Konica Minolta has implemented a print optimization and management solution in A1 Telekom Austria

2022: Implementation of Konica Minolta Solution for Print Optimization and Management

A1, Telekom Austria has implemented a print optimization and management solution from Konica Minolta. The product allowed the operator to reduce costs and improve a number of business processes. This was reported in Konica Minolta on January 17, 2022.

Source: bestbelarus.by

Telekom Austria Group has more than 24 million customers in eight countries. In Central and Eastern Europe, it is a telecommunications service provider. A1 is an organization within Telekom Austria, it accounts for almost two-thirds of the group's turnover. Working with 3.3 million customers, A1 occupies a leading position in the Austrian market, and is also an operator offering service packages including fixed, mobile, Internet and television.

For 8.5 thousand employees of the company, internal communications play a large role, and paper media are still important to them. For printing in A1, 267 printing devices are used: color MFIs of the A3 bizhub C364e/C368 format and black and white MFIs of the bizhub 283/284e format.

"To print one page - at first glance, this is not so much. But if hundreds of employees do it every day, then over the year it leads to significant expenses. One important step is to reduce the number of personal printers in the workplace and create printpoints (areas for printing in the office) - this helps to reduce the cost of ongoing maintenance. Performance A3 devices require additional costs only after reaching a certain print volume, " noted Director of Planning and Preparation of A1 Jobs German Yuritskaya

The print management system SafeQ enabled A1 to optimize the printing infrastructure and simplify some tasks. As a result, the company improved the efficiency and security of business processes, as well as optimized printing management costs. The organization uses significantly fewer printers - their number has decreased by about 2 thousand.

The solution controls costs and records the cost of each print job. You can use it to analyze how many documents you want to print, how many are actually printed, and how many devices are involved in the process. This enables analysis and optimization of power and toner consumption, as well as service intervals for each MFI. It is possible to use the automatic toner ordering function, thus being able to plan and coordinate service intervals more efficiently and, as a result, save working time.

Erroneously submitted or no longer up-to-date print jobs can be removed quickly and easily by the system. This possibility alone reduced printing costs for A1 by 23%, its costs for paper waste and their disposal also decreased. In addition, the company fully realized the importance of operating and standby maintenance costs, which are often underestimated by the business.

The SafeQ also controls access to documents. Employees can use their regular access cards to authenticate to the print device, allowing them to quickly and securely get their fingerprints or scan documents. Individual devices are also equipped with Autostore scanning software, as well as SiteAudit, a solution for controlling and centrally managing the fleet of devices.

Before completely switching to a solution from Konica Minolta, the company implemented a pilot project. It was needed to show employees the feasibility of abandoning printers on the workplace and to test the system. The latter demonstrated efficiency, and the need to avoid personal printers was no longer in doubt, because some of them printed only 20 pages per month, but the cost of maintenance and electricity from this did not decrease.

"Active interaction with us and support from the Konica Minolta team played an important role in the success of the project. We could always rely on agreements with a partner and have no doubt about meeting the indicated deadlines, " told German Yuritskaya