EDD's Print System Overhaul Nets a Win for Efficiency, Savings

The phrase “managed print services” might not get majority airtime at big tech conferences or in the halls of state government in an age dominated by AI and cybersecurity conversations, but that doesn’t make its practice any less significant.

What managed print services may lack in headline-grabbing flash, it makes up for with real-world impact. Take the recent case of California’s Employment Development Department (EDD), for example, where a partnership with Xerox just reached steady state on a project that overhauled the disparate mess of printers, copiers, scanners and fax machines across the agency's headquarters and 130 field offices.

For context, EDD’s printing environment was made up of more than 150 different models from 16 different manufacturers, further complicated by 137 unique consumables. What’s more, 97 percent of the technology was more than five years old, presenting not only consistent operational issues but potential security concerns as well.

The effort was driven by Enterprise Technical Operation Support Manager Samuel Retta, who saw the need to consolidate the chaotic environment and realize cost savings throughout the department. The department’s recent move to its new headquarters building in Sacramento offered the perfect opportunity to give this work a closer look.

“In this case, the hard sale was not very difficult because 97 percent of our fleet was way over five years old; the average was seven years,” he said.

The project saw the department’s machine footprint shrink dramatically from more than 2,026 devices to just more than 730 devices, Retta said. EDD now relies on only two models to meet the needs of EDD’s 10,332 users: a large floor model and a smaller desktop model. Retta’s team can see and control the entire printing network from a single portal.

“The stated goal was 10-to-1 [users per printer]. We were able to achieve 13-to-1, which is really nice. We optimized it really well,” Retta explained. “We have the same print drivers for all of the printers, and they're centrally managed. We get to see all of our fleet from the portal.”

In addition to consolidating the number of machines and the burden of ownership, the move toward Xerox printers is also helping to boost security, both in physical document protection and cybersecurity.

Aging machines will no longer be left on the network as a potential threat vector for cyberattacks, and badge-only access allows staff to print sensitive documents without fear of them finding their way into another print job accidentally. Jobs that sit in the queue for too long are automatically deleted.

The substantial reduction in machines and models has also had a significant impact on the consumables needed to keep EDD in the printing game. Before the project, Xerox General Manager for Public Sector West Michelle Yoshino said the department had a significant amount of toner, ink and other consumables sitting unused and slowly expiring.

“Our goal at Xerox is to work with our customers, making sure that the data and the technology that we provide to them are in real time and really help them to manage effectively,” she said.

Retta and Yoshino said that while the changes have had a substantial impact on operations, they’ve also come with significant cost-savings.

A recent analysis conducted by the company puts the estimated annual cost of the legacy fleet operations at around $1.87 million; under the managed print services contract, that figure now sits at around $1.26 million. Monthly printing costs across the department, meanwhile, have dropped 33 percent, or $51,231, according to the Xerox analysis.

With fewer machines, lower overhead and a pay-to-print model, Yoshino said the department will continue to realize savings while Xerox deals with everything else. The next steps for the project include analysis of field office workflows to find optimization opportunities.