Clients frequently ask us what tangible, quantifiable benefits a software implementation or upgrade will provide. In this guest blog, Fairmount Minerals, a leading producer of sand products for the oil and gas, foundry, and glass-making industries and more, describes the savings it realized by reducing the number of bill of lading copies it prints. The project had a synergistic effect because it reduced cost and contributed to the company's 2013 corporate social responsibility objective.
Imagine sitting on a lift truck and hoisting 140,000 sheets of paper to send them on a voyage to…a dumpster? Is there some other more responsible use?
Challenged by our Best Practices team, we put all that paper in the “saved” column and cut an estimated $7,300 per year in paper and printing costs. We didn’t need a lift truck to do it; the solution came by simply reducing the number of copies of some of our bills of lading (BOLs) for sand shipments.
Says Chris Rundell, Enterprise Resource Planning Applications Manager, “The Best Practices team asked if it was really necessary to print out three bills of lading for every shipment. When we took a hard look at the 185,000 BOLs that were printed in 2012, we concluded that about 70,000 of them were for shipments that actually required only one copy, not three. That suggested we could save 140,000 printed pages, some of which required costly special paper.”
“We implemented the change companywide in April of 2013,” Chris continues. “Linda Collins in our IT (department) was able to leverage new software functionality and reconfigure the printers at all applicable locations. We estimate that we’re saving about $4,500 per year in paper costs, plus another $2,800 per year in printing expenses like toner and printer maintenance.”
This accomplishment is another example of how a simple idea can create significant environmental benefits and a more sustainable future for us all. Linda Collins received lots of fan mail and even flowers in appreciation for her role in this project.
To read about our solutions for our other great clients, check out our Case Studies.
No Comments Yet
Let us know what you think