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Lexmark in conjunction with Dataquest recently inaugurated its Green Print Forum with a CIO roundtable where enterprise printing costs and the ecological effects of indiscriminate printing were discussed in detail. The idea of forming a Green Print Forum originally emerged while putting together the Dataquest Green Book in January 2009.

Back then, while talking to vendors and the enterprise community about various green IT issues and initiativesgreen data centers, storage, and even green buildings and campusesit was realized that many enterprises have not really taken into account the impact of printing on their operating expenses and the ecology as a whole. And this is the message that Dataquest in partnership with Lexmark, tried to highlight and sensitize enterprises about in the first session of the Green Print Forum.

The forum comprised renowned CIOs and business heads from different industry segments such as Rajiv Gerella, CIO, Deutsche Bank; Pradeep Pendse, dean IT, Welingkar Institute of Management; Yateen Chodnekar, CIO, Bank of Muscat; Zameer Syed, VP, IT, Reliance Money; Sushanto Mitra, CEO, SINE; V Subramaniam, CISO, IDBI; Suresh Shanmugam, CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra Finance; Haren Shah, director, IT, Alpha Hi-Tech; and Dhiren Savla, CIO, Kuoni Travels.

(from L-to-R) Rajiv Garella, VP-IT, Deutsche Bank; Sushanto Mitra, CEO, SINE; and Pradeep Pendse, Dean -IT, Welingkar Institute of Management discuss the importance of norms and processes that guide document printing and how document management solutions can help

Jonathan Yeoh, MD, Lexmark, South East Asia kickstarted the discussion by giving a detailed perspective on the printing habits of Indian enterprises and gave some useful pointers on how printing efficiencies can be enhanced through some interesting statistics on printing in India. He urged CIOs to think through the number of output devices within their organization, and how well they are shared on the network; find a better way to share their printers while ensuring security; calculate the per user consumption of paper; and better plan the procurement of consumables. He also urged CIOs to build a sustainable strategy by looking at printing as a key green IT initiative and to imbibe the culture of printing less and saving more within their organization.

In the unstructured panel discussion that followed, Ibrahim Ahmed, group editor, CyberMedia and the chairperson of the forum announced the official launch of the Green Print Forum and asked CIOs to share their experiences on challenges related to printing within their organization, and the initiatives taken to go green while saving costs.

Rajiv Gerella from Duetsche Bank said that banks are bound by many government norms and processes which require large number of documents to be printed and saved for several years. He said that while Deutsche Bank has been educating customers to not print their bank statements and refer to them online, there are other business apsects at the back-end that make printing essential.

Representing the travel and tourism industry, Dhiren Savla from Kuoni Travels spoke of a back-office initiative taken at Kuoni a couple of years ago, where a document management software has been deployed that encourages suppliers to deliver and accept invoices in electronic format, and educates customers on the benefits of e-tickets and electronic travel itineraries.

(from L-to-R) Zameer Syed, VP-IT, Reliance Money; AK Dinkar, GM, MTNL, and Dhiren Savla, CIO, Kuoni Travels dwell on the government processes and QYC norms that guide the printing processes in enterprises	(from L-to-R) Jonathan Yeoh, MD, South East Asia, Lexmark; Ronaldo Foresti, VP, Asia Pacific & Latin America, Lexmark; V Subramaniam, deputy GM- IT & CISO, IDBI prescribe the best practices in printing for Indian enterprises

Zameer Syed from Reliance Money and Suresh Shanmugam from Mahindra & Mahindra Finance spoke about how the government processes and QYC norms (on the need for banks and financial institutions to maintain physical records) make it a challenging situation for a CIO to squeeze out savings from printing.

Giving a new perspective, Yateen Chodnekar from Bank of Muscat spoke about how companies should look at publishing more and printing less. To achieve this, he said that companies should divide printing process into two categoriesmandatory documents and other documents for inter-office communicationsand try and convert them into e-documents.

Sushanto Mitra, CEO of SINE spoke of how small enterprises also need to maintain records on income tax returns and recruitment, which result in significant printing costs. He also raised a key issue on how most small companies receive very little handholding or education from vendors on how they can optimize printing costs and go green.

The need to consolidate the printer devices within the organization, increasing the use of network printers instead of standalone devices, and increasing the use of secure e-documents were points raised by Subramaniam IDBI. He further highlighted the need for the banking community to lobby with the government on reducing the need to print and keep physical proof of documents.

Haren Shah from Alpha Hi-Tech highlighted the need to take printing related costs at the regulators level.

Satish Pednekar from Welingkar Institute spoke of how e-notes and books in electronic format is gaining popularity among students which has significantly brought down printing spends at Welingkar.

The Green Print Forum proved to be a fertile ground for many ideas that will form the basis for Dataquests ongoing green focus and could be taken as a humble start to a series of similar sessions.

Priya Kekre
priyak@cybermedia.co.in

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