Case Study: NHS Hospital: Success with Print Audit 6

Reduce costs & improve accountability with Print Audit 6

The Organisation and its aims

The University Hospital Birmingham, an NHS Foundation Trust is one of the leading teaching hospitals in the UK. A consistently high performing trust, it has been rated ”excellent” for financial management and for quality of clinical and non-clinical services by the Healthcare Commission.

On 16 June 2010 the new 545 million Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham opened with A&E and inpatients transferring from Selly Oak Hospital in addition to other services moving from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

The Trust employs around 6,900 staff and provides adult services to more than half a million patients every year. It has the largest solid organ transplantation program in Europe.

“We are now able to report true print costs and provide accurate information”

Mohandeep Randhawa, Technical Services Officer, NHS Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham

PAE Business

PAE Business provides comprehensive and accurate print tracking, auditing and print management tools to help analyse and reduce customers’ print costs.

The Challenge – Improve accountability, deliver appropriate printing to the new Hospital & reduce costs.

A challenge for IT Services was to improve the visibility and accountability of print activity and to use that information in a timely manner to plan for the delivery of an efficient and cost effective printing environment in the new hospital.

“We had in the past used a print auditing tool but it only gave a high level overview at a network level, we did not have an accurate picture of the current situation” explains Mohandeep Randhawa, Technical Services Officer, University Hospitals Birmingham.

“Looking at the overall IT requirements of the move it was important we understood the printing behaviour of both users, and departments, a more powerful and robust tool was required. We needed detailed information on the current printer set up to drive consolidation, retirement and repatriation of printing assets which in turn would deliver fit for purpose printing and reduce associated costs.”

The Solution

The Hospitals IT Management Team decided to use Print Audit 6 to analyse the current situation in detail. The solution went through a vigorous pilot within the IT department on 100 staff.

“Print Audit’s solution was a vast improvement on what we had before, it gave us exactly what we needed” Mohandeep explains. “We took advantage of a full system free trial to really make sure that Print Audit 6 could give us detailed information and help to deliver the reduction in costs and printers we needed in planning the move. Print Audit was easy to install and use.”

The Process

Following the in-depth trial of Print Audit 6, the project team rolled it out to the rest of the Hospital, in total 4,000 machines. Print Audit 6 was put on a virtual server and then distributed to all PCs across the Hospital’s network. “When we looked at the detailed reports on print use we were surprised by the volume of printer activity, especially from locally attached printers” explained Mohandeep. “Previously we could not accurately gain this information, we didn’t have the visibility.”

“Print audit has enabled us to find and track all the hospital’s printers and collate all management data to our SQL server in real time, a great improvement. We were in a strong position to be able to plan the move into the new building.”

The Benefits

The Hospital Trust is now taking full advantage of the many benefits that Print Audit has delivered. “We have already managed to identify and remove 100’s of expensive to run printers without an adverse effect on the 2-3,000 users, significantly reducing our management and running costs. The forecast is that there will be further reductions in printer assets and a move towards consolidating printing services.

“Each printer now has a printer profile and associated costs attached to it. We can now report to the organisation it’s true print costs with accurate information,” explains Mohandeep.

“Departmental heads will be able to see what they are spending and have improved accountability, they have a greater desire to understand the behaviour of users and their requirements. We now have greater control – printing is now transparent. Print Audit 6 is a powerful tool and easy to use, going forward we will look to implement the rules element of re-directing larger print jobs to the most appropriate device and enforce where possible double sided and monochrome delivering additional cost savings.”

We now produce regular reports for department heads. This has helped them to be more accountable and ensure printer use is not abused.”