How Green can My Printouts be?

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