Sheriff's In-plant Gets Equipment
Once copying and printing was brought in-house, the Manatee County Sheriff's Office was able to take advantage of the low cost of color.
Sidney Ettedgui of the Manatee County, Florida, Sheriff's Office certainly has his hands full. As a crime prevention practitioner he is often speaking to community groups and planning programs to deter crime.
As if that weren't enough, though, he is also responsible for managing all internal and external documents for the 1,005-person sheriff's department, which includes more than 356 law enforcement officials. With officers constantly filing crime and incident reports, document management is a priority.
About five years ago Ettedgui brought in a Risograph duplicator to produce flyers and handouts for his programs. Within four months, that machine had paid for itself.
The efficiency and cost savings of in-house printing began to attract more jobs, however. With over 600 forms and ever-changing documents like wanted posters, missing children posters, recruiting materials and brochures, the agency needed a more efficient way of managing, coordinating production and distributing documents. The sheriff's office was producing nearly two million pages per year, so a system with more efficiency and cost effectiveness was required.
After trying unsuccessfully to outsource printing, Ettedgui turned to Danka Business Systems, headquartered in nearby St. Petersburg. Danka's presence has had a big impact on the sheriff's office since the two started doing business together. According to Ettedgui, people around the office were skeptical at first because of the initial costs, but when they saw that the agency saved over $165,000 in one year, their skepticism disappeared.
"Danka sat down with us and drew up several possible scenarios they thought would work to our business advantage. This even included color copiers, something we thought was far beyond our budget," says Ettedgui.
Triple Purchase
After reviewing the cost-effective options for their present and future needs, the Manatee Country Sheriff's Office purchased from Danka a Kodak ImageSource 92 SP, a Danka C2000 color copier-printer and an ENCAD 36 Pro wide-format printer.
"These copiers are fully networkable. Everything is sent directly to these machines for immediate printing or for future jobs that can be printed later," says Ettedgui. "We can receive jobs from anywhere in the agency or in the county over the network and they can be printed on any machine. Using color is especially important because we know messages are absorbed more quickly when the document is in color."
Ettedgui claims color wanted posters and missing children posters are more effective helping to locate missing people, since color provides a more accurate likeness. The Sheriff's Office also discovered tremendous savings when printing in color, which now costs only pennies per page.
The Kodak ImageSource 92 SP has also brought benefits. "The system allows us to scan, print and control our printing environment," says Ettedgui. "We are able to manage, send and output our documents in any format, such as TIFF formats. If the documents need to be updated or customized down the road, we do it instantaneously. We are looking at the ability to archive our documents on CD-ROM to save on file space."
The CD burner is already being used to store forms and manuals, which some officers can access via laptop computers in their vehicles.
Ettedgui says the ENCAD wide-format printer has become very handy for producing training posters, wanted posters and crime prevention posters. The shop also has Mac and PC workstations, scanners and a Challenge Cutter, as well as binding and laminating equipment. It also recently upgraded to a new Riso GR3770 digital duplicator. Most of this gear, Ettedgui says, is operated by his assistant, Karen Bender.
"When it comes down to it, I think of all the equipment here as being free, because of the savings we've realized in just one year," says Ettedgui.
by Casey McNight
