With the growth of the economy in reverse mode and the Chancellor exclaiming that it’s going to take longer to recover from the financial crisis (although the national debt has reduced) companies will be striving to look at ways of streamlining their operations and improving efficiency.

There’s an argument that suggests the more economically challenged the economy is the greater opportunities there are to be exploited.

Only the strong succeed, losers need not apply spring to mind. Therefore our business objectives need to include a strong will, being well prepared and persistence.

The companies who include the above in their business objectives are likely to survive the global doom and come out on top on the other side.

Recently one company/manufacturer with a turnover of £10 million+ told me “we’ve tried everything, we’ve exhausted every possibility, the business is as solid as it can be given the current climate but no-one is buying anything. You can’t sell it if people can’t buy it because they haven’t been given a budget.”

Are you keeping a close eye on your profit? All well and good looking at the cash value in the bank but are you making a profit. There is always something companies can do to make sure they are running a tight ship and are as efficient as they can be.

There is no magic wand to fix the erring global economy and for many businesses, survival is making it from one month to the next; one week to the next.

The companies that win are those who lead, take the initiative and are not afraid.

Businesses that remain focussed use initiative and aren’t afraid will fare well in 2013.

Here are some points to consider:-

1. Rely on no one – does this sound cynical? Success will not happen until you accept that no one thing or no one person is the cause of your problems and only you can make your goals happen.

2. It’s unlikely that the economy is suddenly going to do a u-turn anytime soon so it’s important to make sure we are aware of any industry changes that might have an impact on our business or us personally. Make yourself invaluable to your company (as an employee) and to your customers by being visible and offering solutions even if they are not in the frame of mind to consider them. At least it demonstrates entrepreneurial intent and that you have the customers best interests at heart.

3. Be more pro-active. Just when you think you’ve exhausted all avenues talk to other businesses, colleagues, associates and customers. Find out what they are doing, how are they generating business, what marketing initiatives have they deployed that you might not have done yet? Set small goals and tick them off when they are done. It could be a change in the workflow process that can make all the difference in increasing your profit margin.

4. Be upbeat – at the start of this year, the majority of businesses we spoke to were. There was a sense of optimism in the air, sales were being done and then along came the Greek economic crisis and kicked everyone out of touch. Nothing like a bad bit of economic news to knock businesses. Being upbeat and optimistic separates us from the rest of the “done-in” crowd.

Each day our world is rocked by events that are either unplanned or completely unexpected by staying focussed and working on a plan keeps us calm and less stressed.

5. Be ever-present everywhere. Now is not the time to live in obscurity. Let potential customers know you are there.

Have a social media strategy, showcase your company with up to date content on your website, tell your companies success stories and share your success openly.

It defines the importance of keeping focussed and why we are actually in business and these things are sometimes forgotten when we are in the thick of things.

6. What if you’ve lost that va va voom; the passion you need that gives you the reason to get up in the morning? Think about a business coach or a friend who can be objective enough to give you advice.

Finally…

If you no longer enjoy what you are doing then its time to take a good look and understand why.

If you’re not enjoying what you are doing then you need to take a long hard look at the reasons why.

Be honest with yourself and if the job or the business is not working and you’ve exhausted every avenue; if the passion has gone completely and you are not motivated to continue, then its time to take a long hard look and make a decision about whether you continue.

Could it be there is no longer a market or niche for your products or services in which case is it time to cut your losses and ship on out? Sometimes things happen for a reason and events are out of our hands.

This is not being negative its being a realist.

Too many companies bury their heads in the sand and think the next week or month will be better when the profit and loss sheet tells a different story.

What do you think?

How are you keeping ahead of the economy?

What tactics have you employed to get through the downturn?

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The post How to survive 2013! Keeping ahead of the competition. appeared first on Digital Print Management.

Print Management software controls how you manage your print-flow in your organisation. It will save time and money!

Using an automated print management solution enables you to set up your print flow by automating print controls making sure that the best printers are optimised for the right jobs.

For example a mono simplex job being re-routed to a black and white device as opposed to a colour printer.

Print specific rules for email or internet access can be set up to ensure that either the application is denied access to specific printing devices or is routed to the most economical printing device.

Industry analysts estimate that 44% of print is unnecessary!

For example:-

• People are printing things more than once
• They may try and print a document and then notice there is an error on the screen
• Their document is not at the requested printer when they go to retrieve it
• The toner is low or there is a paper jam.

The above only serves to increase the quantity of paper being consumed, increases consumable costs, higher electricity bills all of which aren’t always associated with the “management of print” in a company.

Increased user productivity and cost control

Can only be achieved when a print management software application is installed.

Although we are living in a ever increasing digital era of email communications, internet and scanned-to-PDF documents paper is still the preferred format for many businesses to convey important information this is typical of obligatory and legislative based industries.

Multi-functional devices (MFD’s) are more secure, economical and can process high volumes at less than the cost of the more traditional stand-a-lone desktop printers.

An organisation can reduce print waste and costs by being able to output to the more efficient printers.

STOP! Wasted paper, consumables and mountains of print in your organisation.

Security and confidentiality

By preventing private or sensitive documents from sitting unattended and unclaimed at remote printers.

Users can print securely to networked MFD’s by using a secure, convenient and mobile workflow. With secure document release, the documents are held on a secure server and outputs them only when the user authenticates it.

Productivity and mobility

Documents can be released to any device that is on the network anywhere in the building giving users the mobility to print jobs wherever is convenient for them avoiding job queues, collection lines and out of service printers.

“Send To” Printing lets users share documents by sending colleagues the ability to print and confirm output.

Accurate cost allocation and reporting functionality

User authentication to network services – track, analyse and allocate costs of every document produced on any device anywhere in the building. Workers can accurately charge documents to specific department or cost centres codes. You can also track the costs of document attributes such as file or paper size, media type, colour, duplexing, stitching etc.

Effortless control

Print management software lets you determine who may print to which print devices and set up specific rules to determine where colour jobs are printed, automatically delete print jobs, hold or re-route print jobs to more efficient printers as opposed to desktop printers.

Rapid ROI

Print management system administration and control is centralised making it manageable and less reliant on I.T. for print related errors. Fault detection provides a single console to track devices’ status and history including current toner levels, print failures and error messages.

Managing the print-flow for a more sustainable environment

Managing output, enforcing print rules for users and allocating printing to the correct printer ensures that what is required to be printed is. Which means that consumption is reduced, wastage is lessened and this can form part of your company’s environmental sustainability objectives.

What are the benefits?

1. Protect document security and confidentiality
2. Eliminate unauthorised printing and copying
3. Enforce colour quotas on colour printers
4. Enforce output to the most economical and efficient device.
5. Allocate output costs to users, departments, projects or clients
6. Understand how printers and copiers are being used across your network.
7. Reduce the cost of purchasing unnecessary and under-used devices.
8. Reduce I.T. support requirements by not having to call them when there is a paper jam or toner replacement required.

Manage your print, manage your paper, manage your costs!

Next steps

Digital Print Management are channel partners for ProcessFlows the world’s leading print management service and solution providers.

Please contact us for an impartial discussion as to how the Equitrac office software and solutions can help drive down your company’s print costs using our print management solutions.

We like to receive comments so please leave a note and let us know how you manage your print. What are your success stories and how did you manage to implement your print solution.

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One of the biggest challenges facing many companies today is the management of paper, print and print devices.

Implementing a Managed Print Service (MPS) is one of the quickest and measurable way of managing costs because it enables the organisation to consolidate its many devices. 

Organisations often have an excessive number of devices such as desk top printers, old PC’s and redundant equipment that can either be eliminated or replaced entirely with modern technology.

The ratio of 3:1 reduction in devices is achievable and cost savings on consumables is evident when you consider how expensive desktop printers are to operate, manage and maintain on a standalone basis.

In fact if the cost savings are so transparent you’d think organisations would jump at  implementing an effective print management strategy.

But when considering an MPS there can be resistance from your employees’ and their concerns can be:

• You cant take away my printer I will be less productive
• I need this printer because I need to print off confidential information
• Its not an I.T. issue or expense
• I print small jobs so it can’t really cost that much can it?

There are ways to overcome user resistance by being able to communicate to the employee the costs of running their printers and the impact on the bottom line; which the employee may not be aware of.

Making a case to implement a printer consolidation strategy starts with communicating the benefits of consolidating printers such as access to better and more up to date technology and the benefits to the environment by printing on efficient devices.

Modern print hardware provides a better quality printed page gives the user faster printing capability for large jobs and colour printing can be offered to the departments who really need it at an affordable price and there are further cost savings by using duplex printing (double-sided printing).

User secure print technology like “Follow-You Printing” can alleviate confidentiality printing since no print job is printed or released until the user authenticates it at the device. Intelligent print rules and routing software takes the burden off the user to decide which printer is best for each job when hitting print a pop up window gives the user options of where to print the job and the associated costs.

A modern print infrastructure will assist employees to be more productive, documents made more secure, and IT can focus on core strategic activities by not having to provide printer support.

After six months, let your employees know that the company has saved thousands thanks to the implementation of a printer consolidation strategy and their changed print behaviour.

Consolidating your devices will save up to 30% of your overall print costs and create a “greener office” by using one of our Print Management Solutions.

Equitrac Office – For the Enterprise

Equitrac Office print management software helps companies gain control and management of their printing to reduce costs, increase document security and enable sustainability programs. Through measurement, monitoring and ongoing management of print activity.

Equitrac Office measures a company’s printing needs and then deploys the proper equipment to meet those needs. It helps employees become more aware of their printing habits and provides the tools to enforce print policies where necessary, such as routing print jobs to the most cost-effective devices or limiting the amount of color printing.

Benefits:

• Reduce print/copy costs across the whole enterprise
• Improve document security on the network
• Eliminate waste and support environmental sustainability

A large US based Bank saved $2 million in 18 months – Eliminated 88 million print impressions, cut colour printing by more than 50%, saved the equivalent of 70 acres of mature trees and paid for the initial investment within the first 60 days of implementation.

Equitrac Express – For Education

Equitrac Express software brings accountability and control of printed output to any campus, school and Higher Education establishment by providing increased awareness of print habits and their associated costs through user-level reporting, print management helps change print behaviour.

Compatible with leading campus card systems and any printer/MFP, Equitrac Express is used in over 1,000 education institutions throughout helping schools enforce student print quotas, charge for printed output, reduce wasteful unclaimed printing, and make printing more convenient, manageable and secure.

Benefits

• Reduce print waste and increase cost savings
• Recover costs via “Pay-for-Print” – Authenticate with Student ID Card or PIN
• Track and manage print/copy jobs across the site
• Convenient for users – Documents held in a virtual queue, for printing anywhere to any device (depending on user’s print rights)

A large metropolitan University (24,000 students, over 3,100 staff, 3 separate campuses, 26 buildings) realised £310k savings over three years, eliminating over 4.5 million pages of wasteful printing.

Digital Print Management provides mission critical solutions to enterprises that are looking to effectively manage printing environments, reduce print costs, increase security and and lessen environmental impact.

Call us for more information on: 01234-271156 or fill in our contact form and one of our advisors will get in touch.

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The post Managed Print Services – How to manage your print costs! appeared first on Digital Print Management.

Emailing has become the staple method of communication, CRM systems allow us to manage our communications and how we interface with customers, the rise of social media another way of promoting yourself and your company’s brand.

These technological developments have impacted our working lives radically changing the way we work, how we interact with customers and as a result the way we use and interact with paper has also changed.

Or has it?

The lifecycle of a document use to be very simple.

A document would be created as a form or letter, it would be saved, printed and posted.

The letter would then be stored in a drawer or in an appropriately labelled file dependent on how often it would be accessed or, filed into obscurity until such times when you had a spare few minutes to go through your filing cabinets or drawers.

When information from the document was needed we’d hunt around for it, not always an easy task to remember where you filed it and which drawer you relegated that letter.

Once retrieved from storage it was copied if needed but this bit of paper involved a human interaction.

Finally, when the document was finished with, it was filed and returned to storage. A process repeated many times up and down organisations in the UK.

The problem with this filing method is it is very slow, prone to errors resulting in many documents being misappropriated or misfiled.

In the last ten years electronic document management has exponentially changed our working life’s. It has changed the way we interact and use paper. No longer perceived as a long term medium, human interaction with paper has changed from being a permanent record to a transient or short term interaction.

Paper storage hasn’t completely been relegated to the annals of history. It is still required in regulated industries and government but this is fast changing too as many of the permanent records of information are now being stored electronically!

You’d expect that with such a major shift to electronic document management paper work flows would be drastically reduced.

Statistics indicate paper usage is on the decline. The evolution of paper from a permanent record to a short-term bit of information has only changed how paper is used – not how much!

The shift has swung to documents being printed far more times from its electronic master when compared to antiquated filing systems.

Why is this happening?

Because there is still a preference for human beings to interact with paper or to interact with the information that is on the paper.

Think about how we use paper daily. We print the document, use it and then toss it in the bin when finished and then the next time you need it, you guessed it, you print it again repeating the process.

I don’t believe anyone can wholeheartedly put their hand up in the air and say they’ve never done it, we all do it daily unconsciously almost. It is a repeatable process.

The evolution of smartphones, tablets and the need to reference information sometimes makes it easier to work with paper!

Let me quickly illustrate, I’m writing this blog and am working from material and articles that I’ve researched and annotated. If I have two screens easy but its actually quite difficult to switch between what I am writing and what I am reading. Yes, I know I can minimise but its still not that easy.

Even with advent of great mobile apps like Goodreader, webnotes all of which are useful note annotators, it is just not the same as working from the printed article!

Where you can scribble, hi-light and make notes using a pen!

Which validates the statement I made above, people like interacting with the information on paper. The only difference is the way in which we interact with paper, it is very different than we did say twenty years ago!

With most business processes still reliant on paper output for records, transactions, reference or simply for better readability the best solution is to print smarter with print management and apply print policies to ensure that when a document is printed it is printed securely and on the most cost effective device.

Employing managed print services (MPS) will track print usage enable, duplex printing rather than simplex printing when needed, print mono rather than colour, encourage users to be made aware of what they are printing and why they are printing it, how many times they’ve printed the same document and how much its costing the organisation.

MPS will also give users the relevant tools to ensure they make the right printing decisions such as pop up alerts that recommend a different printer for the job they are printing.

Paper as a permanent record held in storage is declining, paper as a substrate isn’t going anywhere.

The use of paper can be better managed with achievable cost, security and improved workflow results.

What do you think?

Do you have a paperless office? If so how have you achieved it?
Is your office under siege with paper?
Would you like to implement a reduced print policy?
What about employees? Do you have a no print policy but find it difficult for staff to employ your no print policy?
Share your thoughts please or post a comment.
We’d love to hear what you think!

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