Summary
CENTRIA, headquartered in Pittsburgh, is an industry leader in the design, development, and manufacturing of sustainable architectural metal wall and roof systems. In addition to its Pittsburgh location, the company also has four additional manufacturing plants in Kentucky, Arkansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In total, CENTRIA has over 800 employees across five locations.
The distributed nature of CENTRIA’s print environment made it difficult to manage, especially since there wasn’t a dedicated IT person at each location. Any necessary changes to printer drivers or settings had to be made on each print server separately, requiring costly visits to each site.
“With five locations and lots of employees visiting multiple locations—not to mention contractors and outside partners—installing and managing printers for everyone had become a huge challenge,” said Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer at CENTRIA.
The distributed nature of CENTRIA’s print environment made it difficult to manage, especially since there wasn’t a dedicated IT person at each location. Any necessary changes to printer drivers or settings had to be made on each print server separately, requiring costly visits to each site.
“With five locations and lots of employees visiting multiple locations—not to mention contractors and outside partners—installing and managing printers for everyone had become a huge challenge,” said Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer at CENTRIA.
Problems and Solution
CHALLENGE #1
1
Simplifying and Centralizing Print Management
CENTRIA relied on print servers at each of its distributed locations. As a result, CENTRIA’s IT team had to deal with the complexity of deploying new printers at remote locations, as well as the extremely time-consuming task of managing printer drivers across multiple print servers.
“Everyone hates print servers, regardless of their organization’s size or structure. For us, print servers meant complexity, high costs, and a great deal of time to update and manage.”
— Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer, CENTRIA
Solution
Vasion Print gave CENTRIA a simple, cloud-based solution for managing their entire printer environment. CENTRIA can now monitor and manage all of its printers across all five locations, all through a single console. And Vasion Print was the only solution capable of eliminating all of CENTRIA’s print servers.
“I was walking through a conference when I saw [Vasion Print’s (formerly PrinterLogic)] big ‘Eliminate Print Servers’ banner—and I was immediately intrigued,” says Bailley. “[Vasion Print] delivered in a big way. Within days of testing it out…we knew this was the solution we’d been waiting for.”
“I was walking through a conference when I saw [Vasion Print’s (formerly PrinterLogic)] big ‘Eliminate Print Servers’ banner—and I was immediately intrigued,” says Bailley. “[Vasion Print] delivered in a big way. Within days of testing it out…we knew this was the solution we’d been waiting for.”
“With five locations and lots of employees visiting multiple locations—not to mention contractors and outside partners—installing and managing printers for everyone had become a huge challenge.”
— Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer, CENTRIA
CHALLENGE #2
2
Make It Easy to Print From Any Location
As a leader in the commercial construction industry, each of CENTRIA’s locations frequently had different traveling employees visiting, along with contractors, customers, and partners—all needing to print while on site. CENTRIA does not have full-time IT staff at each location, so IT members at each site spent a majority of their time helping visitors install printers.
“Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to print when you need to,” says Bailley. “We needed a solution that would make it simple for anyone—regardless of technical background—to be able to print within minutes.”
“Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to print when you need to,” says Bailley. “We needed a solution that would make it simple for anyone—regardless of technical background—to be able to print within minutes.”
Solution
Vasion Print’s self-service print portal makes printing incredibly easy for all users, without the need for any technical expertise. CENTRIA now has a single, consistent printer installation portal across all of its locations, which enables users to quickly and easily pull up a floor plan map to locate and install the printer closest to them.
“Anyone on our network can use the Vasion Print portal to find and install the closest printer to them, enabling them to install and print with a single click,” says Bailley.
“Anyone on our network can use the Vasion Print portal to find and install the closest printer to them, enabling them to install and print with a single click,” says Bailley.
“[Vasion Print] delivered in a big way. Within days of testing it out...we knew this was the solution we’d been waiting for.”— Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer, CENTRIA
CHALLENGE #3
3
Reducing Print-Related Service Desk Calls
Like most organizations, a high percentage of CENTRIA’s service desk calls were related to printers going down or people having trouble installing printers. CENTRIA also faced the common problem of managing many versions of printer drivers and ensuring that each printer in the organization always had the latest updates.
Solution
Vasion Print enables CENTRIA to manage all printers—across all offices and all domains—from a single console. Vasion Print also manages and automatically pushes printer drivers to all workstations, ensuring that drivers are always up to date and that printers are ready to receive print jobs.
“[Vasion Print] has nearly eliminated service desk calls—partly because it’s so simple for people to install their own printers,” says Bailley. “The automated management of printer drivers solves so many problems.”
“[Vasion Print] has nearly eliminated service desk calls—partly because it’s so simple for people to install their own printers,” says Bailley. “The automated management of printer drivers solves so many problems.”
“Anyone on our network can use the Vasion Print portal to find and install the closest printer to them, enabling them to install and print with a single click.”
— Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer, CENTRIA
— Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer, CENTRIA
Conclusion and Saving Summary
By deploying Vasion Print, CENTRIA has significantly simplified and streamlined its printing environment. CENTRIA is now able to easily monitor and manage its entire print environment—across five locations and 800 employees—from a single console. And all of CENTRIA’s employees are able to quickly and easily print regardless of location, without any technical knowledge required.
“It used to take us three days to install new copiers at our corporate office and make sure all of the correct drivers were present—now it takes a few hours,” says Bailley. “[Vasion Print] has drastically reduced the time we spend managing our printers and copiers, and it has all but eliminated printer-related service desk calls—so the return on investment with [Vasion Print] has been incredibly strong.”
“It used to take us three days to install new copiers at our corporate office and make sure all of the correct drivers were present—now it takes a few hours,” says Bailley. “[Vasion Print] has drastically reduced the time we spend managing our printers and copiers, and it has all but eliminated printer-related service desk calls—so the return on investment with [Vasion Print] has been incredibly strong.”
“[Vasion Print] has nearly eliminated service desk calls—partly because it’s so simple for people to install their own printers. The automated managementof printer drivers solves so many problems.”
— Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer, CENTRIA
— Jaison Bailley, Senior Systems Engineer, CENTRIA
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