Exhibition Place is Canada's largest entertainment and convention site, attracting over 5.5 million visitors a year. The 192-acre site is an integral component of Toronto and Ontario's economy, particularly with respect to conventions, sport, festivals, recreation, culture and tourism. Exhibition Place boasts the award-winning, LEED Gold Enercare Centre; Canada's largest exhibition and convention centre, and the Beanfield Centre LEED Silver conference venue. Since 2004, Exhibition Place has undertaken an environmental stewardship initiative, entitled GREENSmart; which includes the promotion of sustainable development, environmental initiatives and leading-edge green technologies and practices across the site.

"With Ricoh's solutions, we're on track to achieve an overall 25 percent cost reduction."

John Koperwas Director of IT, Telecom Records & Archives at Exhibition Place

Challenge

Lack of integrated approach to printing, scanning and faxing
IT spending too much time supporting dedicated printers
No platform for mobile printing
Inability to track printing to drive sustainability goals

While Exhibition Place is a coveted destination for a wide range of events, it operates much like a typical office environment. It has many operational and partner units onsite that need to print, scan and fax on a daily basis. The culture was used to having dedicated printers that had to be kept running. But when something went awry and a printer needed service, it was up to the facility's small IT department to handle the issue.

Exhibition Place also wanted to enable its operational teams to work smarter by enabling mobile printing from any device to any printer onsite. However, it didn't have the technology infrastructure in place to support mobile printing.

Finally, Exhibition Place needed a way to track its print output and user behaviour around printing to further the environmental goals of its GREENSmart program. With no technology to track printing, it had uncontrolled printing and paper consumption — which ran contrary to its sustainability platform.

Results

Anticipated overall 25 percent cost reduction
Zero orphaned print jobs
IT freed from device support to focus on higher value tasks
Insight into environmental progress

All of the technologies and improvements implemented at Exhibition Place are on course to reduce overall costs by 25 percent. With software that allows end users to authenticate their identity and print at any device near them, Exhibition Place now has zero orphaned print jobs — which has significantly reduced paper waste.

With Ricoh managing the printer fleet, Exhibition Place's IT department is freed to focus on higher value tasks for the organization. Operational and partner units at Exhibition Place are able to perform their jobs more efficiently by printing anywhere, anytime from their mobile devices. And Exhibition Place is now able to track its progress in furthering its mission to operate successfully and sustainably.

How We Did It

Replaced dedicated printers with multifunction devices
Enabled Follow-You print and secured ID card authentication
Implemented mobile printing technology
Installed tracking software and took over device management
Moved entire print infrastructure to the cloud

"You know when a product is good from an IT perspective when no one is talking about it."

John Koperwas Director of IT, Telecom Records & Archives at Exhibition Place

Ricoh has been working with Exhibition Place for more than a decade. The relationship began with replacing dedicated printers with multifunction printers (MFPs) and organically right-sizing devices and updating print technology through the years. As Exhibition Place strengthened its commitment to operating more efficiently and sustainably, it turned to Ricoh for solutions to turn ideas into reality.

We enabled Follow-You print technology that allows end users to print at an MFP that is most conveniently located — no matter where they are on the sprawling facility. We implemented authentication software at the devices whereby end users use their access card to securely retrieve their printed document at the nearest device. If a document isn't released at the MFP, it is simply deleted from the system. We also enabled mobile printing technology so end users could use their smartphone or tablet to print to any of the MFPs.

Furthermore, we added tracking software to the print fleet so Exhibition Place could know who was printing where — and what was being printed — to drive more sustainable printing practices.

To streamline printer management, we moved Exhibition Place's print server and applications to the cloud and took over management of the print fleet. Through technology, we receive notifications when toner needs to be replaced, conduct service for all the devices and provide environmental reports so Exhibition Place can track its environmental progress.

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