Wragge Lawrence Graham & Company

Alongside a successful Relocation, a Print Strategy for International Law Firm Wragge, Lawrence Graham & Co has centralised printing, copying and scanning at its new UK HQ. The implementation of Multi-Function Printing technology will reduce print volumes by 2 million pages per year.

Technologies & Innovations

54 Ricoh Multi-Function Devices across 4 floors, Follow You Printing, Print Hubs, Print Room for specialist print services.

The Client

Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co (WLG) is a UK-headquartered international law firm providing a full service to clients worldwide. It is the World Law Group’s representative law firm in England and Wales, connecting clients with more than 15,000 lawyers globally. Through a network of trusted independent firms, it ensures clients receive the best possible service in every jurisdiction. This global reach, combined with the sector know-how and technical excellence of its people, is why it is a trusted adviser to FTSE 100 and 250 businesses, entrepreneurs, financial institutions, UK and overseas government departments, and high net worth individuals. WLG required support to design and relocate the technology for its move to its new 130,000 sq ft Birmingham based international headquarters and further to a competitive bid process selected Cordless Consultants (Cordless) to provide a ‘full duties’, end to end IT Relocation service.

The Team

GVA, Gensler

One element of the Cordless scope was to help identify, explore and deliver technologies that would provide suitable print/copy/scan facilities to the business in the immediate and long term. Their existing fleet of equipment included approximately 150+ aging, local ‘unmanaged’ devices that were resource wasteful and increasingly costly to maintain.

The new print solution had to be accommodated within the new building layout that had been designed around centralised services and a flexible workforce. It also needed to be delivered in a manner that ensured ‘business as usual’ in that users did not experience any interruption in their ability to print over the migration period. The users were very familiar with their existing local devices so much that there was known to be a concern about possible congestion at the printers and an overall increase in the time it would take to send and collect the print, especially relevant in a time critical business where clientengagement time is reported and charged by the minute.

Cordless worked with WLG and the print service provider Complete Imaging to develop a centralised print solution using a standard deployment of Ricoh Multi-Function-Devices (MFD) enabled with Follow You print service.

Printed copies were ‘pulled’ from the device after authentication with the user assigned contactless card. A total of 54 MFDs were deployed across 4 working floors with 3 devices installed in each of the four dedicated print hub rooms on each floor.

A print room was also built to provide volume and specialised print services. The Follow You print service was piloted on a selection of existing MFDs at their old location to develop the configuration and gain user acceptance of the new printing service.

Just prior to migration, training sessions were run to educate all users on how to use the new functionality. All the MFDs were installed and tested prior to each floor’s occupation with the majority bought as new and installed directly and only a few relocated from the existing building.

WLG report that all printing is now delivered by the new centralised print service with Follow You printing working well and now configured as compulsory. Feedback from users has been very positive indicating the initial fears from some users had been overcome.

The Clients’ comments were:

“We have the right number of devices for each floor. It’s great that I can send jobs to print in Birmingham and release them on a Monday in London. I no longer need to carry large print documents with me. I now think about the jobs before I print them and whether I really need them. It is good for confidentiality and stops my printing going missing.”

As often reported about Follow You printing, the effect has been to reduce total print and copy volume. Initial figures comparing print ‘clicks’ (pages printed rather than paper volume) between period before and after the new print services indicate an overall print reduction of 8% equivalent to an approximate total annual volume reduction by 2 million clicks. It is difficult to value this saving but a reduction of this value can be expected to generate noticeable cost savings to the business. Copying has also reduced by 19% during the same period.