Law firm Allens Arthur Robinson saves with HP

A move to consolidate printing and imaging resources under one roof -- with Hewlett-Packard -- has led to cost savings of around 30 percent for law firm Allens Arthur Robinson.

Approximately three years ago, with AU$2.2 million in hand, the company began replacing legacy print, fax, scanning and photocopying machines from a range of manufacturers including HP, Xerox, Ricoh and Kyocera.

"Cost is always a factor ... we certainly have reduced costs substantially -- mainly in the photocopying side of the business -- and it just improved in functionality and productivity gained.

"We had an ageing fleet of printers, predominantly HP 8000s and some Kyocera printers ... [we] had the cost under pretty good control under those but they were just getting too old, too slow, they were starting to wear out and so forth," Allens Arthur Robinson information services logistics manager Peter McGrath told ZDNet Australia in a recent interview.

Consolidation was key as management of print and imaging services was starting to get out of hand.

"We probably had every brand of photocopier on the planet in Allens Arthur Robinson at some place, so we had issues with that, regarding consolidation of services [and] multiple support contracts ... we wanted to have, if we could, one consolidated support contract, one throat to choke," he said.

While the firm considered a leasing arrangement, using its own capital to purchase the equipment proved easier, simpler and quicker according to McGrath, who said: "why borrow money when you've got your own to spend?"

Based on internal research, McGrath estimated the hardware cost to be just over 1c per printed page. HP supplies managed print services to the legal firm and that includes the supply of all printer cartridges.

The majority of Allens Arthur Robinson's 60-odd IT staff -- located in Australia -- have been involved in the reworking its print strategy at some stage. The company has close to 1,700 employees in total, with 1,600 in Australia and 120 spread across its Asia-Pacific offices.