CASE STUDY
How Flow Automotive Overcame PrintNightmare in Less Than Two Days with Vasion Print
Out of all the software we have ever installed, Vasion Print is the one that has worked the best—and I don’t mean just for printing. Vasion Print does everything it says it does, and it does it well. It has far exceeded all of our expectations.
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- Chuck Young, Director of IT, Flow Automotive Companies
The Numbers
< 2 days
full deployment
610+
hours of printer administration
saved each year
$60,000+
saved per year
100%
reduction in print tickets
The Summary
When PrintNightmare “broke printing,” Flow Automotive needed a solution fast. They were able to deploy Vasion Print less than two days later, saving the IT department from manually installing printer drivers on 1,100+ computers and keeping business operations running without interruption. Now, Flow saves over 610 hours of printer maintenance time each year, and helpdesk tickets are down 100%.
The Customer: Flow Automotive Companies
Industry
Retail Motor Vehicles
Flow Automotive was founded in 1957 with one automotive center in North Carolina. Over 60 years later, the company now has 50+ locations across North Carolina and Virginia, representing more than 20 manufacturers.
The Challenge
When Printing Breaks: A Race Against the Clock
Flow Automotive requires fast, convenient printing for business to run smoothly. Every car sale consists of printed paperwork for contracts, forms, and loan applications.
With over 50 locations throughout North Carolina and Virginia, the car dealership network easily uses thousands of pages each day. Not being able to print would have disastrous consequences for their bottom line.
As Flow IT Director, Chuck Young, explains, “If printing doesn’t work, business stops. That’s not an option.”
To keep printing running smoothly, the Flow IT team would install printer drivers on their server, and the server would allow them to manage the drivers.
Troubleshooting printing problems was time-consuming, and Young’s team spent around 12 hours each week on printer administration. “We had to babysit printers and drivers,” he says.
It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.
Until it didn’t.
If printing doesn’t work, business stops. That’s not an option.
In 2021, the PrintNightmare vulnerability “broke printing.”
“All of a sudden, everybody’s printing quit working. An employee opened a printing ticket, and by the time we had fixed it, six more tickets had come in. We had to manually install printer drivers locally on every PC that needed to print, with a staff of only six people,” Young says. The IT team worked 12+ hour days and still couldn’t keep up. “We had to find a different solution very, very quickly.”
We had to find a different solution very, very quickly.
The Solution
Launching a New Print Management Solution in Less Than Two Days
Between manually installing printers and doing everything they could to keep business operations running smoothly, the IT team had very little time to evaluate options and deploy a new tool.
They needed an immediate solution.
Chuck Young and his team chose Vasion Print for its group policy deployment, easy configuration, and simple web interface. Less than two days after the PrintNightmare debacle started, Flow was ready to deploy Vasion Print to over 1,100 computers.
They installed and launched Vasion Print in under an hour.
“We had it out to the entire company within an hour,” Young says. “As deployments go, it was a dream.”
As deployments go, it was a dream.
With Vasion Print in place, the IT team’s schedule went back to normal right away. After all the trouble they’d had from PrintNightmare, they kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It never did.
“Vasion Print jumped right in and saved us,” Young says. “I kept looking for the downside, but I never found one. It just works. So many pieces of software I’ve used don’t work as advertised, but Vasion Print does. We set it up, and the next day I was off fighting other battles.”
Since that initial scramble to fix printing, Flow has cut printing tickets 100%, by preempting issues and printer connection requests from employees who didn’t have access to the printers they needed. They’ve restricted access by IP address, so that employees don’t accidentally add printers at other Flow locations. “It fixes problems we didn’t even know we had,” Young says.
I kept looking for the downside, but I never found one. It just works.
Flow went through a complete printer upgrade in July 2024, refreshing all 300+ printers across locations.
Their new devices were set to duplex printing by default, which doesn’t work with Flow’s printing needs. They were able to change settings through Vasion Print and update every employee’s printer. “Without Vasion Print, those updates would have taken four or five days. We were able to do it in a few minutes,” Young says.
The Results
Over 610 Hours of IT Time Saved Each Year
Flow Automotive originally turned to Vasion Print in a crisis. Since then, the tool has far exceeded their expectations.
“Out of all the software we have ever installed, this is the one that has worked the best—and I don’t mean just for printing. Vasion Print does everything it says it does, and it does it well. It has far exceeded all of our expectations,” Young says.
The 12 hours his team used to spend weekly “babysitting” printers has been cut down to less than 15 minutes, saving them over 610 hours each year.
“Printing used to consume a lot of time. Now, it’s in one area. We update the driver there, and it’s pushed to everybody’s devices. It’s simple,” Young says. He estimates that without Vasion Print, he would have had to hire a full-time employee just to manage printers, costing $60,000 in additional overhead each year.
“It’s just been a bonus in all areas, especially for the price,” he concludes. “I would recommend Vasion Print to anybody in a heartbeat. Especially if you have more than 50 printers, you need this product,” he concludes.