Furniture manufacturer cuts costs and improves printing services

Cutting to the chase

Problem

Print environment had no control and no colour printing

Solution

PaperCut MF improves all printing processes while adding greater security

Outcome

Almost 500,000 fewer copies per year, greater security, peace of mind

The Fournier Habitat Group (FHG) is a French family-run business that specializes in the manufacture of kitchen and bathroom furniture. Best known for its Mobalpa, SoCoo’c and Perene brands, GFH employs 2,200 staff at seven sites in France.

The company wanted to adopt a print quota solution, primarily to regulate its printing volumes for economic and environmental reasons.

And when a printer went offline, staff would have to manually choose another printer to print to - wasting time and causing IT callouts.

Overall, it’s the IT team, just as much as the employees, who are more efficient and able to enjoy greater peace of mind"

- Christophe Chatel,

End Customer and IT Manager, Fournier Habitat Group

Problem

Print environment had no control and no colour printing

FHG needed to upgrade its fleet of 250 multi-function printers (MFPs) with the aim of gaining greater control over its printing management.

While the group had already subscribed to a solution that enabled it to manage quotas, it had not rolled it out, because it was too complicated for its IT team to manage.

“The primary aim was to have better management of printing. Specifically, we wanted to give our staff the ability to print in colour, while maintaining control over printing,” Christophe Chatel explains.

However, with colour printing ten times more expensive than printing in black and white, the goal was to reduce both the costs of printing, AND the amount of printing carried out.

Solution

PaperCut MF improves all printing processes while adding greater security

The group chose PaperCut MF to solve its printing problems.

“The solution quickly met our expectations and also enabled us to go a lot further than what was expected at the start,” Christophe declares.

PaperCut MF makes it possible to define—in just a few clicks—the various employees’ rights and quotas when it comes to printing (colour, black and white, number of pages per period, etc) and to continuously monitor their consumption.

The group was then able to roll out its printing policies in a very straightforward manner, by coupling them with the benefits offered by PaperCut MF’s “Find-Me” printing function. This made it possible to provide users with a unique virtual queue for their print jobs, so that they could release their documents with complete security.

The practice of using access badges to the buildings, once extended to the printing and digitalisation functions, made it possible to improve security and confidentiality on print jobs, but also made it possible to avoid certain documents being forgotten about or printed by accident.

Outcome

Almost 500,000 fewer copies per year, greater security, peace of mind

Placed end to end, the various functions of PaperCut implemented by FHG enabled it to make a saving of almost 10%, equal to 490,000 pages per year. This reduction also applies to environmental aspects and is an integral part of the company’s corporate responsibility policy.

Along with these measurable gains, FHG can rely on PaperCut MF reports to carry out a detailed study of the consumption and use of printing facilities, and upgrade processes such as invoicing or the management of deliveries.

PaperCut MF has also made it possible to eliminate numerous sources of friction that can be linked to printing, such as malfunctions, queues for the additional functions, and problems with confidentiality:

“Overall, it’s the IT team, just as much as the employees, who are more efficient and able to enjoy greater peace of mind,” Christophe says.

For the IT team, in addition to its intuitive interface, PaperCut MF also provides peace of mind:

“The solution is simple, reliable, and robust. We don’t need to worry, and the advantages it brings are incomparable compared to what it asks of us in terms of management and use,” adds Christophe, who hails the simplicity and robustness of the solution that has been rolled out on site.

Indeed, given that the sites do not always have the benefit of optimal Internet connections due to their geographical locations, installing PaperCut MF, which is hosted on a local server, meant that the group could rely on a solution that guarantees continuity in the printing service, regardless of whether access to the web is available.

Christophe is a firm believer in PaperCut MF and wants to continue upgrading his fleet of printers around it. PaperCut’s agnostic approach will enable him, in future, to be more flexible from the point of view of hosting the solution, compatibility with the different operating systems, workstations, and connected objects, and the various models of printer on the market.