Woolworths takes the knife to printing at new shared centre
Woolworths takes the knife to printing at new shared centre
March/April Edition, 2008: Reports, presentations, consignment notes and other documents, 3000 employees across the Woolworths Empire can generate a lot of paper. But putting them in the one place helps, and sourcing a print services vendor that will work to help them improve their printing efficiencies is one reason behind the retail giant’s ability to now boost a 30 – 40 percent print savings across the board.
The move to create a shared business services environment gaveWoolworths a new lease on the business life. After years of working in partnerships with suppliers for its retail operations, Woolworths established a similar relationship with Ricoh in order to manage their imaging and printing functions.
Converging nine offices into one is no easy feat. For Woolworths, the goal of overall efficiency, reduced wastage and improved processes was reason enough to make the dream of a National Support Office a reality. Five years in the making, the retail giant finally made the move in October 2005 and set up shop in a purpose built facility at Norwest Business Park in Sydney’s West.
The development goal was an open plan facility, providing the space, air and the opportunity for improved communications. The building would make working life easier and more efficient for people, but presented a whole range of challenges for how the company would deal with physical documents, storageand printing.
“Moving to a building of that structure, the way you store documents becomes an issue,” says Amanda Hansen, business manager at the Norwest Facility. “You don’t have as many walls, and you miss the large storeroom type of areas. We had to ask, how do we want to work this?”
The question posed an opportunity. Electronic or hardcopy, a move of this size presents the means to wipe the slate clean on existing practices and move to implement swifter, more cost effective and more environmentally clean ways to deal with paper.
In searching for a solution, Hansen says they realised the need for a partner, rather than just a supplier. “We know we’re experts in retailing, in the same way we like to partner with companies who are specialists in their own field,” says Hansen. “We’re not experts in everything and we’re not going to suddenly become experts in document imaging just because we think we can.”
So Woolworths went to tender for a managed print service and found Ricoh. Fleet management experience was important in the decision, but even more so was the need to find a company with a strong focus and environmental ethic.
Instead of just supplying the fleet, the contract would see Ricoh provide some updated printers and multi-functional devices, advice on processes for reducing printing and a staff team of six to assist in continually improving efficiencies and running Woolworth’s newly established Bulk Print Centre.
The centre was Ricoh’s initiative, a recommendation that along with six permanent Ricoh staff the centre could assist in not just internal operations, but colour printing, copying services and scanning and fleet management to the rest of the building also.
The bulk print room has been fundamental in Woolworths achieving a 33 percent reduction in printing. “You can clearly see the environmental benefits in that we’re printing less paper and definitely seeing the positive savings,” says Hansen.
From the outset of dealing with printing in the national support office, Woolworths anticipated the site would deliver around 50 million black and white printed documents a year—20 million from within the bulk print centre, and the remainder from the 36 workgroup utility rooms inside the building.
These figures were quickly reduced with smart thinking. Duplex printing became a normal function, staff were encouraged to change their practices with their habits monitored by the Ricoh consultants, and an early call alert system labelled Web SmartDeviceMonitor was introduced to ensure consultants would be able to improve response times in dealing with printing errors.
“Picture a combination of reports that need to go to all our stores,” says Hansen. “We print them centrally and distribute them through our mail system.
Comparing the bulk print room to a SNAP on Kinkos facility, Hansen says the room reduces the process of dealing with documents—like the printing, colour organisation, binding, stapling etc into the one team, removing the inefficiencies of having multiple staff members walk away from their usual office tasks. “It makes the whole working environment better for people in that they’re no longer doing boring and mundane tasks,” says Hansen. “It’s also handling some of the printing that would have previously been sent offsite.”
Hansen believes already, Woolworths has achieved significant savings around the bottom line. A massive 36 million pages has been spared from the printers with a 30—40 percent savings in printing achieved. Meanwhile useless toner cartridges and their associated waste have been reduced by 37 percent.
“We’re actually reducing printing,” says Hansen. “If you think about other services, they’re encouraged to make more money. Ricoh are smart enough to see it’s not about printing, it’s about reducing it and changing.”
So could these benefits have been seen without the third party? Hansen doesn’t think so: “They drive reductions for us and although they’re getting paid to print as part of the service, they’ll still say, ‘if we do it this way,’ there will be more efficiency,” she says.
Hansen admits that prior to the move the nine separate officers were reliant on paper due to technology limitations. “If I wanted to email and send reports and have them viewed in certain environments, we couldn’t do it. The only way of doing it was to print and mail the hard copies,” she says.