Posted on Mon, Mar 28, 2011 @ 10:00 AM
According to the 2010 Network Forensics Survey of more than 200 security professionals, “35% [of respondents] said they have had a significant security incident within the last 3 years, and 82% said that it's likely they will experience a significant incident within the next 3 years.”
Despite this understanding of risks, findings also showed that few organizations have the processes in place to effectively identify, determine the scope of, and respond to security breaches.
So, how can IT security professionals most cost-effectively secure their environments? By investing first in the areas that pose the biggest potential risk, and determining the proper solutions for their business’ unique needs and user base.
In my opinion, there are four key areas to consider when developing a comprehensive security plan: Network Security, Data Security, Device Security and Personnel Security. Below, I’ve outlined some basic best practices that you can implement easily in each of these areas.
Network Security
- Patch all OS and device firmware regularly as soon as vendors release them.
- Ensure that all the networking devices — including routers, switches, and access points — are protected by strong passwords.
- Ensure that remote access to network devices via Telnet and SNMP are restricted based on the IP address and granted to only authorized IT support personnel.
- Provide log-on banners such as Message of the Day (MOTD) for networking devices like Cisco routers and switches with a legal warning message to any unauthorized users attempting to access the device.
- Encrypt Internet and wireless communications and ensure that encryption keys are regularly changed in a secure fashion to prevent eavesdropping and data-manipulation based attacks.
Data Security
- Review your password policy to ensure that password protection, best-practices adherence, and retention policies reflect current practices. Update requirements for password complexity and password reuse rules if needed.
- Urge users not to open unsolicited attachments, which are a primary vehicle for viruses. Certain attachment types — .exe, .asp and .cmd — are more likely to carry malware than others.
- Never distribute sensitive information, such as payroll or customer lists, via email. It takes just one unwitting employee to forward this information into the wrong hands. Instead, store sensitive information and lists on a server that qualified employees can access securely. SharePoint is a great option.
- Remove, or update and protect, old mailboxes. Your domain may contain a few test accounts or inactive email addresses, which were likely created with simple passwords. Those easy-to-guess passwords can open the door for a savvy hacker to infiltrate your system.
Device Security
- Provide proper end-of-life management and data destruction.
- Develop desktop virtualization and application virtualization proof-of-concept initiatives.
- Implement software, such as the forthcoming Intel Anti-Theft Technology, to enable the IT department to remotely access a stolen company (or employee-owned) laptop and protect it from thieves by blocking the boot process.
- “One of 10 corporate laptops will be lost or stolen over their three-year lifetime — along with tens of thousands of dollars of data” (Source: InfoWorld)
- Interesting fact: Intel combats device theft this by allowing employees to store personal information on company machines, because then the user is more likely to value the device.
Personnel Security
- Provide employee education and training, so that they understand:
- Company device usage policies (not downloading or installing unapproved software, etc.)
- How to spot malicious apps, phishing scams, etc.
- Proper, approved use of cloud systems (MobileMe, Dropbox, etc.)
- Install video surveillance systems.
- Develop proper firing and debriefing procedures to ensure that important data doesn’t leave with departing employees.
- Start an awareness program. Prominently post basic tips — such as attachment vigilance, how to handle strange emails and password-protection steps — to keep employees conscious of the dangers they may encounter in their inboxes.
Lastly, here are a few big-picture things to keep in mind:
Create balanced security policies: Ensure compliance, protect corporate data and ensure the security of your infrastructure, but stop short of policing employees to the point where you may be hindering their abilities to do their jobs. You can always say, “no” when activity becomes inappropriate on a case-by-case basis. (Source: IT World Canada)
If you’re seeking additional budget to put the security you need in place, see this article: Five Security Budget Tips for 2011. It includes tips such as:
- Relate IT security budget needs to these three key drivers: compliance, risk of legal fees and brand damage in case of security breach.
- Discuss importance of risk management
- Find out if your customers are asking about security as a decision-maker
With basic security practices in place, and with security taking a higher profile within the organization, you’ll reap the benefits of a safer technology environment. And, you’ll be better poised to move forward with larger security initiatives if needed.
Your Thoughts?
What are your biggest security concerns? What systems are you putting in place to combat them?
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Darin Haines is Group President of MCPc's Advanced Technology Group - Delivery Division and has over 16 years of experience in leading the technology function in mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations. Connect with Darin on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Fri, Mar 18, 2011 @ 08:34 AM
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend a human resources seminar sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) that was held in the beautiful conference facility on the second floor of the 1801 Superior building — MCPc's new home starting this summer.
Office Layout
Pam Wagner, manager of the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s employment advertising team, was kind enough to give the MCPc attendees a tour of the parts of the facility we hadn’t seen yet (thefourth, second, and part of thefirst floors) after the seminar. After seeing the cool, open architecture of the second floor and how it overlooks the first, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we can take all of our current associates and new hires on a tour of their new offices as well. What an impressive, light-filled, modern space!
Design and Development
MCPc submitted the architectural and mechanical drawings out for bid, and now we’re working out the extensive details with the chosen architect (the same one who initially designed the 1801 Superior building) and the engineers. We’re also getting a lot of help from our friends at The Plain Dealer, who have started repair work in our new Technology Center — part of the current first floor of the parking garage — in preparation for our construction improvements.
Optimistically, we are keeping our fingers crossed that construction will be completed in June for a July/August move-in date.
Internal Planning
To ensure a smooth transition, MCPc hired moving consultant Lori Cole to help orchestrate our move. She met with about a dozen associates — representing departments from IT to the warehouse — to review her firm’s moving methodology and how it will work for MCPc. According to Lori, newsletters, colored labels, excessive signage, and records-retention programs are in our future.
Move Captains have been identified and assigned to various teams of associates. These individuals will be responsible for disseminating information to their teams related to the move, including the pre-move clean up, move training, move updates and more. It’s great to have someone as efficient as Lori running the show!
Anticipation Builds
In the meantime, we continue to make the best of close quarters and an overflowing parking lot in our Strongsville facility, though the newly installed bridge from our lot to the one next door is certainly helping. That said, as we continue to grow, we’re becoming increasingly excited to move into our spacious new facility in downtown Cleveland this summer.
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Beth Stec is VP of Corporate Communications and Human Resources at MCPc, and is responsible for the development and management of personnel programs and policies. Connect with Beth on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Tue, Mar 15, 2011 @ 02:47 PM
Application and Desktop Virtualization have exited the hype cycle and become one of today’s mainstream technologies. You know when Cisco, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, and IBM are doing all they can to position themselves within these solutions, it’s time to get serious.
But where do you start? Who is the vendor of choice and what technology should you deploy? Maybe you‘re contemplating how to roll out this time and money saving technology, or how to support it once it’s in place?
These are all important questions; however, it may be wise to first consider your approach. Desktop and application virtualization can be disruptive and overwhelming technologies if an organization does not develop a foundational design to build upon. For a few moments, let’s put aside the vendors and technologies and focus on the strategic side (approach) of the coin.
The Right Approach is Critical
From an end-user PC perspective, distributed desktop computing has been the norm. The PC (include Macintosh in this general acronym) brought us a rich, graphical and interactive experience, and enabled things like complex spreadsheets, the World Wide Web, and 3D graphical rendering. Unfortunately, this grand technology also has its drawbacks, including limited flexibility. For a more detailed explanation of the shift in PC usage, see my previous post, The Future of Desktop Computing: 2011 and Beyond.
The concepts around Desktop and Application Virtualization will require a new IT mindset that permeates the entire organization if they are to become truly beneficial to your business.
Two of the basic tenets of a successful approach are:
- End-user segmentation
- End-user computing environment assessment
Let’s take a high-level look at each of these.
End-User Segmentation
End-user segmentation is a type of assessment that looks at the people who use the technologies, not necessarily the technology itself. When conducting an end-user segmentation exercise, a set of criteria is agreed upon and then used to divide end users into groups. A very basic form of end-user segmentation is done today in most businesses.
For example, you may have users who need the ability to work remotely and those who do not. The users who require mobility to accomplish their jobs get put into one segment, and those who do not are put into another segment. From that division, decisions are made about who gets laptops (mobile users) and who gets desktops (office workers).
The difference between a full end-user segmentation assessment and the basic one described above is that many different criteria are used to determine the segmentation in the full assessment, such as:
- Job functions
- Location of job
- Data to which the end user needs access
- Programs used to execute one’s job
To use job function as an example, a user who is required to build detailed specifications for a new product is going to require very different tools (technologies) than those a financial analyst will need.
End-user segmentation provides you the foundation for doing technology segmentation because it helps you define what tools each end-user segment requires, and allows you to right-size the technology provided to them.
The future, based on end-user segmentation, will have IT departments providing only the tools (technologies) an employee needs to do their job and nothing more. Herein lies the true benefits of end-user segmentation: efficiency and cost reduction.
End-User Computing Environment Assessment:
Is Virtualization the Right Move?
An end-user computing assessment is simply the review, over time, of your organization’s current end-user computing environment, typically performed as one component of a desktop and application virtualization assessment. The information gathered helps you determine what applications can be virtualized and which end-user segments can benefit from virtualization. Without the data provided by this assessment, a proper solution design is not possible.
There are additional benefits to this type of assessment, including the ability to define application standardization, resource right sizing, and power savings based on technology use. For a better look at all of the benefits of conducting assessments, please see the MCPc technology assessments services page.
Conclusion
By approaching virtualization through the basic tenets described herein, you will begin to understand where these technologies can best suit your company’s unique needs and objectives. End-user segmentation and assessment are just the beginning of the long road to a scalable, sustainable virtualized environment. But starting out right will ensure a much smoother journey.
Do you see virtualization as a part of your organization’s IT and business strategy? What are you doing to get started?
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Jason Dell is a Converged Network Solution Consultant at MCPc, and is responsible for developing and programming custom solutions for clients. His expertise includes network security and security for mobile devices in the enterprise. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Thu, Mar 10, 2011 @ 02:15 PM
Each month, we share a collection of articles we’ve recently read that provide insight on prominent IT topics. February’s roundup takes a look at: iPads in the enterprise, how mobility and constant connectivity affects today’s workforce and IT, tips for successful VDI implementation projects, a step-by-step guide to building a next-generation data center, and data-warehousing expectations from Gartner.
iPad Adoption
In iPads Storm the Enterprise, Maria Korolov reports on the rapid adoption of iPads in corporate environments, and their increasing support by the C level. In fact, a quote from Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer states: "Enterprise CIOs are adding iPad to their approved device list at an amazing rate… Over 80% of the Fortune 100 are already deploying or piloting iPad, up from 65% in the September quarter.”
As Korolov explains, one likely reason for the recent uptick in corporate acceptance is iPad’s upgraded operating system (iOS), which includes enterprise-level security features such as application-level encryption and the ability to input security controls on the machines.
She goes on to explain common uses for the iPad, a few business-friendly apps (focusing largely on CRMs for mobile sales teams), key features for frequent travelers, and additional security tips to protect customer and corporate data.
For more on iPads in the enterprise, see Korolov’s complete article.
Mobility
In Constant Connectivity: The Way We Work Today, a philosophical and informative article on today’s working habits, Mark Settle explores the issues of “constant connectivity” and its effects on both end users and IT departments — from personal/professional balance, to network availability, to hardware support, to software “wars,” to security.
He wraps all findings into an “IT Manifesto for the Constantly Connected Workforce,” encouraging CIOs and other technology leaders “to switch from being a reactionary force trying to hold onto the status quo to demonstrating true technology leadership by proactively supporting the use of new access devices throughout the enterprise.”
Settle goes on to offer three steps for CIOs to start embracing mobility:
- Continue to support standard devices, but encourage employees that want to use their own devices to do so. However, make them aware that they are responsible for providing tech support on technologies they’ve procured.
- Rather than fighting commercially developed applications, test the ones that seem to have potential, and encourage employees to use those apps that can make their lives easier.
- Start moving key business applications to the cloud, providing employees with anywhere, anytime access to desired functions.
Read Settle’s complete article for a pop-culture peppered story outlining the history of work in America, and the rationale behind his recommendations.
VDI Implementation
David Messina tackles the topic of how IT professionals can successfully roll out a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to their organizations in Best Practices for Maximizing VDI Success.
According to Messina, end-user satisfaction is the make-or-break measurement against which VDI pilots or proof of concepts are measured. So, to keep pilot employees happy and help ensure company-wide adoption, there are three key technology components to consider:
- Reliable network connectivity, whether accessed via LAN, WAN, VPN or other lower-speed links. Employees must be able to access applications as they would without VDI. Messina stresses the importance of accounting for bandwidth needs not only for average use times, but also for peaks of activity.
- Real-time visibility into systems performance, including the network, storage, desktop hosts, servers, security gateways and more. This proactive management is important to ensure quick response times if problems arise that would affect the end-user experience.
- End-user empowerment, such as the ability for them to record activity when facing errors. This reduces the need for IT to try to replicate problems and increases incident-response time, resulting in employee satisfaction.
Data Center Architecture
In the four-part series, Building the Next-Generation Datacenter – A Detailed Guide, Birendra Gosai offers an in-depth strategy for moving your organization to the cloud, “from an entry-level virtualization project to a mature dynamic data center and private cloud strategy.” Each article within the series details one of four key phases, and includes a Gantt chart with key tasks involved and resources required.
- Server Consolidation — How to properly consolidate your server environment, using virtualization, to reduce server sprawl and make more efficient use of resources.
- Infrastructure Optimization — How to build and maintain a mature, optimized infrastructure so that tier-1 workloads can confidently be virtualized.
- Automation and Orchestration — How to control VM sprawl (uncontrolled workloads) and reduce OpEx through automation and orchestration capabilities within the virtual environment.
- Dynamic Datacenter — How to develop an agile IT environment that is service-oriented, scalable and secure.
If you’re considering server virtualization and/or cloud computing for your organization, this detailed guide can provide you with a solid understanding of the complexity of this undertaking, and how you can approach it in a step-by-step fashion.
Data-Warehousing Trends
Summarizing a recent Gartner report, Georgina Swan shares the biggest trends expected to impact the data warehousing market through 2012 in her article, Nine Data-Warehousing Trends for the CIO. The trends include:
- Organizations will use intensive proof-of-concept testing to make their final decision for data warehouse database management systems.
- Data warehouse-as-a-service and in the cloud are expected to continue to grow in popularity.
- Open source database management systems are being developed specifically for data warehousing; expect to see more players emerge over the next 12-to-24 months.
For details on these, and the other six trends to look out for, see the complete article.
What Do You Think?
What articles, blog posts, videos or podcasts did you find interesting last month? Post a comment, and we’ll be sure to keep an eye on those sources for future wrap-up articles like this one.
This post is an MCPc blogging team collaboration.
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Posted on Mon, Mar 07, 2011 @ 10:21 AM
So far, we covered the first four steps in executing an Imaging & Printing Assessment:
Today, we address the fifth and final step — how to create the plan to implement your recommendations.
Outline the Next Steps
Above anything else, your assessment deliverables need to be action-oriented. That means you need to suggest the next steps, assign ownership, and get agreement on completion dates. Make sure you are empowered with the resources to implement your findings. This may include consulting with multiple vendors and/or creating an RFI or RFP so you can evaluate real future-state costs.
Consider the risks associated with change, and prioritize your next steps based on risk-reward payoff. Pay close attention to low-hanging fruit, and don’t discount quick, small wins.
Implementation Project Plan
Upon getting approval to implement your printing assessment recommendations, your next steps are to create the implementation plan and to get a project manager assigned to it. Your implementation plan needs to include the tasks required to maximize both immediate and long-term savings. Below are some key elements to include.
- Identify Key Contacts
- Identify Reporting Analyst
- Identify Service Delivery Analyst
- Audit Networked Printer Fleet
- Define Copier Management Strategy
- Define Printer Management Strategy
- Define Fax Management Strategy
- Define Help Desk Ticketing Integration
- Define Consumable Fulfillment Process
- Define Billing / Invoice Process
- Develop Service Transition Plan (internal to external)
- Design IMAC Process (installs, moves, adds, changes)
Keep in mind that a well-managed imaging and printing environment is a process, not an event. If it’s not a part of your core skill set, try to enlist a qualified project manager, especially one that’s PMP-certified. They have experience writing project plans, creating project timelines, working with vendors and holding people accountable to deliverables, and also have a knack for quality and a firm grasp of details.
Tips to Ensure the Success of the Implementation
When the implementation process starts rolling, hold regularly scheduled project-status meetings to discuss open action items and next steps. These meetings may be as quick as a few minutes and as long as several hours, depending upon on where you are in the implementation process.
Remember that you are the project owner and should be the one driving the project. Assigning a project manager does not change project ownership; you still own the deliverables and results. Your project manager is there to assist you, not take ownership.
Your project plan will have several specific deliverables. And, since the time you spend working on each one will include a lot of action items and communication — internally with stakeholders and externally with vendor partners — your communications are important deliverables in themselves.
Keep project owners and stakeholders informed and up to date. This type of cost-savings initiative will have high-level management visibility. The project owners need to keep stakeholders in the loop.
Lean on your vendor partners for advice. They have experience with imaging and printing projects. Allow them to lead you. They exist to support your best interests.
To be sure, an imaging and printing assessment is a complex, long-term project with many moving parts. But with careful execution of each step —
— you will successfully lay the foundation for a leaner and more intelligent print environment.
Your Thoughts?
Have you had experience driving an internal imaging and printing assessment? Are you considering one? I would love to hear your feedback on the topic.
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Jeffrey Goldstein is Senior Consultant at MCPc and is responsible for the delivery of hardcopy and value-added services within the Lifecycle Management Group. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
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image credit: bjora857
Posted on Fri, Mar 04, 2011 @ 08:29 AM
So, we’ve talked about the importance of building support for, and refining the content of, your Imaging & Printing Analysis by including both stakeholders and non-stakeholders in the review process. With their feedback in hand, it’s time to complete your future-state recommendations.
Think back to your spend buckets. It is easy to attack the future-state recommendations by breaking them into the same buckets. Ask yourself separately how to handle printers, copiers, multifunction devices, and fax machines. What is your corporate policy for personal desktop printers? What about color printing? Think back to your current-state assessment data. What is the useful life of the devices you already own and/or lease? How many devices can be reused in your future state?
Your goal at this point is to create a deliverable that incorporates these factors, as well as a detailed floor plan map that visually illustrates the desired future state.
Create a Template for your Deliverables
Organize, organize, organize! Has someone ever handed you data or a report that was difficult to read, was not intuitive, or gave you a negative gut feeling? Don’t fall into that trap. You have a lot of data to present and it’s vital you present it in an organized, reader-friendly format that incorporates all of your critical success factors.
Below are some tips for creating a well structured imaging and printing assessment deliverable.
- Start with an executive summary that briefly highlights the savings opportunity.
- List critical success factors.
- Identify stakeholders and their role in the assessment process.
- Briefly describe the assessment process.
- Explain your findings, using charts and tables when communicating numbers.
- Describe your future-state recommendations.
- Explain the savings opportunity in detail.
- Provide color-coded floor plan maps for visual reference.
- Describe the process to continuously monitor and manage the fleet in the future.
- Create appendices with your raw data, and refer to them throughout the document.
Tips to Organize and Present the Financials
You will likely be presenting your findings and future-state recommendations to financially focused decision makers. Make sure you present numbers in a meaningful and organized fashion.
Use charts and tables when communicating numbers. Don’t address numbers — especially the key figures — in sentences. If you choose to present your findings in PowerPoint, make sure your charts and tables are intuitive and don’t distract attention from the rest of the content.
Details matter; make sure numbers are aligned properly. When presenting a table of numbers do not center them in individual cells or within a column. Dollar figures require a $ and the number must be right-justified.
Balancing Quantity and Quality
Quality is critical; you don’t want to sacrifice important points for the sake of brevity. You worked hard on this assessment, and there is a lot of information you need to communicate to the decision makers. If you consider the template tips above and each tip encompasses one page, you now have a ten-page document.
Be specific, make the document flow, and make sure the information is intuitive. A high quality deliverable that balances quality and quantity will typically be 15-25 pages, along with 11x17 floor plan maps. If you are 20 pages in with no end in sight, consider revising your document. You don’t want to present a 50-100-page spiral bound assessment deliverable.
Consider sharing drafts with people outside the project who can provide unbiased feedback on the length and clarity of the presentation before you present it.
Tell the Story
Finally, remember that you’re telling a story, not defending your dissertation. You’re telling the story of an organization that spends too much money on printing and imaging and of the operational processes that led to this current state of inefficiency. And, most importantly, you’re telling the story about your plan to make these problems go away and continuously optimize the print environment.
If you tell a clear, compelling story that directly connects problems to actionable solutions, you stand a good chance of getting the green light to implement your recommendations. But, before you plunge forward, you’ll need to put in place the project plan to execute them efficiently — the subject of the last post in this series.
5-Step Printing Assessment Series:
1. Gather the Data
2. Crunch the Numbers
3. Validate Your Findings
4. Build Final Deliverables
5. Implementation
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Jeffrey Goldstein is Senior Consultant at MCPc and is responsible for the delivery of hardcopy and value-added services within the Lifecycle Management Group. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Thu, Mar 03, 2011 @ 08:34 AM
In previous posts, I discussed how to perform a current-state analysis by gathering data and crunching the numbers. If you’ve completed those steps, congratulations — you have successfully worked your way through the hardest part of your Imaging & Printing Assessment.
Your next step is to validate your findings with your project stakeholders — essentially, anyone who has the authority to either implement or veto your project. They are your allies and will help you guide your organization to a future-state plan that reduces printing costs. Debrief with each of them, some in a group and others one-on-one as you see fit, to share your current-state analysis findings. It’s important that your stakeholders are pleased with your progress and are armed with the information they need to help you move the project forward.
Review Critical Success Factors
Your Imaging & Printing Assessment project must line up with your organization’s overall business objectives. At this point in the process, it’s important to work with project stakeholders to tie your current-state findings back to your critical success factors.
For example, if a critical success factor is to reduce lease expenses by 20 percent, but your current-state analysis shows that your leases don’t expire for two years, you are not in an immediate position to act on it. Conversely, if a critical success factor is to reduce the cost of color, and your assessment finds that you print and copy a lot of color, you have an opportunity to over deliver.
My suggestion is to create a one-page summary that describes the project, the critical success factors, your assessment findings, and a matrix mapping the critical success factors to the assessment findings. Draw some initial surface-level conclusions that are logical and easy to understand. Keep complex topics out of your summary document, and use it to gain additional buy-in for your project, which will be helpful when you are ready to implement your future-state recommendations.
Seek Out and Encourage Feedback
Once you’ve packaged your current-state analysis in a digestible format, make your findings widely known and solicit feedback. Encourage people to punch holes in your findings. Ask non-stakeholders to review your summary document and share their thoughts, especially department managers and others who are responsible for budgets.
Point out areas you’ve identified for improvement, as well as the potential cost savings you have in mind. By encouraging feedback, you will gain additional stakeholders without specifically asking for support. And, after all, reducing spend is ultimately the responsibility of everyone in your organization.
Incorporate Feedback and Address Questions
As you work toward building your final deliverable, be sure to incorporate the feedback into your future-state design. It’s likely that someone is going to ask a question you didn’t consider. Make sure to document all questions and provide detailed, documented feedback that answers them. By incorporating this information into your recommendations, you’ll have automatic buy-in from those departments that will be affected by the project.
Company-wide feedback is critical to the success of your assessment. Don’t fall into the trap of creating future-state recommendations without the appropriate amount of buy-in. One sign that you don’t have enough information is if you continue to revise your future-state recommendations because of missed feedback. In that case, continue to solicit responses until you’re confident in your recommendations.
By taking this inclusive approach to the findings-validation stage of your printing assessment, you will strengthen both the facts behind your analysis and your stakeholder support. This will make it infinitely easier to build out your final assessment deliverable and implement your recommended changes — the final two steps of the assessment process.
5-Step Printing Assessment Series:
1. Gather the Data
2. Crunch the Numbers
3. Validate Your Findings
4. Build Final Deliverables
5. Implementation
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Jeffrey Goldstein is Senior Consultant at MCPc and is responsible for the delivery of hardcopy and value-added services within the Lifecycle Management Group. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Wed, Mar 02, 2011 @ 12:04 PM
After you’ve gathered the current-state analysis data for your Imaging & Printing Assessment, the next step is to crunch the numbers. This is typically the longest phase of the assessment process, and often the point where many assessments break down.
It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to provide your managers, and the organization as a whole, with an accurate portrayal of the current state of your print environment. It must be easy to understand and it must be action-oriented.
Organize Your Data
There’s a great deal of data to wrangle during this phase. These four tools will help you stay organized throughout the process:
- A master spreadsheet for your data.
- A master repository for your data (online portals like Microsoft SharePoint are great resources for this).
- A checklist of all the data you need to collect.
- A spreadsheet to track your high-level spend buckets. I call this the “rough analysis tracking” spreadsheet. Your raw data reports may not all be in the same format, which may cause you to crunch the numbers differently. Normalize and copy your high-level findings to this spreadsheet.
There is a lot of raw data to incorporate into the master spreadsheet, so expect to make a few revisions. A good formula to measure and compare costs within the spreadsheet is the cost-per-page — the sum of all your costs divided by the sum of all your pages. Click here to download a sample calculator in Excel.
Some of the formulas you’ll need to run are very basic. For example, say a toner cartridge costs you $100 and has a manufacturer rated yield of 10,000 pages. $100 / 10,000 = $0.01 per page. Simple math. But, others are more complex. For example, some printers have high- and low-yield cartridge options. Let’s say your organization has purchased ten high-yield and seven low-yield cartridges. The yield-per-page math still works on a per-cartridge basis, however you also need to attribute the different cost structures to the devices and departments who made these purchases.
Remember your spend buckets — organize as much data as you can by copier, printer, and fax machine.
Consider Third-Party Print Assessment Software
As I mentioned above, the number-crunching phase is where many print assessments break down. A trained eye for the details and specialized software tools can be decisive factors for success. This is where partner organizations that specialize in assessments can be valuable assets. They know what numbers to crunch, have the right software tools, and can provide expert perspective on the raw data.
Though these specialized tools are usually fee-based, and often require technical certifications to administer, the good news is they are very effective and typically include reports that can be automatically generated. Most have a built-in database of print and copy devices with the associated toner, maintenance, and service information. In many cases all you need to input are your specific costs. Typically, these tools also can automatically discover network-connected print and copy devices by pinging a specific range of IP addresses.
In short, they make the number-crunching phase a lot easier. If you lack access to the software tools to complete an assessment, consider collaborating with a partner organization.
The Role of Your Floor Plan in a Printing Assessment
Your building floor plans are fantastic visual references that support your current and future-state analyses with practical details that can’t be captured in a spreadsheet. For example, let’s say your department is physically split by a wall, or the doors for one department are secured and cannot be accessed by people in the neighboring department. In this situation, you’re going to need two devices, no matter what your spreadsheet says or how much you want to consolidate.
Here are some tips to help you organize the information on your floor plans.
- Color code by technology (print, copy, fax, multifunction).
- Draw as close to scale as possible so devices aren’t oversized or undersized on the map.
- Thoroughly label everything (device name, department name, queue name, IP address, etc.) .
- Create symbols to indicate special features or capabilities (scan, stable, booklet, stitch, etc.).
- Create a map key that appropriately describes the map.
Presenting Your Findings to Internal Stakeholders
Once you crunch the numbers and finalize your current-state analysis, double check to make sure it’s accurate, and be prepared to defend it to your managers and others in the organization – they will likely meet your report with initial skepticism and plenty of questions.
Here are a few examples of typical reactions to a current-state analysis for which you will want to prepare:
- There is no way we spend that much money on “fill in the blank”!
- Are you sure? Where did you get your information?
- That seems like a lot of money. How does it compare to other companies in our industry?
- Who authorizes all these purchases?
- Now that we have this information, what can we do to reduce our spend?
- Our department isn’t responsible for the budget; you will have to inform “someone else.”
- That’s good information to know, but it’s up to each department to individually make the appropriate adjustments.
When addressing these questions, keep in mind that you need allies to buy into this project. Approaching internal stakeholders with a vetted current-state analysis, a sense of diplomacy, and clear ideas for an action plan will be critical for developing an effective future-state analysis and recommendations. This starts with validating your findings, which I’ll discuss in tomorrow’s post.
5-Step Printing Assessment Series:
1. Gather the Data
2. Crunch the Numbers
3. Validate Your Findings
4. Build Final Deliverables
5. Implementation
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Jeffrey Goldstein is Senior Consultant at MCPc and is responsible for the delivery of hardcopy and value-added services within the Lifecycle Management Group. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Tue, Mar 01, 2011 @ 02:45 PM
Over the next several days on the MCPc blog, we’re taking a deep dive into the Imaging & Printing Assessment process. We’ve already discussed how assessments can help companies save money on imaging and printing costs, and also how to determine whether to insource or outsource the assessment. In looking at the assessment process itself, we’ve put together a five-step approach, each of which will be covered in a seperate blog post:
So, to get started on your Imaging & Printing Assessment, you need to perform a current-state analysis. To do so, you want to evaluate all copier contracts, monthly service invoices, toner purchase history, device usage patterns, device physical location, and various operations or workflow processes that affect end-user productivity. These data points are the raw data used to calculate your current-state costs, and will be used as a benchmark against which to measure cost savings when assessment recommendations are implemented.
Step 1: Categorize Your Spend
Because there is a lot of data to collect, it’s a good idea to break up the data into buckets. This makes it easier to understand and also helps you identify gaps in your data. Below are some recommended buckets and their associated costs. Depending on your preferred procurement processes, these buckets may be easy or more complex to decipher.
- The Copier
- Monthly Lease Costs
- Monthly Service Costs (base charge)
- Monthly Cost / Page Costs
- Lease Term / Asset
- End of Lease – Return Costs
- Lease Early Termination Costs
- Excess Toner Costs
- The Printer
- Printer Purchase or Lease Costs
- Lease Early Termination Costs
- Toner Purchase Costs (look back 12 months)
- Break / Fix Contract Costs
- Time & Materials Costs
- Additional Maintenance Costs
- Self Maintainer Costs
- The Fax Machine
- Fax Machine Purchase or Lease Costs
- Lease Early Termination Costs
- Toner Purchase Costs (look back 12 months)
- Service Contract Costs
Step 2: Collect Device Usage Data
In addition to collecting all of your cost data, you need to collect information about device usage. This information is both objective and subjective.
The objective information is the monthly usage data. Like reading the odometer on a car, all printers, copiers, and fax machines contain an odometer that can be read by installing a software-based, data-collection agent on network-connected devices. The subjective information comes from talking with end users. It is important to gain departmental feedback, especially from department managers, and to understand their needs for special finishing features, color use and quality, and workflow habits. Incorporating departmental information in your current-state analysis can bring extra credibility to the assessment.
Step 3: Evaluate Floor Plans
Lastly, it’s important to document physical device location with a floor plan. The goal of floor planning is to evaluate device placements, so that you can ensure that they are in the most optimized physical locations. Documenting the current floor plan helps you visualize where departments may lack features, where bottlenecks exist, and where you have too many devices.
Sample printer floor plan - Click here to view a larger image.
Conclusion
While collecting the data can be time consuming, your assessment will reap the benefits of your hard work. Also, while you are collecting subjective date, you can communicate the positive aspects of the assessment to each department, and slowly build company-wide buy-in.
After you have collected all of the raw data it’s time to begin crunching the numbers, a topic that will be discussed in tomorrow’s post.
5-Step Printing Assessment Series:
1. Gather the Data
2. Crunch the Numbers
3. Validate Your Findings
4. Build Final Deliverables
5. Implementation
|
Jeffrey Goldstein is Senior Consultant at MCPc and is responsible for the delivery of hardcopy and value-added services within the Lifecycle Management Group. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
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