Case Studies

The Company: Netopia
Netopia, Inc. now 20 years old, was born of the convergence of emerging router/gateway technologies with the ever growing demand for global connectivity. It develops and markets a portfolio of broadband equipment and services designed for the small and medium enterprises, office/home professionals and multi-PC households. The ever evolving technology enables carrier and service provider partners to deliver bundled, value-added services at reduced costs to generate profitable revenue streams, and acquire or retain subscribers in fast growing markets.

Netopia has over 300 employees and is present in five countries on three continents. Posted revenues for 2004 were in excess of $ 76 million. From the company’s headquarters in Emeryville, the Information Technology Department staff of seven (7) administer approximately 50 printers in three (3) Bay Area locations.

The Problem: Reducing Printer Costs without burdening staff
As you can imagine the IT staff at Netopia is highly trained and works in a very fast paced environment. Like most skilled network administrators, the Netopia staff is not really trained in printer support. With limited resources, their time is best devoted to supporting the demanding, cutting edge work force of this high tech company. So printer support was outsourced. But that was expensive.

Netopia was dependant on two separate contracts: one for laser printer consumables and another for printer maintenance. It was costly. It was time consuming. It was slow.

The Solution: Printer Umbrella– free parts & labor!
Mike Leonardich is Netopia’s Director of Information Technology. He was working with Doug Mount of Uptime Resources to develop a solution. Mount offered to combine both consumables and service into one printer management program – the new Printer Umbrella program. This program focuses on immediate service response and the elimination of support costs. Now Netopia pays only for the toner that it consumes. Delivery and installation of toner cartridges is free.

The program features guaranteed four (4) hour onsite response and free maintenance & repair service, including all parts and labor No contract is required. All products and services are backed by an unconditional “no questions, no quibbling” 100% money back guarantee. So there is no risk.

“I was shocked. I doubted it could work”, said Leonardich, ”If it did, I thought that it would not last because it would not make money”.

The Results: Dramatically reducing costs & freeing up IT staff resources
How has the program actually worked for Netopia? The program has been in effect for 15 months now. Netopia enjoys a dedicated account manager who knows exactly what they need and team of printer technicians, all certified for Netopia’s printer fleet. Netopia receives “just-in-time” delivery of consumables and immediate support services – all from one single vendor, Uptime Resources. This is easier to manage for Netopia.

The IT department is now able to focus on more important challenges than daily printer issues.

How much money did they save? The total cost is less now than they were already paying for just their consumables. All maintenance and repair costs were eliminated.

“We no longer pay huge sums for maintenance”, claims Mike Leonardich, “We are saving five figures every year with the program. We also save time”.

How is the service? “They are extremely timely, extremely fast to respond when a problem occurs. And they fix the problem extremely fast too”.

No longer doubtful, Mike continues to recommend the Printer Umbrella program. Good, reliable service. Huge budget savings.
More resources for the IT department.
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