By Scott Dunham; Photizo Group

Being in first place is the only way to win championships, and winning championships is what Hendrick Motorsports does. In 2009, Hendrick Motorsports identified perhaps the only aspect of their business environment that wasn’t ahead of the competition: their print environment.

When Chris Newsome, director of IT at Hendrick, realized that the 200+ outdated print devices in their 100-acre Charlotte campus were slowing business down, he knew something had to be done. That’s when he called Toshiba America Business Solutions and National Business Development Manager, Jon Arvik.

The Problem

Hendrick Motorsports is a lot more than just fast cars, drivers and pit crews; with 550 employees working year round, the business of speed happens in an office environment as well as on the track. “From a print management perspective, we were spending too much money. We weren’t managing that part of the business well,” Newsome says.

The previous print fleet at Hendrick consisted of a myriad of imaging products from multiple vendors, models and drivers. When Avrik and the Toshiba team came in to perform Toshiba’s patented Encompass™ Analysis, they found hundreds of document processing systems including printers, copiers, fax machines and scanners all of which were supporting redundant document-centric processes.

The Encompass analysis illuminated not only the number of devices deployed, but the business activity they supported, and more importantly the true cost of operating those systems. Toshiba communicated to Hendrick Motorsports’ IT and facilities management a detailed situational analysis, suggestions for change, and the impact they would have on daily operations in the form of costs savings and productivity improvements.

“The biggest thing was we didn’t realize we didn’t need all the devices we had. We were also spending too much on toners. We needed to work smarter as an organization. It helped us work faster. We are all about speed. Changing this way of doing business was necessary,” said Newsome.

The Solution

Optimizing a print environment like the one Toshiba found at Hendrick is a big job. The Toshiba team began by replacing the old mismatched devices with high-end Toshiba e-STUDIO™ Multi-Function Printers (MFPs) and other group printing devices in departments that didn’t need such robust functionality. In the engineering department, Toshiba utilized their own business partnerships to provide better wide-format printing solutions to help save engineers time.

But Arvik and his team didn’t just replace old devices, they wanted to add speed and efficiency wherever possible. Toshiba enabled Hendrick employees to use Toshiba’s signature e-BRIDGE® Re-Rite OCR (optical character recognition) software located on the front panel of the  e-STUDIO MFP to create editable Microsoft® Word™, Excel™ and other popular document formats. Now Hendrick employees can modify, share and securely store these documents using Hendrick’s Microsoft SharePoint® server.

Newsome commented, “In our IT department, we have our SharePoint site. Where we had a couple of individuals entering information manually, now some of the documents can be scanned and go directly into SharePoint” He continued, “Personally as a manager, I use the scan to PDF feature daily. It saves me so much time. It is great to be able to save documents to a PDF where I can mark them up and send to different business partners.”

The Outcome

The entire project plan was implemented over the course of just six months in 2009. After rolling out the MFPs, the Toshiba team dove headfirst into group printing and document management solutions. Newsome says, “I was impressed, I’ve been doing this a long time. With 22 MFPs, we replaced close to 100 old devices. We saved about $100,000 a year—just on supplies.”

In addition, through implementing electronic creation, sharing, storage, more efficient output devices and toner cartridge recycling, Toshiba was able to reduce Hendrick’s environmental impact — paper, electricity, waste by-products and consumption — by approximately 20 percent from previous rates.

Jon Arvik described the optimization process, “Our change offering was based on a holistic managed print services program consisting of workflow software tools [e-BRIDGE Re-Rite and SharePoint connector]. We also installed network-configured Toshiba e-STUDIO MFPs, complemented by strategic workgroup HP/Lexmark printers.”

The net result was a systematic reduction in the number of devices required to perform the same information workload. Toshiba’s work also enhanced the employees’ ability to produce, share and store documents electronically, while reducing the cost of document management by more than $10,000 per month.

Making such a big change in the office environment, especially one that affects the daily activity of all the employees requires some serious coordination and teamwork. Newsome commented on the Toshiba team’s interaction with his employees, “They worked with us well, I was really surprised how well the departments were on board. At first there was a resistance to change. But they realized they would be able to increase productivity, and once our employees were introduced to the new technology, they were very eager to cooperate with the Toshiba team.”

And the support didn’t end in 2009 once the implementation was complete. Their Toshiba dealer comes on site once per month to talk to different departments, see how they are doing and find out how they can improve their business. Toshiba reps will assess if there are any additional training needs, and will introduce new technology as it becomes available. “They [Toshiba] come out and build a relationship. They get to know these people on a one-on-one basis. They take an interest. I get great feedback from them,” adds Newsome.

In the end, at Hendrick Motorsports it all comes back to winning championships, and the before and after comparison of Hendrick’s print environment paints a pretty clear picture of how Toshiba’s work has enhanced Hendrick’s chances at claiming another one.

Scott Dunham is one of the newest additions to Photizo’s Information Services team, collaborating with senior analysts and senior consultants to provide additional research and analysis. A recent graduate from the University of Kentucky with a Bachelor’s of business administration in marketing, Dunham looks to add value to major information services reports.