Rochester, NY -- We originally reported back in March 2011 that the city of Rochester, NY had contracted out with Xerox to provide MPS services to help them save money. Now, almost a year later, the city is reporting a savings of $2 million in printer costs.
When Xerox and the city of Rochester began talking, there were 459 different printers operating across the city offices being managed by their IT department. After performing an inventory, they were able to determine which printers were actually needed. Through their contract with Xerox, the 459 printers were replaced with 168 new devices, including 24 ColorQube 9200 MFPs. Perhaps, more importantly, the shrinking of the printer volume has enabled their IT department to redeploy to other projects.
During their talks with Xerox, the city of Rochester also was able to see that it wasted a lot of money buying consumables for the 220 different models it had been supporting. The city itself has a population around 200,000 people, and they have to be careful with where their money is spent.
CIO David Mayor said that he had no idea that the city even had 459 printers until Xerox came in. He also pointed out that because of the way purchasing was set up, to buy toner was a long process which contained its own hidden costs. Through Xerox, those costs have been eliminated. While he admits that there was initial resistance to what he described as he said “…people didn’t want to give up their personal printers. Taking someone’s personal printer off their credenza is no way to win a popularity contest.” After the printers were deployed, however, there was no resistance. As he notes, “When you save $2 million, you’re saving jobs. You can consolidate your printers or you might have to ante up additional headcount.”
With results like these, perhaps we will see more cities looking at Xerox and the other leading MPS providers like HP and Lexmark to save their cities and their citizens money.
