An In-plant Success Story

I had the opportunity to spend a few days recently visiting a shop that I worked with two or three years ago. Revisiting a shop that had issues, only to find that most—if not all—of the issues have been resolved, is one of the most rewarding things about my job.

All too often, our assignment is to do an assessment of an in-plant because administration (upper management) is concerned about the financial sustainability of the shop. Maybe it has been losing money. Or maybe customer complaints have been increasing. Or perhaps the managed print services (MPS) guys are knocking on the door.

Dealing with declining revenue is a common scenario these days, especially in public higher education; but it’s happening in state and local government, school districts and many businesses as well. As parent organizations react to reduced revenues, they start to look for ways to cut costs, and the Peters-Drucker-Blanchard mantra (i.e., focus on core competencies) comes into play.

“We’re not in the printing business,” the argument goes, "so why should we invest limited capital in printing equipment?” Or...“Declining revenue/sales is forcing us to make some difficult decisions. We’re going to have to eliminate some positions. Cut down to the core. Trim the fat.”

It doesn’t matter what business you may be in, when it comes down to making tough choices, and the conventional wisdom is that you’re going to have to cut something, it makes sense to cut a support service, because it’s not “core.” At least that’s the argument.

A lot of my projects are driven by the need to reduce expenditures. Administrators are given the mandate to cut some percentage from their operating costs, and as we all know, food, travel and printing usually lead the list.

That was the case at the school I visited this week. Three years ago, the shop was in trouble. It was losing money, the director position was vacant, and management needed to make some decisions. The primary question was: “How can we eliminate the red ink?” However, since the ability to return to a net positive balance was in question, the larger question was, “Should we fill the manager’s position?”