The Paper Chase

If it has anything to do with paper, Printing Services at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is likely in charge of it.

by Caroline Miller

AT THE University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Printing Services has found a simple path to rich rewards:

"We are trying to follow the paper," says Printing Services Director Geoff Bant. "We try to diversify as much as we can. We don't want to just be a printer or just a copying place. We try to be a lot of everything. The campus needs all sorts of things; the challenge is to provide these services without losing money."

The university is located two hours from any major city, so the ability to provide a wide range of services to students, faculty and staff is critical. It often takes the in-plant outside the realm of traditional in-plant services.

Besides commercial printing and copying, Printing Services' offerings include: photography, photo development, large-format printing, MIS printing, self-service copying and design.

Recognizing that, in a campus environment, people often print to self-service machines rather than bringing jobs to the in-plant, Printing Services developed a program to manage the printers and walk-up copiers in the university's libraries, computer labs and departmental offices.

"We are trying to get that paper wherever it comes out. If it comes out next to someone's printer, than we want that laser printer or copier to be ours," remarks Bant.

For example, he says, Printing Services used to print 1,000 departmental policy manuals and send them out. Now, it prints about 500 manuals for certain people and then puts the manual on the Web for people to download and print.

"If we are smart, we own the devices to print the manual out on, because they will print more than 2,000 manuals in a department," explains Bant. "We are trying to make sure we stay ahead of where the paper is going."

Growth Through Absorption

With 95 employees and nine campus print centers, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Printing Services is one of the country's largest university in-plants. It ranked 25th on the IPG Top 50, and 7th in our December ranking of top university in-plants.

Though the in-plant got its start way back in 1900, it wasn't until 13 years ago that its growth began in earnest. Back then there were 37 independent departmental copy and print centers across campus.

"Over the years, we have absorbed or consolidated all but about four of those shops," reveals Bant. "We've absorbed their employees, their debts and their equipment."

Bant also began meeting with department heads to convince them that Printing Services was in a better position to manage their copying and printing work.

"We spent a lot of time going to departments and asking them, 'why are you doing this on your own? We can do this for you.' We can give them what they had before, but they don't have to worry about buying equipment or staffing. Slowly, that has talked some people into not wanting do it on their own. We now have over 400 self-service copiers that we've placed throughout departments, and we've done it without a mandate," reports Bant.

The self-service copier program enables the in-plant to centrally contract with different vendors. Departments get the same machine, but now the charge is internal, and they don't have to deal with sales representatives or the repair people.

"They call us, and we take care of it. The vendors give us a price that is lower than the department because they know that they are dealing with someone that is going to screen the service calls and that they won't get called out every time a staple gets caught. If we manage it properly, we come out making some money on it. It's been very popular. In the last four years we've gone from 25 machines to over 450 machines," reveals Bant.

Extracurricular Activities

Printing Services is also expanding its reach outside of the university. The school is taking major strides to bring private enterprise onto campus and into university buildings in the form of start-up companies.

"We are a major computer facility. We have faculty members who start their own business while they are working for the university," Bant says. "The university is trying to make it easier for them to do that. We are trying to serve those kind of ventures by putting copiers in these offices."

Printing Services also got permission to provide copier services to the county administration offices.

"We are both public institutions. But there are still some gray areas, because we are not supposed to be competing with the private sector. But you can see those boundaries breaking down as the private sector comes onto campus and the lines get blurred," Bant admits.

Many Other Services

In addition to printing and copying, Printing Services serves other campus needs. Photography drop boxes are placed in dormitories, so students can drop film into them on the way to breakfast. They receive developed photos in their mailboxes a few days later.

"They don't have to trek across campus or drive somewhere to get their film developed," notes Bant. "We just send it to an outside lab for development and we mark it up."

One new area the in-plant is considering venturing into is book publishing.

"We are being asked to do books—and not just print them, but help get them edited, do the publicity and the fulfillment. The University Press only publishes so many things a year, but people write books and they want to have them published. Desktop publishing has made it so that they don't feel like they need to go to a big publisher."

The diversified services offered by the in-plant have helped keep facilities management organizations from stirring up trouble, reports Bant.

"It would be pretty difficult for one outsourcer to come in and do all the things that we do," he says. "They are not going to want to provide all of the odd-ball services that we do."

However, when you have such a broad base of services, it can be hard to get the word out to a campus with 33,000 students, more than 13,000 faculty and staff members, 220 buildings and 1,388 acres.

There is no mandate to use Printing Services, and 99 percent of the in-plant's $9 million budget comes from chargebacks, with a very small amount of funding from the state to take care of public services provided for free.

"We figure we do half the business on campus," says Bant. "Our biggest problem is that we are not competing on price but on time. A lot of our business is fund-raising, and that is all becoming a science of timing. If we do a coffee table book, it has to arrive at a potential donor's house two days before the phone call comes to follow it up. If it gets there two days afterwards it's no good. We lose work if we can't turn it around in shorter and shorter times."

Staying on top of local competition means a commitment to marketing.

"We have to keep telling them that we are here—but not assault them with lots of flyers, because then people think we are wasting money," he says.

Printing Services gets the word out by sponsoring presentations. One upcoming topic is how departments can get print projects done in a less-expensive manner.

"In essence, we are trying to get them thinking about duplexing and different kinds of binding that would be cheaper. A private enterprise wouldn't want them to do things cheaper. But if you look at the big picture, we are in the same boat. We want them to realize that we are on their side. If we do it right, we stand to make more money from the campaign," he says.

Targeted Marketing

Printing Services also uses its connections behind the scenes to capture new business.

"We can do a data dump from the university's main computers. We can see which department went to which printer and how much money they spent. We can target those certain people rather than doing a blanket campus marketing program," Bant says.

The in-plant also offers a free print and promotional products bidding service for the campus, acting like a print broker. Clients can bring a job specification, and the in-plant then calls local printers and gets bids. Printing Services also offers its own bid on the job.

"We can't underbid the printer. But, it does bring a lot of people in the door, and it gives us a chance to get to know them," he says. "Plus, we get to look at where we lost business and how much we lost it by."

It also enables Bant to track the jobs the in-plant wins. Bant takes the next closest and highest bid and tracks the difference in job prices.

"An in-plant's worth can be a hard figure to prove," he admits. "This gives us the ability to prove the value of the in-plant. We want to be a big part of everything we can, and we want them to know that we are doing everything we can for them in an efficient manner."