Tag Archives: Print Cost

How managed print services cuts the cost of office printing.

By implementing a managed print service strategy that saves time, money and is ‘green’.

I recently wrote about the differences between managing your print in-house V outsourcing/print management.

Here! Two similar sounding models yet distinctly different!

In the article, I refer to the management of print in-house often referred to as MPS (Managed Print Services)

The lines become easily blurred when talking about print management and MPS?

Many businesses don’t really understand or know the true cost of printing and often there is no method employed to manage and control print spend.

How can you take control of this seemingly mundane yet essential everyday business function?

Take Control of your print NOW!!

managed print services VS print management

Why implement an in-house print management  system?

Simple!

  1. To manage and recover costs
  2. Be able to print anywhere but with the right control mechanisms in place
  3. Reduce paper waste
  4. Increase productivity
  5. Reduce adminstrative costs
  6. Improve profitability by removing the hidden cost of printing and making it visible
Before I continue I should point out that a print management software/hardware solution employed in-house is not the same as print management and outsourcing all your finance/corporate printing.
Whilst the two sound similar and do cross paths, print management is a unique discipline that includes outsourcing anything from a business card, cheque to pens, mugs, mouse mats and all your finance/corporate print.
Managed Print Solutions are about managing the document process and print such as the printing of emails, photo-copying and document archiving in-house.
Implementation of an effective managed print program can see businesses reduce print costs by up to 30%.
Statistics can so easily be manipulated but for the purposes of this article let me provide an example of a US bank that implemented a strategic print management process and removed some 88 million print impressions, cut colour printing by just under 50% and paid for the initial investment within 8 weeks of it being set up. Impressive!

print management

How does it work?

A suite of print management software tools designed for companies, universities and commercial enterprises installed on your network that help you take back control of what you print by monitoring, measuring ongoing management of print activity.
The software is designed to gain a clear picture of what a company needs and then involves the deployment of the proper equipment to meet these needs.
It also helps employees become more aware of their printing habits and enforces print policies where necessary such as routing jobs to the most cost effective devices or by limiting the amount of colour printing.
Using print management software brings accountability and control of printed output to an enterprise, school, university, law practice, and accountancy firm.
User level reporting hi-lights awareness of print habits, costs and helps influence print behaviour to make employees think more before they hit the PRINT button.
It is a simple one step solution which keeps track of output from all connected printers and copiers by providing:-

Take control of your printed output!

  • Accurate – information for all print and copy costs
  • Secure – only releasing documents for output after users authenticate at the device
  • Mobile –  allowing users to send files to print from one location then pick them up across the building or campus
  • Green –  as it can discourage waste and enforces rules for  output
  • Reduce –  print/copy costs and waste around the organisation
  • Redirect –  large jobs +50 pages to a high volume multifunctional product (MFP)
  • Eliminate –  unnecessary printing by allowing users to delete jobs sent in error
  • Auto delete –  jobs in the print queue so they aren’t printed
  • Duplex printing – colour prints
  • Works with existing printers MFP’s and copiers
  • Adapts to any size

How do you regain control of your print spend and reduce print and paper costs?

managed print services

Easy. Click here and one of our advisors will call you.

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How print management saves time and money.

20 pund note

A managed outsource printing service = savings for your business

Easy really, the majority of businesses don’t have a clue how much they actually spend on corporate print such as letter-headings, invoices, paper, consumables in fact, anything print related. This is because there is no methodology to managing the process from purchasing, stocking and re-ordering.

A print management company can provide a fully automated and customised print management service which will help measure and control your printing costs.

The first step in the process is understanding how much your current spend is on print this is achieved by carrying out a print audit of the various documents used by the business.

A print management company seeks to understand why and how documents are used, what the order cycle is and whom the suppliers are? From the information gleaned determines the total print spend!

A project manager oversees the whole process from start to finish culminating in a proposal detailing current print costs V cost savings on the various print items ordered.

Emphasis will be to demonstrate cost savings through efficiency driven processes.

Each quarter, a review of the usage of the various items is undertaken to see where further cost savings can be made. Managing your company print, usage and spend should be an on-going process of analysis and review.

Managed Print Services is at the other end of the spectrum to print management and enables companies to manage the flow of print in an organisation.

Equitrac print management allows you to automatically control and manage how print flows through your organisation – improving productivity and maximising time.

Using print management software organisations are able to set up automated print controls and rules to optimise the way print moves around the company.  Employees can be denied printing certain applications such as email by automatically routing jobs to the most cost-effective printer for that task.

For example a solid ink colour device is more cost effective to print obligatory emails and letters rather than a colour-cartridge-guzzling desktop printer for colour runs, colour print can be prevented altogether unless user authorised.

Industry analysts estimate that 44% of printing is unnecessary

  • People are printing things more than once which is wasting huge amounts of money
  • They may send a document to print, then notice an error on screen
  • A document is not at the printer when they go to retrieve it
  • The toner is low or there is a paper jam

This results in wasted paper, consumables and larger electricity bills. Print management software enable a more efficient, leaner and greener print environment.

What do you think? Have you implemented one or both solutions? How have they worked for you? Please do share your success or disaster stories.

To learn more about how you can regain control of your office printing costs, contact us today.

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How a managed print service reduces print and paper costs

How a managed print service reduces print and paper costs.

How managed print service reduces print and paper costs

Managed print services allows user authentication,reduces print/copy costs and reduces paper waste.

Installing a managed print service solution offers substantial cost savings by re-routing and managing the amount of paper and printing processed in your office.

One of the frustrating challenges for organisations is reducing the volume of print and paper processing.

The management of paper, print and print devices cost money but often overlooked because they are seen as essential for modern-day offices and not perceived as a true cost reflected on the bottom line.

Recycling paper, implementing a duplex print strategy (printing both sides) or using recycled paper as part of a company’s drive to go green won’t save a company money in the long term.

Dispensing with mountains of paper often secure or confidential information requires the services of a secure disposal company but that all adds to the costs of managing your paper flow.

Many companies believe that office print is necessary and stockpile paper, re-print if there is an error on the printer or PC without any consideration for the environment or the cost implications to the company.

When an organisation analyses when, where and how often paper is used and what the re-ordering frequency is, do the printing costs then become visible?

Implementing a managed print service strategy does help reduce print costs, removes unwanted printing and enforces print rules such as using black rather than colour or simplex/duplex printing.

Companies are overburdened with many print devices – desktop printers, scanners, photocopiers with employees territorial and protective of their printers.

Cost reductions are achievable with a reduction of 3:1 by implementing modern MPS (managed print services) and MFPD’s (multi-functional print devices).

Include sizeable reductions in consumables used across an organisation and the cost savings are evident.

With a mobile workforce, employees want to be able to print anytime and anywhere.

One critical issue that halts the adoption of MPS is security.

Securely printed information runs the risk of being visible to prying eyes without MPS implementation and the management of how and when printed documents are managed in the paper flow is critical.

How a managed print service reduces print and paper costs

Secure print tracking software eliminates confidential information being left on the printer.

  • How do you prevent wasting paper prints?
  • How do you keep printer consumable costs down?
  • What happens to unclaimed documents?
  • How do you print off secure documents without a desktop printer?

By removing the need to rely on a single printer, users are able to divert their print jobs to the most cost-efficient printer and not have to worry about a device being out of service or having to wait for I.T. to resolve the problem.

Using secure print technology with user authentication ensures that the right device is selected, when it is printed and by whom as the print job can only be released when the user authenticates the print job at the device.

A secure document release application and secure print tracking software encourages user mobility, minimises paper waste and protects personal information and customer confidentiality.

Intelligent print rules and routing software removes the burden of the user to decide which printer is best for each job because when the user hits “print” a window pops into view advising the user which printer and what the cost is for the printing of the job.

Implementing an MPS solution will save you time and money in the long term and there are some easy to implement solutions that can be put in to practice without delay in addition to utilising a managed print services solution:

How a managed print service reduces print and paper costs

Managed print services reduce print costs, removes unwanted printing and enforces print rules

  1. Duplex (double-sided) printing get more out of each of the pages you print, print the odd pages first by setting your printer and then print the even pages thus reducing the number of sheets you use; particularly useful for when you want to print notes.
  2. Print using a smaller font/typeface – as long as you can read you will find more content will fit onto an A4 sheet.
  3. Check before you print – the print preview button ensures you see what you are printing. Changing the margins or scaling the document ensures you optimise the whole sheet for printing.
  4. Print only the pages you need – using the print preview button you only print the pages you want. In the print dialog box enter the page ranges required.
  5. You can adjust your page settings by reducing the header and footer and left/right margins enabling you to fit more content onto the page reducing the number of pages printed.
  6. Print multiple pages onto a single sheet of paper using font size 12 which tends to be the default setting, the document is still legible.

Finally, you can significantly reduce your print costs by working with a print management specialist who will evaluate your print requirements and understand your MPS requirements.

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