Summary:
- A federal agency found it impractical to reprogram their mainframe application
- RPM converts their print streams to PDF, includes date and time stamp, routes via email to users named in the document
- The agency is now achieving their sustainability initiatives, with print costs cut 50%
An agency reviews costs vs requirements
This federal government agency, like many, has established procedures to automatically print approved reports. Over time, this incurs significant costs in reams of paper, for personnel managing the printed reports, and in the cost of servicing overused agency printers. In 2015, an agency mid-level manager began researching ways to reduce and eliminate some automatic printing.
“RPM was really easy to work with. There’s no big learning curve and the features and functionality are self-evident."
“We quickly realized that it was impractical to program the mainframe application that managed report printing, so we researched software that would work on our existing system. RPM Remote Print Manager, from Brooks Internet Software, looked like a cost-effective solution that included some other benefits,” he said. These included the ability to identify certain zones in reports and automatically email the reports to named users. And, because at least one other federal agency was already using RPM, it had been through the government acquisition approval process and was on a purchase list.
PDF automation saves both time and materials
“Before adopting RPM, the agency was going through reams and reams of paper supporting 500 people reading printed reports at about 15 offices throughout the state. One office was using 500 sheets a day. We used an RPM free trial license and found it was very flexible, did everything we wanted and would be easy to roll out to all the other offices,” he said. “Now we share reports from the mainframe, and RPM grabs the print streams, digitally scans the reports and routes them electronically, with date and time stamps, to staff that needs to see specific reports. It saves us so much time and money because there’s less printing, the flow of information is much better, and staff can read reports from email instead of taking the time to log into the mainframe.”
“The biggest thing otherwise is that RPM helps us with government sustainability initiatives. Not only are we satisfying those, we can report on our results, as required. In our case, printing costs were cut by 50 percent, and we have demonstrable savings on printer wear and tear and toner costs. In the end, this means we are saving taxpayer money,” he said. As for working with Brooks Internet Software to deploy RPM and keep it running in each office, the manager explained that other than some help during the initial setup, he hasn’t required support. “RPM was really easy to work with. There’s no big learning curve and the features and functionality are self-evident. Before and after RPM was like going from night and day. We’re really keeping everyone using the system very happy, and can’t say enough about the software,” he said.
“Without RPM, we’d never have been able to program the existing mainframe system to do this without incurring significant costs and managing cascading changes. And RPM virtual printing is an excellent fix for a very few staffers off-site without access to agency printers – they now get reports by email instead of picking up automated print jobs at our agency offices,” said the manager.