HP and a Bechtle Managed Print Services contract help to achieve this. A positive side effect for the Group’s IT division is that these days it no longer needs to worry about the printers.
Transcript
Case study
NZZ Media Group benefits from innovations in printingHP printers and Managed Print Services help reduce costs by 50%
IndustryMedia
ObjectiveReduce costs and outsource printer fleet management and maintenance
ApproachAt the end of a tendering process involving multiple providers, the company chose HP and Bechtle IT Services
IT matters• Reduced pressure on the IT department thanks
to the Bechtle Managed Print Services contract
Business matters• Lowered printing costs by 50%
• Reduced paper and consumable costs by 15%
• Achieved further cost savings through Level Pay payment model
• Enabled mobile printing, including external equipment and employees’ private devices
• Improved printing processes due to the flow technology of certain HP multifunction printers
• Delivered a scalable solution that can be adapted to the needs of NZZ at any time
“In my mind, the biggest advantage of the new solution is the enormous cost savings. Today, the printer fleet costs us just 50% of what it did previously thanks to consolidation and standardisation - and that’s just the direct costs for the devices.” – Renato Isler, head of client management at NZZ Media Group
A complete, hassle-free package NZZ Media Group has cut the costs associated with its printer fleet by more than 50%. Highly efficient multi function printers from HP and a Bechtle Managed Print Services contract help to achieve this. A positive side effect for the Group’s IT division is that these days it no longer needs to worry about the printers.
Case study | NZZ Media Group
ChallengeHigh printing volumes tie up capital NZZ Media Group is one of the largest media companies in Switzerland. It focuses on high-quality, independent journalism and champions a liberal world view. Its two flagship publications, the ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’ and ‘NZZ am Sonntag’ are particularly well known. The company also publishes regional newspapers and specialised media, organises events such as the Swiss Economic Forum, operates local TV and radio stations and provides various information services. With approximately 1,600 employees spread over 34 locations, the Group is one of Switzerland’s major employers.
Printing documents is not just important for employees in administrative departments. Printing volumes are especially high in the editorial offices, as well as in the layout and graphics departments where manuscripts and photos are printed every day. Editors and graphic designers print entire newspaper pages to compare headings and get an overall impression before they are sent to production.
In the past, roughly 8.5 million pages were printed across Switzerland every year in the NZZ Media Group. Two-thirds of these were black-and-white pages, and the rest were colour prints.
“Our industry is heavily cost-driven so we asked ourselves how we could reduce printing costs on a permanent basis,” explains Renato Isler, head of client management. In the past, the IT division at NZZ Media Group had leased the equipment from a manufacturer and took care of all the tasks associated with the fleet itself—maintenance, administration, minor repairs and the provision of spare parts and consumables.
“I wanted to be relieved of all these tasks, whilst at the same time massively reducing costs,” says Isler.
To do that, the company had to make a clean break. All existing printers, no matter how old, had to be replaced to enable the company to start completely from scratch with a provider of Managed Print Services.
SolutionDevices from HP and a Bechtle Managed Print Services contractNZZ Media Group issued a call for tenders. Three providers were short-listed and finally HP and Bechtle IT Services were awarded the contract.
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“Compared with their competitors, HP and Bechtle IT Services offered the best price-performance ratio,” explains Isler. During the tender stage, the media company asked for a proposal recommending how many multifunction devices should ideally be deployed across the various sites in Switzerland. All the manufacturers recommended approximately 120 devices in their proposals.
Bechtle IT Services took another, closer, look at the individual buildings and requirements on site. Together with Isler and his colleagues, the partners then decided to install approximately 150 multifunction devices. Isler explains: “The site visits were very helpful—including advice on which device sizes or requirements were needed at which sites. This enabled us to ensure that our employees only have to walk a maximum of 20 metres passing through no more than one door to reach their closest printer.”
In total, the print fleet was reduced from 250 to 150. Bechtle IT Services took care of the roll-out in close cooperation with the project team at NZZ Media Group. Bechtle IT Services also impressed with its flexibility: In many editorial offices, production continues over the weekend, meaning that exceptionally careful coordination was required.
However, it was not just the number of printers but the number of models that was rationalised. As a result there are now just three models in use, all of which are colour multifunction devices. More than a third are HP PageWide Enterprise MFPs. HP PageWide technology uses pigmented ink that is applied using a printhead which covers the entire page width.
“These devices were chosen for the low cost of printouts and operating speed,” says Isler.“Costs are up to 50% lower compared with laser printers and the printouts take half the time. For many of our employees, speed is particularly important. A newsreader on the radio, for example, needs to print a document quickly on the way to the studio, or in accounting where 10,000 invoices have to be printed at once.”
More than 60 devices are HP LaserJet Enterprise 700 Color MFP M775z, which employees can also use to print A3 documents. There are also HP Color LaserJet Flow MFP M880z devices. User identification with SafeCom means that employees can easily send documents to any device, exclusively to their own email inbox for security reasons.
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“The HP Color LaserJet Enterprise Flow MFP M880z devices in particular give us the option to support digital workflows in the company, for example by scanning documents and saving them in folders in one working step. Thanks to these new possibilities, our employees are currently developing their own ideas for process optimisations. What’s more, Bechtle IT Services and HP give us inspiration about the possibilities flow technology can offer,” says Isler.
BenefitsSecure, device-independent printingAll HP printers are equipped with the SafeCom Pull Print solution, ensuring secure printouts: employees can only collect these secure printouts from the multifunction device after successful authentication using the badge that they also use to access the building or using their Windows® login.
“Ultimately, it was worth it. Only with the HP Managed Print Services contract will we be able to compare costs in the future,” says Isler. “With the SafeCom Pull Print solution, we now save more than 15% in paper and consumables. This 15% represents documents that are sent to the printer but are not collected,” says Isler. In addition, SafeCom provides transparency about the print costs that are incurred in each department thus allowing costs to be re-charged to the individual departments.
“ With the SafeCom Pull Print solution, we now save more than 15% in paper and consumables by reducing the number of documents that are sent to the printer but are not collected.”– Renato Isler, head of client management at NZZ Media Group
Customer at a glanceHardware• 56 x HP OfficeJet Enterprise Color
X585 with HP PageWide technology• 63 x HP LaserJet Enterprise
700 Color MFP M775z• 23 x HP Color LaserJet Enterprise
MFP M880z Flow
Software• SafeCom Pull Print • SafeCom Mobile Print
HP Services• Bechtle Managed Print Services
With the SafeCom solution, the NZZ Media Group can also allow their employees to print documents from any site and any device. Isler explains: “For external employees in particular, SafeCom Mobile Print is a huge help. They send a mail to a printer and are then able to collect the printouts from a device without every single device having to be laboriously set up and installed. Our in-house employees also appreciate this, because we support the ‘bring your own device’ concept. Today, employees can print from any private terminal equipment.”
HP now sends consumables directly to the individual NZZ Media Group sites. This is done automatically using monitoring software which checks the devices at defined intervals and places an order when the level of consumable materials drops below a predfined threshold. Bechtle sends quarterly invoices for device rental and operation to the 20 subsidiary companies. “As a result, in the IT department we no longer need to worry about anything to do with printing,” says Isler.
“In my mind, the biggest advantages of the new solution are the enormous cost savings: today, the printer fleet costs us just 50% of what it did previously thanks to consolidation and standardisation and that’s just the direct costs for the devices.There are also indirect cost reductions as a result of the reduced workload for the IT department, as well as further cost reductions due to savings on paper and consumables. The latter can be attributed to the SafeCom solution or HP PageWide technology. NZZ Media Group is also able to achieve further savings as a result of the Level Pay payment model. This ensures that consumables are paid for at the click of a button when they are actually used up, not before.
The printer infrastructure is provided with complete support by the Printing Competence Centre at Bechtle IT Services, which is also responsible for qualification and the introduction of new HP drivers, for example.
Learn more at hp.com/go/mps
Case study | NZZ Media Group
BechtleBechtle AG has 66 systems houses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and is one of Europe’s leading online IT retailers with e-commerce companies in 14 countries. Founded in 1983, the company is based in the German city of Neckarsulm and currently employs over 7,200 people. Bechtle has over 73,000 customers in the industrial and retail, public services and financial sectors and offers a comprehensive range of IT infrastructure and operations services covering a wide range of manufacturers. Bechtle is listed on the TecDAX technology stock index. The company generated sales of EUR 2.8 billion in 2015.
