Colorado Integrated Document Solutions Adopts Managed Print Program

By Ashley Roberts

The project received IT support from the top level of Colorado’s government. From left: Brenda Berlin, Deputy CIO and CFO, Governor’s Office of IT; Teddy Abad-Perez, IDS Secure Office Print Ecosystem Manager; and Trace Ridpath, Director of IT Governance and Security, Governor’s Office of IT.

In 2011, Colorado’s Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) operation was managing the state’s fleet of multi-function printers (MFPs) while the IT division of the Governor’s Office was managing the network and single-function printers. With 15 state agencies to support, 1,000 MFPs and more than 10,000 network or personal printers, IDS, the Governor’s Office of IT and a third-party consultant came together to decide the best course of action for the future of the MFP service.

Teddy Abad-Perez, Secure Office Print Ecosystem Manager at IDS, says that based on the results of the business case, it was decided that both the MFP and printer fleets would be managed by IDS, which is part of the Department of Personnel & Administration’s Division of Central Services.

Furthermore, to better serve executive agency customers, IDS agreed to four initiatives that were recommended in the business case:

Create a centralized MFP program.
Standardize printers.
Work with IT to provide network security software for all printers.
Manage print service solutions.

Xerox won the contract bid to provide the hardware and automate all of the service processes. Previously, three different vendors supplied MFPs.

The fourth part of the process, the managed print service solution, is currently in the proof of concept stage.

“The managed print services recommendation was to provide oversight to state agencies on proactively monitoring printers on the network from a security standpoint,” Abad-Perez says, “to monitor on-time consumable ordering and to have them report remote diagnostics to the vendor for proactive maintenance.”

The program was also developed to enable mobile print solutions and to provide machine metrics, which, as Abad-Perez explains, would combine all state agencies’ data to make better business decisions.

“Through our lean assessment, we realized that agencies never knew how much they printed in dollar amounts,” he says. “So now the information will be available.”

Showing value is important to every in-plant, and Abad-Perez says that there are three main ways that IDS is using this program to illustrate its importance to the state.

“Securing the print ecosystem” is crucial, he says, because hackers are now targeting MFPs, so IDS will use its capabilities to provide security for all devices that touch the network. This allows for an enterprise solution to push out security firmware upgrades simultaneously. Furthermore, since Colorado is a state that cares about the environment, the program will be used to provide sustainability guidance to all agencies. Users will be able to check printer diagnostics to determine if jobs should be printed on-site or sent to the in-plant. Finally, the program provides a service enhancement to the agencies.

The IDS program, now rebranded the Secure Print Office Ecosystem (SOPE), “lets our customers know that we partnered with the IT office to bring them a secure printing service that will help them in a multitude of ways, such as sustainability, security and service enhancement, all at a lowered cost,” Abad-Perez notes.

The initial savings of the lean project have totalled nearly $10 million, Abad-Perez says. IDS plans to conclude onboarding by December 2018.