ERGT Australia

ERGT slashes printing costs and streamlines archiving with Ricoh 

ERGT Australia is a leading training services provider specialising in safety, survival and emergency response training for high-risk industries. Established in 1994, ERGT has more than 180 staff and facilities in Perth, Darwin and Melbourne.

The company prides itself on delivering professional and engaging training for its clients by using simulated environments to develop skills and behaviours that address safety-critical industry needs. ERGT also manages dedicated training centres for energy company Esso and the Australian Defence Force.

Tailored course materials

As part of its specialised training courses, ERGT provides all participants with comprehensive printed manuals. These summarise the topics covered in the course and become a handy reference document once training has been completed.

To produce these manuals, ERGT had been relying on an ageing competitor office device which was nearing the end of its operational life. “The cost per page was climbing as the device aged and we were starting to have some reliability issues,” says ERGT’s Resource Co- ordinator Patrick Hannigan. “We knew it was time to look for an alternative.”

The company was also struggling with the task of archiving training workbooks and assessment sheets. To comply with regulations these must be retained for at least 7 years and so are scanned and held electronically.

“This process was very manual and time intensive and were keen to find a more streamlined way of completing the archiving process,” he says.

A Ricoh alternative

In early 2014, the company began looking for an alternative printing vendor and was impressed with the offerings suggested by Ricoh. “They took the time to understand our specific requirements and put forward a very compelling business case for switching to their devices and management services,” says Hannigan.

The initial rollout comprised a fleet of new devices for the ERGT offices. An MP C6004exSP multi-function colour printer was deployed in the company’s head office in Perth with a second MP C2003SP multi-function device installed in the reception area. A third SP 3510SF unit was also placed in the office to handle smaller print and scanning jobs.

“During the evaluation process, Ricoh had also recommended to us that we should consider a production device to handle our training manual print runs,” says Hannigan. “We had previously been hand finishing these production runs, including manually folding and stapling which was both a slow and tedious process.

After evaluating a number of options, a decision was taken to deploy a Ricoh Pro C5100s production device including a Plockmatic professional booklet maker. All of which has subsequently been upgraded to the newest Ricoh Pro C5210s solution including its upgraded Fiery print server.

Our cost per page for colour and black and white prints has dropped considerably which represents a significant saving for us

Streamlined workflows

With the new devices in place, ERGT staff quickly noticed some significant benefits. Office printing and scanning could be completed much more quickly and the quality of both colour and black-and- white output was consistently high.

“Our cost per page for colour and black and white prints has dropped considerably which represents a significant saving for us,” says Hannigan.

When it comes to printing training materials, the improvements have been just as impressive. Large print runs can be completed in less than half the time previously required with folding and binding all completed automatically in any booklet print runs.

“The new Ricoh device can do square-edge folding and stapling which means we can produce manuals that look like perfect bound books rather than simply pieces of paper that have been stapled together,” he says. “It gives a much more professional look to the finished products.”

With templates stored in the Fiery print server, alterations to documents can be made quickly and new versions printed when ready. This allows any alterations to training courses to be accurately reflected in the provided materials.

At the same time, the Fiery print server with its printing queues allows for high speed reprints of stored booklets and training manuals. Inbuilt workflows allow for automatic preparation and a proof print to be produced for final approval.

It also holds print ready jobs which are ready to print on demand, saving both time and speeding up the entire production process.

Hannigan says the new Ricoh devices have also helped to streamline the archiving of workbooks and assessment documents. All can be readily scanned and stored in a central database.

“This means office staff can be freed up to focus on more value-adding activities."

Hannigan says ERGT recently signed a new contract with Ricoh that will extend the relationship for the next three years. “Everything they said they would deliver they have delivered,” he said. “They have become a valuable technology partner for us and we look forward to their support and guidance over the coming years.”