Secure cloud services help healthcare provider deliver critical care to patients.

IT Manager, Step One Charity, United Kingdom

The Challenge

Step One Charity IT team manages 14 printers to print its patients’ reports and records.

The unsecured print environment presented a significant challenge. The organisation’s staff feared sending sensitive jobs to the wrong printer. Which mean that confidential personal information could be left at shared printers. Such information might be seen by unintended users, leaving Step One open to regulatory fines (e.g., GDPR) related to personal data privacy issues.

The IT team also spent a disproportionate amount of time managing and maintaining 5 print servers and the security policies across 14 printers.

The Solution

To help Step One Charity overcome their issues, Pinnacle Document Solutions Group implemented Xerox^® Workplace Cloud, allowing them to provide a complete solution from a single cloud platform.

Comprehensive Fleet Management Made Easy

With Xerox^® Workplace Cloud Fleet Management Solution, Step One’s printer security settings could be defined and applied across their fleet. Once the policies are set, they are monitored continuously to identify and remediate unintended changes This assisted Step One with an efficient and end-to-end means to manage their fleet security policies, all through the cloud.

For example, Pinnacle implemented policies to:

• Set admin password and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) settings on all devices, which are automatically updated quarterly

• Disable protocols that support direct IP printing as well as printing from USB drives

• Enable authentication, encryption and image overwrite and disables all protocols and features not deemed essential

• Disable scan to Home, to Mailbox and to USB on all devices

Thanks to Xerox^® Workplace Cloud, Pinnacle provides them with remote security policy configuration and compliance monitoring to ensure the security of printers and their patients’ data.

Secure Printing and Printer Access–Providing Peace of Mind: To ensure the safety of printed documents, Pinnacle made use of Xerox^® Workplace Cloud’s Pull Printing capability. This allows the organisation’s staff to submit jobs to a secure, single queue, where the job is held until the user authenticates at a printer of their choice to release it. Users can view or change the job settings before releasing it. If the job is no longer required, they can also delete the job to save print costs.

Desk or Mobile-based Simple Solution for Users: To help Step One keep pace with the evolving workplace, Pinnacle offered them Xerox^® Workplace Cloud “email to print” capability. This means that regardless of the type of device staff are using (smartphone, tablet, computer and Chromebook), they can simply email their print job to print@PrintByXerox.com to submit the job. The staff can now release their jobs at any printer by authenticating at the device. Because the jobs are held until they are ready to release them, the staff don’t have to make frequent trips to the printer to immediately collect the print to protect confidentiality.

Cloud Printing: Cloud-based services are gaining momentum every day, and with Xerox, Step One is leveraging the power of Cloud Printing. It allows them to log in to any supported cloud service on their multifunction printers so that they can scan to and print directly from their cloud storage.

Adopting Xerox^® DocuShare^® in the Future: To achieve the complete digitisation of its workflow, Step One plans to use Xerox^® DocuShare^® in the future. DocuShare^®, an enterprise content management tool from Xerox, will help them to digitise, store and secure business-critical information easily and efficiently.

The Results

Cost Savings: Since the adoption of Xerox^® Workplace Cloud in 2019, Step One has achieved several benefits. It has allowed them to remove unwanted onsite print servers to maximise space at their day hospital and other locations. It has also reduced the burden of IT administration and license costs as the charity now has four fewer servers. This has freed up more time for two IT department personnel to be assigned to more business-critical processes.

Improved Device Security: This is a remarkable achievement for the UK-based charity. Step One needed the technology and processes in place to successfully demonstrate they had security in place to meet GPDR. Plus, they had to manually configure each printer to manage security policies. However, with Xerox^® Solutions in place, Pinnacle now helps them with remote security policy configuration and compliance monitoring. This has resulted in improved printer and data security for the charity.

Huge Time Savings: This is another area where Xerox^® Solutions have efficiently helped Step One Charity. Previously, changing the Admin password on all devices would take hours. With Workplace Cloud Fleet Management, it’s now done within minutes. The amount of time saved working on printers in the current setup is quite impressive. With the new holistic Xerox^® Solutions, they are saving approximately 15-20 working hours per month.

Extra Budget + Extra Time = Newer Services and Better Patient Care: The charity now spends the savings achieved on other software/solutions to empower staff to serve their patients more efficiently. They are using the extra budget to build an electronic learning hub for their employees and to record patients’ development. The IT resources and other staff that have been freed up now have more time to assist front-line support personnel in offering better care to their patients.

About Step One Charity

Based in Devon, UK, Step One Charity provides mental health services for their patients to achieve employment goals and live more independently. It encourages people with mental health issues to take control of their future through one-to-one coaching, mentoring, crisis care and recovery.

Step One currently has a fleet of 14 printers to print its patients’ records. Around 120 of the charity’s personnel use those printers daily.