Print Software Cuts Costs and Delivers Efficiencies at South Lakeland

Published 23rd October 2008

South Lakeland District Council’s Revenue and Benefits Department is saving around £42,000 per year ongoing and has already saved a minimum of £126,000 to date following the implementation of innovative print management software from Gandlake.

Using the software, the Council now designs its own unique paper stationary – such as payment cheques – ending its reliance on pre printed paper stationary which often resulted in costly wastage if, for example, a cheque signatory changed.

The print management software is also enabling the Council to replace continuous paper stationary with cut sheet stock which frees staff from the time-consuming and costly job of separating cheques or other documents.

“Simply by using the print management software to migrate to non pre printed cut sheet paper stationary – and taking into consideration the annual cost of the software - we have already saved £126k over the last three years and will continue to save around £42k per year from now,” says Stuart Henderson, Systems Administrator, Revenues and Benefits, South Lakeland District Council.

In addition, the print management software is also enabling:


- bar coding on bills enabling citizens to pay at any Pay Point (for example in a Post Office) and reducing ‘over the counter’ per transaction payment charges incurred by the Council. During the Financial Year 07-08, the Council saved over £18,000 and will continue to save a similar amount during each subsequent year

- year-end Council Tax, Housing Benefits and Benefits letters to be batched and stapled in Royal Mail’s Walksort® order reducing postage costs by £1200.00 per year

- the automatic processing of print jobs at 7:00 a.m. providing staff with work when they arrive in the office at 8:00 a.m increasing staff productivity; enabling a full-time member of staff responsible for print queue management to be allocated elsewhere

- BACS payment notifications to be sent via email with a PDF attachment reducing print, packaging, postage and labour costs.

South Lakeland District Council is using Gandlake’s LaserServe version 5.0, the document creation and distribution element of the vendor’s middleware, Gandlake Enterprise Layer (GEL).

“We were very impressed by the speed of delivery, the effectiveness of the solution and the ‘quick wins’ it delivered to the authority,” adds Henderson.