Cairn India Revolutionizes Corporate Print Strategy with Canon

Cairn India is one of the fastest growing energy companies in Asia and has been exploring hydrocarbons in India for more than 17 years with a world-class resource base, interest in nine blocks in India and one in Sri Lanka. The Company is committed towards protecting the health and safety of people involved with its business activities and who come into contact with its operations and the health and sustainability of the environments in which they operate.

The Company headquarters operate on a 24 x 7 model and supports 1000+ users, across eight floors of three buildings. Cairn India was looking for a unique corporate printing strategy and found a perfect answer in the form of Canon’s solution.

Business Environment

The company has grown organically over the last ten years and acquired various printers to support the business needs. Printers had previously been replaced on a like for like basis and varied model types. The diversity of models added to the support costs, inventory costs and closure time.

The IT support teams were managing 100+ printers and copiers with different makes / models.

Business Challenges

The below mentioned business problems were identified in the printer landscape:

A – Location Driven Purchase of Printers

Multiple Models and Diverse Landscape

Manual Tracking of Support Needs

Complexity in Operational support due to varied vendors

b.Escalating Management Costs

Inability to account and monitor printer

usage and consumable consumption

Multiple devices for multiple functions printing, scanning and copying

Multiple AMCs and support contracts

c.Environment Unfriendly Practices

Single sided printing

Unclaimed printouts and copies

Wastage of cartridges and consumables

The Company’s “Green Brigade” estimated a print waste factor of 30-40%, based on the papers trashed in recycling bins near their printers, with no definitive way to confirm the source of waste.

d.Reduced Security

Unclaimed printouts and copies

Managing confidential printing

The IT management team was keen to find an alternate solution that would enhance security, allow reporting, reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies.

“50% reduction in printers fleet has brought down our electricity consumption which has helped us to reduce our carbon footprint and be an environmentally responsible company.” Mr. Hari Kumar, Chairman – Green Brigade.

Solution Selection

As a starting point for gaining control over the printing environment, the company identified the need to manage printing and had conducted research to find potential print accounting solutions, based on ease of use, granularity of print tracking, reporting and administration. Key criteria for the selection of print solution included product features, service level agreements (uptime), price and response time. The selection was based on a strict and extensive product and services review in the industry covering all major players in this category.

Based on assessment of all the parameters, Cairn Indian finalized on Canon India to provide with optimum products and solutions and ensure maximum business benefits in terms of cost and security efficiency.

Solution Implementation

The company ultimately chose to replace its printing installed base with 54 strategically located Canon MFPs equipped with Canon’s UniFlow print management software. The initiative was to provide print accounting capabilities and card readers to better manage the printer access. The Follow-Me printing feature supports user mobility, and helps in reducing waste and ensures confidentiality and protects personal information.

Specific uniFLOW® capabilities that are attractive include ease of use in terms of both users and administration and security features such as Follow-me Printing®. Follow-me Printing with Secure Document Release supports user mobility, reducing waste, ensuring client confidentiality and protecting personal information. It holds documents in a secure print server until users authenticate themselves at the networked MFDs of their choice. Also important were service levels and uptime guaranteed by Canon.

Business Benefits

a.Environmental Protection

Reduces waste by eliminating unclaimed print-outs and adding the accountability that

encourage users to print only the documents they actually need

Carbon footprint reduction due to minimized usage of paper

b.Improved Information Security and Confidentiality

Card-based ID systems for simple authentication to improve confidentiality of the documents

c.Improved Employee Productivity

Promotes mobility by allowing users to release documents at any convenient MFD, anywhere in your organization

Freed from reliance on a single printer, users can now output documents when and where they are needed and avoid the inconvenience of printers that are busy or out of service

d.Cost Effectiveness

Reduction in printer footprint from 105 to 54

Reduction in number of personal printers

Reduction in need to store consumables & cartridges

e.Operational Efficiency

Simplified and Centralized IT infrastructure print landscape

Improved maintenance and support

Higher uptime of MFDs has ensured availability of devices as and when needed for Better Service Levels

Moving forward

The Company is using the reports and data generated from uniFLOW® to design the next phase of its printing infrastructure and a company-wide rollout of the same. A final initiative for the company will be to move its print server to the cloud.