Since its first member was founded in 1832, the GRAWE Banking Group has built on almost 190 years of experience in the area of finance, investments, and real estate. The company, which is part of the Grazer Wechselseitige insurance group, now has 900 employees at 37 locations and manages assets worth 24.7 billion euros. The GRAWE Banking Group focuses on consistency, stability and security in its work. This includes the security of investments as much as data security: The bank manages highly sensitive data relating to the person and wealth of its customers. Hence, the GRAWE Banking Group must ensure appropriate confidentiality for this data. In order to ensure that documents printed on the bank’s printers cannot be viewed by unauthorised persons, the GRAWE Banking Group has opted for the Dispatcher Paragon print management solution from its long-standing partner Konica Minolta: Authentication Management ensures that documents are only released at the printer after prior authentication. This is particularly important as some of the company’s printers are located in the bank’s public consultation rooms. The solution also allows full control over print jobs and optimises the consumption of materials, such as paper and toner. For example, the GRAWE Banking Group has used the solution to define rules for printing in order to reduce consumption – such as by only allowing double-sided and black and white printing. With Dispatcher Paragon, the GRAWE Banking Group has significantly increased the security of confidential data and at the same time introduced a future-proof solution for print management.
GRAWE has been using printers from Konica Minolta since 2005. As part of a change process, the banking group replaced its printers for new bizhub MFPs (MultiFunction-Peripherals) from Konica Minolta. Part of the tender was a solution to secure print jobs, explains Armin Rettl, Head of IT Infrastructure at GRAWE Banking Group: “As a bank, security is a top priority for us, and we have to provide detailed evidence of the path that information has taken. Since the printers in our branches are publicly accessible, we have to avoid documents being freely visible in the printer.”
With the aim of finding the right application for the GRAWE Banking Group‘s needs, Konica Minolta chose Dispatcher Paragon as the print management solution. As a long-standing partner, Konica Minolta is well acquainted with its customer‘s needs and is aware of the sensitivity of the data that the banking group processes and prints on a daily basis. Implementation was rolled out in the course of re-equipping the GRAWE Banking Group with Konica Minolta MFPs: The printing systems were initially delivered in March and April 2021 – the company now uses 79 multifunction printing systems from Konica Minolta‘s bizhub i-series, including 49 bizhub C300i and several bizhub C650i. By May, Dispatcher Paragon had already been introduced: "Delivery and set-up were quick and simple. Shortly afterwards, we carried out internal training on the product and started with the nationwide roll-out of Dispatcher Paragon. We received very positive feedback on Dispatcher Paragon from our colleagues right from the outset: They immediately understood how to use the solution and recognised the added value that the tool offers them in their daily work,“ says Rettl.
With Dispatcher Paragon, Konica Minolta offers a solution that provides a variety of functions for optimised printing: Thanks to user management directly in the tool, the GRAWE Banking Group‘s IT department can create users, who then send their print jobs to an MFP. The print process is started at the device only after prior authentication via chip card by the person who issued the print job. This ensures that only authorised persons can view and collect printouts. The follow-me-printing principle also allows for more flexibility: Print jobs can also be sent from the home office to the office or branch. It is also possible to control printers in other branches within the GRAWE Banking Group. The print job can only be started when the employee is present and after authentication. At the same time, Dispatcher Paragon also allows for selective exceptions to this rule, if necessary – for example, for bulk printing or in the everyday business of customer advisors who must print a lot. Besides the follow-me-printing function, which the GRAWE Banking Group has mainly been using so far, Dispatcher Paragon also offers extensive reporting and budgeting functions. This helps to obtain transparency about the printing costs of the respective teams, departments, or users. At the same time, it helps to achieve more efficient usage of printers and resources, which is one of the GRAWE Banking Group‘s aims, Rettl tells us: „With the introduction of Dispatcher Paragon, we also want to reduce material consumption. We have already seen a drop in material orders for paper and toner due to a more conscious approach to printing. We want to improve this even further in future with Dispatcher Paragon‘s reports and reduce our environmental footprint.“ Therefore, the GRAWE Banking Group looked for a solution that allows printing according to the follow-me-printing principle, in which print jobs are only actually executed when users authenticate themselves directly at the device. “Since we had long been very satisfied with Konica Minolta printers, it was logical for us to ask our partner about the software solution as well,” continues Rettl.
Implementation of the solution is set to run until the end of 2021: “In the meantime, we want to use even more of Dispatcher Paragon’s functions and integrate them into our workflows,” says Rettl. He sums up: “Dispatcher Paragon is everything and more than we expected from a print management solution with the strictest security standards. Thanks to Authentication Management, we can prevent unauthorised access to the highly sensitive information, eliminating security gaps. For us, the solution has already become a vital module for secure and future-proof printing. With Konica Minolta, we have the right partner by our side, with whom we have a trusting relationship as equals.”