University of Wisconsin improves report distribution
for financial reporting systems

Overview

Like many large, complex organizations, the University of Wisconsin has been facing the challenge of managing the cost and complexity of large financial system reports for more than two decades. By dramatically reducing the volume of system reports – both through the elimination of paper print volume and the optimization of report distribution, the University has been able to achieve significant cost reductions – in the cost of print, in staffing, and in overall operational cost reduction. RSD EOS addressed these problem areas, yielding a cumulative cost savings of over $6 million.

www.wisc.edu

University of Wisconsin Case Study image

 

University of Wisconsin logoThe Customer

The University of Wisconsin was founded in 1848, and currently has approximately 30,000 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students. It has graduate programs in law, medicine, veterinary science, pharmacy and other social sciences. The university offers traditional liberal arts, professional programs and a wide variety of student activities. Many of its programs are considered as leaders in instruction, research, and public service.

Report management challenges

Twenty years ago, the University of Wisconsin acknowledged the inefficiencies of manually printing and distributing enormous financial systems reports on a daily or weekly basis. These reports were from the payroll, accounting, and budget systems. At the time, three large Xerox 9790 machines ran three shifts per day, six days per week printing these reports. Two full-time staff had to manually segment and organize the financial reports for distribution. Before the reports were even sent out, about 30% of the print run was discarded as waste.

RSD accelerates print reduction, optimizes datacenter performance

Since the implementation of RSD’s EOS (Enterprise Output Solution) for electronic report distribution, there has been a significant reduction in the amount of paper consumed on an annual basis. With electronic distribution, only the appropriate section of the print run needs to be printed.

RSD EOS has also solved the problem of report recovery. Before the RSD solution was implemented, when items would get lost in the mail, it would be expensive to rerun the entire print job. Now it is easy to reprint only the section of the report that the user needs. Another benefit is that the reports are managed throughout their lifecycle in a secure and compliant archive, meeting data retention and disposition requirements.

RSD EOS today at the University

Today in the EOS repository, there are more than 11,000 defined report types. Also, there are more than 2,000 active users of the RSD EOS system. These are all internal to the university and none include student workers.

Twenty-year cost savings

The 20-year cost savings for the project have totaled $6 million. Print has been reduced by at least 30% of the total pages being archived annually. The fully loaded cost of printing includes other costs such as bursting the reports, distribution, local copies, local storage, confidential recycling or shredding. Also, there was a one-time savings of $40,000 from two clerks who were reassigned to other duties within the university.

 

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