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| Palliser Furniture Rationalizes their Output with Xerox |  |  | |
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| | | Palliser Furniture Limited was established in 1944 by Abram Albert DeFehr, as a one-man operation making simple wooden furniture pieces in the basement of his Winnipeg home. Since that time Palliser has grown to over 4000 employees and has become Canada's leading home furniture manufacturer (www.palliser.com). Their current product lineup includes one-piece sofas, sectional sofas, recliners and home theatre viewing chairs in both leather and fabric.
Palliser has several plants and offices distributed throughout the city of Winnipeg, and their head offi ce building alone had 30 devices, translating into 1.2 people per device, sourced from four different manufacturers including Xerox. These devices were a mix of personal printers, faxes and copiers. The equipment proliferation meant that Palliser's IT department had to maintain several different kinds of machines and associated printer drivers; their Accounts Payable department had to handle several bills and invoices each month; and their staff needed to comprehend different user interfaces. In addition the responsibility for the numerous devices was spread over several departments, meaning that no individual owner had control over the equipment's budget, maintenance and administration. As a result, in addition to productivity impacts, costs were driving the office output expenses out of control to over ten thousand dollars per month.
Under the direction of Palliser's CIO, Jason Bergeron, Palliser performed an internal analysis to understand the current state of their office output devices in terms of usage, requirements and costs. As a result of this analysis, Mr. Bergeron realized cost savings and productivity benefits would be realized by consolidating the output equipment. He also understood the issues associated with consolidation - for example employees were accustomed to the convenience of having their own printers. However, Mr. Bergeron believed the employees would be open to change once they were made aware of the benefits that Palliser would experience and so issued an RFP. "The Head Office location was a great place to start. It included all of the finance and accounting staff. If they could understand the benefits of consolidation, we could roll this out across the company. In addition, the numbers had to be right. Only a true justifiable expense reduction would fly."
The Solution
After careful research into the issues faced by Palliser, Xerox responded to the RFP with a solution designed to achieve and exceed Palliser's goals. "Xerox came to the table with a proposal that made sense. They replaced aging equipment and kept some of the equipment in place that was still viable. All of the other vendors wanted us to throw out all of our hardware. From a cost perspective, this made their proposals less attractive."Bergeron explains.
Selecting and implementing the Xerox proposal, Palliser reduced the number of machines at their Head Office location from 30 to 11. They purchased two WorkCentreTM Pro 35s and two M20i's at their head office location, while retaining their Xerox equipment already under lease such as WorkCentre Pro 55s and WorkCentre Pro 245s. In addition to reducing the number of machines, the plan reduced their print vendors to just two with Xerox being the primary equipment vendor for new implementations.
However, the solution didn't stop there - given the high benefits from the initial head office install, over the course of 2005, Palliser expanded the solution to their other offices throughout Manitoba, adding 28 more Xerox devices.
The Results
Palliser can expect significant cost savings by implementing the Xerox proposal: a projected savings of over fifty percent, resulting in a net savings of over sixty thousand dollars per year at head office alone. Says Bergeron, "The solution saved Palliser over $150,000 per year in office output expenses over the next 5 year period. We checked the numbers against projections 3 months after implementation and the savings were real. In addition, we added some colour devices in the mix." The IT and Accounts Payable departments have realized increased productivity due to the consolidated billing process and reduced equipment management requirements. Palliser has also gained better service quality and increased product uptime due to the standardization of their equipment.
In summary, according to Mr. Bergeron, Palliser has gained the "ability to drive business process change for major savings." The Xerox solution provides Palliser with the ability to roll out standardized uses for the technology across all locations. "While the savings cannot be quantified, there is a definite improvement in satisfaction related to print. Hey no one complains anymore!"
Palliser plans to take advantage of Xerox's partnership with IP Fax vendors in order to take full advantage of their infrastructure. Xerox Document Centre technology combined with an IP Telecommunications environment will help Palliser cut Fax expenses and improve productivity in their customer contact centre.
To download the complete case study click here.
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