Modern print management guarantees full cost control and high print security

ELECTROPULT JSC from Saint-Petersburg with over 450 employees is a leading Russian enterprise, developer and manufacturer of electrical equipment, con trol systems, distribution and regulation of electricity. The enterprise meets the needs of the key sectors of the country’s economy at the proper level: energy, including nuclear power, gas, chemical, oil, metallurgical and other industries. Modern production and advanced technology allow the enterprise to produce high quality competitive, energy efficient products with prolonged lifetime on 40,000 m².

The history of the plant dates back to 1935 when a design engineering office was established for development and production of electric switch boards and equipment for electric power stations that were being built. In 2004 JSC “Plant ELECTROPULT” was incorporated into REP Holding. Full-scale reorganisation of the workshops and re-equipment with the advanced machinery and technology was carried out. The equipment made by ELECTROPULT operates safely in more than 50 countries around the world. A company as sophisticated as ELECTROPULT needs a printing infrastructure that meets the most modern requirements. With Dispatcher Paragon from Konica Minolta, the company has chosen a solution that ensures full cost control over the print environment as well as a high level of security of the printing operations.

Advantages

Security of data on paper and collection of statistics on user actions is ensured by mandatory authentication at 29 printing devices using proximity cards - the same cards are used by employees to access the office.
Printed documents go straight into the hands of their owners, and forgotten or mistakenly printed documents do no longer pile up in printer trays.
Printing rules and policies were configured for different groups of employees to control printing (colour or black and white) and optimal use of printing devices.
To simplify the work for users, the control displays of the devices have also been modified so that only the most necessary functions are available to users, which further simplifies and streamlines the handling of printing.
In the first few months, direct printing costs were reduced by around 30%.
Indirect costs due to lost printouts, time spent on scanning and job management were minimised.
The workload of the IT department was reduced by 45% due to a decrease in the number of incidents and the SLA.

Challenge

For the efficient operation of the entire enterprise, the cost of the processes of preparation and centralised controlled printing of office documents is of paramount importance.
ELECTROPULT had already installed Konica Minolta MFPs and several from other vendors.
The next step was the optimisation of the printing costs and the implementation of a software solution that comes from a MFP vendor and offers full scale integration with printing equipment at the embedded terminal level.

Solution

Implementation of Dispatcher Paragon.
The choice of Konica Minolta as a solution provider was also influenced by the quality criteria of software and hardware service support with Service Level Agreement (SLA).