THE COMPANY
Throughout 125 years, Skanska has been a modern and innovative developer and contractor, building what society needs. Today, Skanska is one of the world’s leading project development and construction groups with expertise in construction, development of commercial and residential projects and public-private partnerships. Based on its global green experience, Skanska aims to be the clients’ first choice for Green solutions. The Group currently has 53,000 employees in selected home markets in Europe, in the US and Latin America. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, Skanska’s sales in 2011 totalled SEK 123 billion.
In the UK, Skanska employs approximately 4,000 staff and undertakes around £1.2 billion worth of work each year carrying out all aspects of the construction, development and infrastructure process – from financing projects, through design and construction through to facilities management, operation and maintenance.
Skanska works in accordance with the Skanska Code of Conduct and to its Five Zeros, which reflect its core values: Zero loss-making projects, Zero accidents, Zero environmental incidents, Zero ethical breaches and
Zero defects.
The organisation was named the Greenest company in the Sunday Times 2011 Best Green Companies Awards and the Best Contribution to Corporate Responsibility at the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) ‘Supply Management awards 2011’.
THE BRIEF
Skanska is an organisation with very complex printing needs. Its locations throughout the UK vary from static offices to temporary on-site structures, all with unique printing requirements. This can range from mono to colour, MFD (multi-function devices) to desktop equipment and from high to low volume production. However, they all faced the same internal challenge… to reduce printing costs in paper, consumables and energy use.
Before M2 partnered with Skanska the company’s printer estate of 965 printers, copiers and faxes had grown in an unregulated way. This denied the IT department the ability to monitor and support the devices causing delays and internal issues. Although there were more than 10 service contracts across its estate, some machines were not covered, which caused further cost implications.
It became clear that most of the printers were not fit for the locations’ purpose; this was either due to an over or under specification of the machine or incorrect functionalities. Both of these issues added monetary costs to the business and created user dissatisfaction.
“It wasn’t cost efficient,” said Victoria Swaker, strategic buyer at Skanska. “Improved cost efficiency was one of the main drivers for looking to standardise our printing requirements with a single supplier.”
THE SOLUTION
Skanska started a tender process in September 2008 and the company’s printer supplier, HP, recommended talking to M2 about streamlining its printing requirements.
Upon its appointment in April 2009, M2 carried out a printer audit, including costs, and put forward suggestions for improvement. This involved replacing Skanska’s whole printer estate and installing new machines specifically tailored to each location and departments requirements. The rollout involved M2 working very closely with the relevant stakeholders of the business ensuring they understood the customers’ exact requirements.
The whole project took around six months to complete and due to relationships previously created through the audit, M2 was able to offer a seamless installation across the entire estate. This included the operational divisions, which may only require printers for two or three months at a time.
At the end of the process, Skanska had the right equipment for each individual location. Extra features, including colour printing capability, were only included on printers where there was a specific business need and duplex printing was set as default to minimise paper waste. Incorporating the whole fleet onto one service contract meant fewer headaches and a reduction in ‘man’ hours for the company’s IT department.
THE BENEFITS
By matching the company’s exact requirements to the printer estate, M2 was able to reduce the number of printers at Skanska by over 450 devices, and considerably reduce power, consumables and maintenance costs.
Thanks to a management and control system from M2, Skanska now has complete control over what printers are attached to the network, further improving maintenance and reducing costs. Since M2’s introduction of default duplex printing, the company has reduced its paper requirements by over 750,000 sheets. It has also been able to reduce expenditure on toner cartridges by implementing a default setting to black and white print.
Via an automated toner notification system, M2 has increased device availability by ensuring consumables are ordered and dispatched without customer intervention.
And Victoria Swaker is full of praise for M2’s customer service. “I’m extremely happy with them,” she said. “We’re so impressed we are even trying to see if they can help us with other areas of our business.”
