Westpac

Banking on success with IBM and Ricoh

Gary Sim, General Manager of Westpac’s Service Delivery Infrastructure Group, shares the journey Westpac has taken to put in place a print solution to reduce waste, improve efficiencies, and successfully contribute to Westpac’s environmental and sustainability goals.

Ricoh Managed Document Services (MDS) addresses the business practices surrounding the management of printed and electronic information. Ricoh MDS has been delivering effective managed document services for enterprises like Westpac to help them control capital costs for output devices, reduce document related inefficiencies, minimise material waste and reduce the size of the document management fleet.

The company

Westpac was the first bank established in Australia. It began trading on 8 April, 1817 as the Bank of New South Wales, with a single office in Macquarie Place, Sydney. In 1982, with the merger of the Commercial Bank of Australia, it changed its name to Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC). In 2002, Westpac was registered as a public company limited by shares under the Australian Corporations Act (2001). More recently, in December 2008, Westpac merged with St. George Bank Limited.

Today, Westpac is a banking leader in Australia, New Zealand and the near Pacific region. It maintains offices in key financial centres around the world including London, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai and Singapore. Employing close to 40,000 people, Westpac is ranked in the top five listed companies by market capitalisation on the Australian Securities Exchange Limited (ASX).

With annual profits over A$6 billion, Westpac serves over 12 million customers. It also owns and operates other major financial businesses, such as St.George Bank, BT Financial, Westpac NZ, Bank of Melbourne, Bank SA and RAMS.

We will have a printer fleet that is more sustainable, more secure, more convenient and more efficient. We estimate huge savings in paper, toner, freight and maintenance.

The challenge

Westpac’s workplace print technology environment was in need of a refresh. They wanted a single vendor that could provide consistent levels of service and response times; a pricing model that would give them visibility of their print performance; high levels of document security; improve access to document workflow and a reduction in their paper and consumables waste.

The approach and solution

Working in partnership with IBM, Ricoh received the green light from Westpac to build an MDS solution to meet the bank’s strategic goals. This meant embarking on a highly detailed discovery process that could provide Westpac with a strategically-aligned document management solution in a timely manner. Ricoh applied its proven MDS methodology to help Westpac meet its print environment goals.

Understand: What are the real problems?

In following a proven discovery process, Ricoh’s MDS project team conducted extensive workshops and interviews with key stakeholders across the bank’s wide enterprise, to fully understand the drivers for change. This included:

• Identifying current fleet information, service and supply arrangements, and security risks
• Discovering infrastructure or document bottlenecks and environmental impacts
• Understanding the intent and objectives of the existing WBC print policy and future state business objectives
• Providing a full and complete picture of the current state
• Analysing the total cost of ownership (TCO), environmental options, and any potential hidden costs

Improve: Service, costs and environmental performance

Based on the findings from its extensive discovery process, Ricoh proposed a tailored solution to meet Westpac’s immediate and longterm requirements. The service commenced in December 2010, whereby Ricoh provides a mix of suitable multifunction devices (MFDs), on-site valet staff, fleet management and reporting software, coupled with a comprehensive project and change management approach.

IBM, Ricoh and Westpac each applied a careful thought process, along with detailed negotiations, to ensure that all areas of the engagement were covered and well defined.

Transform: A big project with rewarding outcomes

With a strong team of people that included project, change, and service management – overseen by the account management team – Ricoh embarked on a sizeable and complex transformation project for Westpac.

With only four months from signing the agreement to the agreed start date of 1 April 2011, Ricoh was kept busy during the transition stage:

• Designing and installing the technical solution which would later be deployed into production across 900+ locations
• Building processes and designing agreements for service management and third-party device maintenance and supply
• Integrating the service desk, consumables management and IMAC-D remote IT Services
• Designing and implementing service-delivery – including valet services, management information reporting, service level management, financial management, asset management, operations and online services – including the Customer and Service Centre web portals

Ricoh MDS: Solutions to Westpac’s challenges

From 1 April, 2011, Ricoh moved into the audit, design and implementation stages, with a scheduled completion date of December 2012. This transform phase includes:

• Conducting a comprehensive discovery process with site audits to define the current print environment and any special print requirements
• Preparing and communicating a future-state design plan to support Westpac’s print policy
• Rolling out devices and solutions for 954 sites
• Implementing technical solutions to support Ricoh’s Follow You Print solution across all locations
• Introducing Ricoh’s consumables recycling program
• Preparing change management strategies to support the implementation and acceptance of the new services and solutions

Govern: Realising the benefits

With Ricoh’s enterprise-wide MDS solution implemented, a process of formal quarterly reviews by on-site MDS personnel continues to demonstrate productivity savings for Westpac, as well as improved workflow efficiencies and waste reduction. Westpac management now have greater visibility over performance and improved control and governance – thanks to Ricoh’s customised Equitrac reporting and management software.

Westpac no longer needs to deal with multiple vendors – everything is managed under one document services contract, saving time and effort. What’s more, it now has a consolidated device fleet providing the latest technology and improved reliability.

Most importantly, Ricoh is helping Westpac manage its entire print environment, with a complete fleet of Ricoh printers that intelligently switch off when they’re not in use. Westpac’s print policy has helped change user behaviour by providing Follow You printing, which means users can print from devices across the enterprise.

Additionally, if print jobs are not activated within a stated timeframe, they are automatically deleted from the device – saving paper and ensuring a secure green document environment.

The bottom line says it all: Ricoh has helped Westpac save 5,000 reams of paper every year, weighing 13 tonnes – that’s 16,000 kg of CO₂ saved each year for the planet, or the equivalent of 221 trees^*.

Optimise: An ongoing partnership

Implementation is not the end of the story. Ricoh continues to manage and control the quality of service delivery and support for Westpac – recommending strategies for continuous improvement, and proactively monitoring and optimising resources so that devices and services are available when required by the end users.

The IBM, Ricoh and Westpac partnership has netted significant benefits that allow Westpac to print and manage documents with less waste, less cost, less complexity and less CO₂.

Due to the success of the initial solution, Ricoh is getting ready to assist other Westpac businesses – such as St. George Bank, BT Financial, Bank SA, Bank of Melbourne and RAMS – look for ways to improve their productivity and lower their costs. Most importantly, to provide a state-of-the-art print environment that helps Westpac Banking Corporation achieve its business and sustainability goals.

^* Source: US Legal-Research Foundation and US Environmental Protection Agency