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Is 'Followship' Advancing Your Firm?
Beginning with the next issue, we will be expanding the information we present to you to extend beyond the boundaries of the legal industry.
Last July, we interviewed one of the industry's thought leaders -- Patrick Tisdale, CIO of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP -- who described CIOs at law firms as being risk-averse, tending to closely track each other, observing what each other is doing, and then following suit. "Everyone is waiting for somebody else to innovate before they jump on the bandwagon," he said.
Patrick criticized the "followship" of these CIOs and warned "if you aspire to expanding your market share or increasing the number of prestigious clients you serve, then mimicking the behaviors of your peer group is certainly not going to get you ahead." He encouraged CIOs to look outside the legal industry for answers.
We agree with Patrick and we believe his words to be inspirational. We ourselves have seen that innovation generated in other industries can be beneficial to law firms willing to think outside the box … and that there's much tried-and-true information available elsewhere that can greatly benefit the legal industry if it is willing to think beyond its own fraternity.
In that spirit, you will be seeing more in this newsletter that transcends law firms … and yet the information is as pertinent to law firms as it is to other organizations because every organization faces the same fundamental issues as law firms do.
Because organizations support more document imaging and printing devices than ever before, what are the key issues that affect them? They are:
- Financial. How do we reduce, control, and easily measure our costs?
- Environmental. How may we behave environmentally responsible as we build and maintain our imaging and printing infrastructure?
- Productivity. How do we develop systems and infrastructure that contribute to human productivity?
- Information technology. How do we free ourselves from mundane distractions so we can focus on our highest and best purpose of advancing our firm?
How can comprehensive Managed Print Services factor into these issues?
Next issue we'll talk about some of the MPS strategies that can address these issues. In the meantime, we are always anxious to hear your thoughts. Please drop us a line and give us some of your opinions.
And you can print that!
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Jim Goehrig of Wiley Rein LLP
Jim Goehrig has been the chief information officer of Washington, D.C.-based Wiley Rein LLP since March 2008 and has been a proponent of Managed Print Services (MPS) since he signed with Advantage nine months later. He recently took a few minutes to discuss the results of his engagement with MPS.
Advantage: What had you been hoping to achieve when you signed on to an MPS program?
Jim Goehrig: Primarily we wanted to reduce and better manage our printer fleet costs. We were seeking predictable expenses as well as better consumable inventory control and parts management so that we no longer needed to stockpile parts for each of our unit types. Ongoing management of these items was time-consuming. Secondly, we sought to optimize the size and utilization levels of our printer fleet. We wanted to obtain the proper ratio of users to printers.
Advantage: It's now a good 16 months later. How has MPS impacted your company?
Jim: One of the major achievements is that we've been able to optimize our printer fleet size and reduce our printer count. We have proper utilization of our printers now; we don't have printers that are under- or over-utilized.
Advantage: What kind of savings has that meant?
Jim: We achieved a 17% reduction in print costs by utilizing MPS. Additionally, we were able to reduce our printer hardware expenses by 24% as a result of determining proper printer utilization levels and adjusting our printer distribution.
Advantage: So when Advantage's Walt Lemmermann talks about the four impacts of MPS being financial, environmental, productivity, and IT, it sounds like you were most affected by the financial aspect.
Jim: Absolutely. Initially we approached MPS with a financial frame of mind hoping to achieve cost optimization, and the results were better than we had expected. Not only did we reduce our consumable costs but we also reduced our printer leasing costs since we reduced the size of our fleet. And we no longer have to maintain those units. So it has achieved positive financial results for us.
Advantage: On the down side, was there anything you'd expected to achieve that did not happen?
Jim: Not really. In fact, there have been additional benefits. We reduced downtime and support calls related to printing, we improved our first-call resolution so that we don't experience repeat problems, and we receive quarterly utilization and maintenance reports that help us manage everything on an ongoing basis.
Advantage: What would your best advice be to other CIOs considering MPS?
Jim: There are a lot of benefits to an MPS program but you need to remain actively engaged. You can't walk away and hand over the responsibility to someone else. You need to insure that you're meeting the appropriate SLAs and providing expected service levels.
Advantage: It sounds like the program is freeing you up a bit.
Jim: Yes. From a technical support standpoint, we've freed at least 15-20% of our support team's time that was previously spent addressing printer issues.
Advantage: Any reason NOT to join an MPS program?
Jim: Not from my perspective. Just look at the program closely before signing on. But, given my experience, I would recommend it to anyone who asks.
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Advantage Welcomes … |
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Advantage welcomes Dickstein Shapiro LLP -- one of the country’s premier law firms with over 50 years of service -- as a client. Like Advantage, Dickstein is passionate in its commitment to its clients and to the development of new approaches that will facilitate the growth and success of its clients’ organizations.
Advantage would also like to thank all of our readers who responded to our survey on our newsletter's contents.
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About Us |
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Advantage Enterprises delivers advisory and managed print services, primarily to professional service firms so they can focus on their highest and best purpose of billing their time and growing their client base.
For over 20 years, Advantage's environmentally green
lifecycle management programs have increased productivity
of printing and imaging fleets and cut costs while
saving the environment.
To learn more about what gives the top law firms their
competitive edge, please visit our Web site at www.advtg.com
or e-mail us at
marketing@advtg.com. |
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I am constantly interrupted with requests for replacement toners. When I get to the printer, most of the time there is a 'low toner' or 'order toner' message displayed and I suspect that the toner isn’t empty. Is there a way to reduce the frequency of random requests? And how can I make sure the toner is empty so we don’t prematurely change it out?
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The best way to stop the constant interruptions is to prevent them from happening in the first place. You can batch your toner replacements into one time a day using a remote monitoring program like 
