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Case Study: Enercon Engineering

The Customer Challenge
Founded in 1975, Enercon Engineering has grown from a small Central Illinois company into one of the world’s leading manufacturers in the power generation industry. The company manages its more than 38,000 projects in 100 countries from its headquarters in East Peoria, Ill.

It’s up to Ryan Minor, Network Administrator for Enercon, to make sure the roughly 150 employees who work in the facility have the technical infrastructure they need to operate successfully on a day-to-day basis.

When he encountered some reliability and service issues with their existing printer contractor, he knew it was time to seek out a new partner.

“I was interested in finding a vendor who would help us better track our costs and determine how much we were using our machines and if we would be able to eliminate some machines,” said Minor.

He turned to RK Dixon, a market leader when it comes to copiers, printers and computer networks.

The RK Dixon Solution
To help businesses proactively manage their print services and ensure they are utilizing their equipment in the most effective way, RK Dixon developed a systematic approach to its managed print services. The three stages are discovery, analysis and fleet management.

“Experts have estimated that the total cost of document management can cost a company up to 5 percent of its total revenue unless carefully controlled and managed,” said Mike Hamilton, Senior Business Consultant for RK Dixon. “By taking a systematic approach to print services, we are able to help our customers make educated decisions about their printer fleets that will ultimately help them save money and increase efficiencies.”

Hamilton and his team began the discovery process by electronically monitoring Enercon’s existing printer fleet, determining physical inventory and conducting brief end user interviews. The data helped him analyze how printers were being used throughout the facility and truly grasp the impact of those metrics on costs.

Using this approach, Hamilton and Minor together developed a print management strategy that helped Enercon gain control of their printer fleet and dramatically reduce costs.

“We were able to look at the data and determine where printers were most needed and where we were able to take advantage of cost savings by eliminating machines,” said Minor. “We had never had that type of insight into our data before.”

The Results
RK Dixon’s approach allowed Enercon to consolidate its printer fleet in the facility. The RK Dixon team was able to install the new printer fleet within one work day by fully prepping each piece of equipment so that it only took a few minutes at each unit to swap out the old for the new.

Despite the advance planning, the implementation was not without its challenges.

“There was some culture shock among employees who were going to lose their individual printers because of the consolidation,” said Minor. “But together we were able to help them understand that this was for the overall good of the company and that it would help us take
advantage of cost savings.”

The managed print program has resulted in some dramatic cost savings for Enercon. Their savings have increased from 35 percent in the months immediately following the deployment to roughly 38 percent today.

The program also enables Enercon to change, expand and install additional equipment without capital expenditures and take advantage of added printer functionality and a program that automatically orders
new toner when thresholds become low.

“It saves me a lot of time and makes everything a lot easier,” said Minor. “I would definitely recommend RK Dixon managed print services program to other medium to large-sized businesses. It’s helped us out quite a bit.”

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