Standard Chartered Bank?s growing operations in Ghana meant that the bank suddenly found itself in a printing conundrum. Its old Genicom and Tally printers, which operated at a maximum speed of 1,500 lines per minute, could not keep up with the increasing volume of daily and monthly reports such as balance statements and end-of-day transactions.

At a minimum the bank needed the capability of printing 1,800 lines per minute to keep pace with growth, although everyone agreed that 2,000 lines per minute would be ideal. In addition, the old printers were noisy and broke down frequently, resulting in costly downtime and repair bills. For Standard Chartered?s IT department, enough was enough.

?We had to identify a new solution that would carry us through our next phase of growth,? said Rexford Darko, manager of Infrastructure & Telecom, Group Technology at Standard Chartered West Africa. ?The reality is that any time we can save on operations can be channelled into customer service. In this case we were hoping to make a big saving.?

Reiss & Co., a systems integrator in Accra, was called in to identify a solution. With its guidance, Standard Chartered had within six weeks signed a purchase order for two Printronix P5220s, which were subsequently installed and linked to servers at the bank?s business continuity site and its head office in Accra, Ghana.

Printronix met Standard Chartered?s criteria for speed ? including operation at the desired 2,000 lines per page ? as well as flexibility, robustness and low noise levels.

?Since the installation of Printronix, we?ve seen a reduction of between twenty to thirty per cent in wasted man hours,? concluded Darko. ?The performance of Printronix has exceeded our expectations and we feel it?s been a good investment for the long term.?