Confidence in a Managed Print Solution

The Mission
• Establish costs associated with existing print / copy / scan environment
• Deploy a world class print / copy / scan infrastructure
• Seamless migration of work force into new print environment

The Solution
• Analysis of user requirements
• Matching of user requirements to leading technologies
• Ensuring user buy-in
• Ongoing site management

The Result
• A “right-sized” print / copy / scan environment
• Very high level of user satisfaction
• Minimum waste of resources
• Eliminate printer related calls to internal help desk
• Rapid response to user issues.

Introduction
On May 14th 2001, Eircell, Ireland's leading mobile operator, officially become a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group plc, the largest mobile telecommunications company in the world. The deal was the largest ever in Irish corporate history.  Today, Vodafone is Ireland's leading mobile phone operator with a customer base of over 1.7 million people and a total of 1,500 employees. The company’s corporate philosophy 'Coverage, Care and Choice' underpins everything that it does and applies not only to the way Vodafone treats its customers but also to what they expect from their partners.

Background
The Eircell business started life distributed across a number of Eircom sites.  As the business rapidly grew so did the number of company locations.  By March 2001 Eircell was distributed across 7 main offices around the country.  At this point, planning began for a new building in Leopardstown to house all of the business units.  The design and development of this building was critical as it was to house 1,400 Vodafone employees. 

This building was to create a work environment that could maximise the potential of Vodafone employees.  It was to be not only aesthetically superior but also technical and ergonomically world class.  Features of the design included an emphasis on an open plan environment, promotion of a roaming culture, a physically open approach to management and high visibility of work and meeting areas. 

During the Summer of 2001 Ergo began to review the print / copy / scan infrastructure within the existing sites in terms of device type, number and print volumes per machine, department and location.  Ergo reported the total costs associated with these functions across the enterprise. In October 2001, Eircell invited the submission of tenders to deploy an output management solution across the new building.  While the leading vendors and manufacturers submitted responses, in Feb 2002 Ergo were awarded the tender on the basis of value, technical capability, and their track record in similar large  environments.

The Solution
The migration of services into the new building was tightly planned by Vodafone for June 2002.  Ergo conducted user & technology proof of concept testing within test groups across a number of the old buildings and surveyed users as to their satisfaction with the proposed technology. 

Ergo liased with the building architects regarding the design and placement of print stations across the floor plans.  The new print solution was spearheaded with multifunction devices (mfp’s).  The solution was successfully rolled ahead of the user migration timetable.  The optimum solution was fully deployed when the users arrived with out any disturbance in their previous environment. 

Ergo have a full time on site fleet administrator who ensures optimum equipment performance at all times.  Ergo have also deployed web-base remote alerting on all devices which is integrated into Vodafone’s Enterprise Management System called Unicentre TNG.  This procedure sends alerts via email and/or SMS to the fleet administrator whilst also recording the event to Vodafone’s own systems.  To ensure wide spread user acceptance and use of the new printing environment Ergo conducted user training and deployed informative signage around each new device.

Today
Vodafone now have a print / copy / scan solution professionally managed and support by Ergo that is right sized for their current requirements while being scalable for future growth.  Vodafone enjoy the benefits of the latest printing technology without the burden of maintenance and support.