Banking and financial services sector has been a flourishing industry and with changing consumer preferences the sector has undergone a fair bit of business transformation with technology innovation playing a critical role. In fact, it is more of digital transformation and banks have had to deal with it on two fronts, firstly external and customer facing and the other is internal, more to do with their existing IT infrastructure and workflows. Most financial service institutions in India have seen a technology revamp with large SI’s managing the core infrastructure working in collaboration with several specialized players across the ICT industry.
This is where a document management service from players like us comes into play and globally we have had success where the company has been successful in reducing printer fleet by as many as 35,000 units, freeing up space in multiple office premises as well as reducing cost by 35%. In India, analyzing the scale of banking and financial services companies; a cost reduction by anything over 20-25% on the print infrastructure will have significant impact on the balance sheets. This is a key focus area of ours and is significantly showcased in our engagements with all banking and financial customers in India.
How does MPS work in a large bank
While the CIO/CTO would be keen on deploying solutions addressing the accessibility, security and mobility requirements to meet financial inclusion initiatives and improve the customer’s experience, the technology at the backend plays a crucial role. This is where a solutions and service providers like us comes into play. We have already been managing credit card processing, printing and dispatch mechanism of a leading bank in India and with Managed Print Services we have the capability to scale up and optimize the print infrastructure and save costs while improving productivity.
Banks and financial institutions have several challenges and incremental expenses coming their way. Growth and expansion of the banking and financial services incurs additional expenses including adding employees and real estate across the country. There are multiple smaller pockets of cost centers that are not centrally monitored or are in the hands of one signing authority. In addition, IT infrastructure costs and firm’s printing infrastructure costs mushroom up. Furthermore, there are instances where growing number of departments start leasing or buying their own printers, with no single point owner managing devices or usage. Cumulatively these costs blow up in proportion in the expense sheet of the firm and the possible solution to optimize these costs on a national footprint is the deployment of Managed Print Services.
Let us take an example of a large banking and financial services firm with pan India and regional presence that has over 40,000 printers and copiers, with a large number of leased equipment and more than 4,000 different print drivers. Invariably all these lack centralized control as most departments would have purchased or leased their own desktop devices, ordered their own supplies (or, in many cases, over ordered) and printed without much thought to cost or consequences. Clearly in such scenario, change is needed.
By doing a print infrastructure assessment, using state of art assessment tool suite and including a complete inventory of all devices and device locations, we can develop a Managed Print Services solution meeting client objectives along with a defined roadmap spanning the next few years. Through MPS, firstly a national print management and help desk support service can be centralized, with a streamlined fleet of networked printers and multifunction devices and aggressive user-to-device ratio. In such circumstances as per our estimates, print costs can be 35% lower.
Furthermore alongside the company’s printing challenges there would have been an expansion of real estate footprint that grew more expensive with every device increase. In streamlining the former challenge, the institution can also address the latter. Multiple printing and copying devices would be replaced with networked multifunction devices in smaller quantities. Areas that formerly would have housed copy centers would be “returned” to the business as open space. Storage rooms formerly filled with hard-copy files would be made free by digitizing documents using scan-to-email. Employees would be printing more efficiently due to energy-saving multifunction devices having features like duplex printing and scanning.
In a typical scenario like above, MPS deployments have two targets: equipment that would be expiring and buildings with 400-plus employees. In some cases, buildings can be consolidated. For example, MPS can merge the print requirement of four buildings into one, reducing print devices to half. Secondly, because print devices are networked, they can be accessed from virtually anywhere in the company. Plus, there is option of mobile print for tablets and smartphones, making it more convenient for the mobile workforce.
Security is also improved through MPS. Control will be stronger than ever. Print activity will be monitored closely, with reports that track usage, capture costs and help identify areas for improvement. Projects can’t be released from a printer without employee authentication. Additionally, an on-site team proactively manages support, often providing service and supplies before users realize there is a need.
Equally beneficial in MPS is the simple “utility model” click rate, bringing the additional advantage of cost efficiency. Furthermore there are new solutions that include scan-to-workflow and digital mailrooms etc. which enhance productivity and also save costs.
As per our estimates in a circumstance like above, paper usage would drop by 37%, greenhouse gases would have been cut by 32%, solid waste by 42% and energy consumption will be down by 33%— all of which contribute to print costs dropping by over a third. By bringing in gamification tools, individuals teams and departments can be motivated further to bring down print volumes.
In the present context; the incumbent need for large enterprises and SME’s is to analyze and outsource their print infrastructure services to a service provider that specializes in the domain and is capable of delivering the need in the desired turn-around time and service levels backed by tangible and measurable key performance indicators, continuous monitoring and proactive support for the print environments. While MPS enable operational cost savings, adopting a MPS strategy can also help organizations reduce their print-related environmental impact especially in high document sectors like banking, financial services and telecom. Ability to aid transformation by leveraging document and workflow analytic tools to continuously assess the present state, organizations should work with vendors to not only replace paper-based workflows with digital alternatives but also seek opportunities for new business process models that further streamline and optimize these processes through technology and automation.
(Abhishek Sarda, GM Marketing - Global Document Outsourcing at Xerox India)
