Printing was a major concern for Essar Group’s mobile workers, including the top level mangers and marketing executives. To take a printout of even a single document, mobile workers had to hunt for the local IT support staff and the nearest printer. In order to counter these challenges, Essar Group wanted a solution that did not require mobile workers to access any laptop or desktop and enabled them to print documents from their handheld devices (in this case BlackBerry smartphone) regardless of the location of the company’s network.

Essar Group trialled solutions that used the mobile device’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections to link directly to printers, but none of these delivered the expected result. The company then adopted HP ePrint Enterprise solution, which is a cloud-based service that enables users to easily search for and print to a company’s networked printer.

With the ePrint Enterprise solution, mobile workers at Essar are now able to print and distribute documents to their team staff at the push of a button on their mobile devices, rather than having to open a notebook or finding a PC to connect to a printer.

With ePrint Enterprise, we have eliminated the inconvenience caused to our executives, as earlier they had to stop their work mid-way to print a document. Now, they can just send a document for printing from their smartphones to the nearest printer

Jayantha Prabhu, Chief Technology Officer, Essar Group

 “With ePrint Enterprise, we have eliminated the inconvenience caused to our executives, as earlier they had to stop their work mid-way to print a document. Now, they can just send a document for printing from their smartphones to the nearest printer. It eliminates the inconvenience of having to jump out of a meeting to get a printing job done. They can now print even while attending a meeting,” says Jayantha Prabhu, Chief Technology Officer, Essar Group.

Today, the employees are just required to type in key search terms or use the GPS capabilities of the smartphone to quickly find a convenient printer. The solution has also improved the productivity of the local IT staff as they no longer have to manage the printing needs of visiting executives.

Security was definitely a major criteria, before adopting this cloud-based printing solution, for an enterprise company like Essar. Prabhu informs, “The solution has security features that an enterprise customer require – for example, the data does not leave their enterprise network and can be integrated with well-known pull printing user authentication solutions.”

The use of HP ePrint at Essar has now been extended to 1,000 smartphone users and soon will be extended to the remaining 5,000 mobile users. Other than the ePrint solution, Essar has entered into a Managed Print Services (MPS) contract with HP that covers more than half of its operations.