HOW TO BETTER MANAGE YOUR PRINTERS

Did you know that:

bulletAccording to the Gartner Group, an average of 1% to 3% of an organization's annual revenues are consumed by document production.
bulletThe average office employee consumes 10,000 pages of paper per year, equivalent to approximately 1.2 trees per year. The greenhouse gasses emitted in manufacturing the paper have to be added to calculate the full impact.
bulletThe average printer cartridge takes three quarts of oil to produce. If the cartridge is not recycled, it takes over 1000 years for it to decompose in a landfill.
bulletUp to 50% of help desk calls are related to printers.

To reduce the cost of printing in your organization, you can perform some basic printer management steps internally or you can hire a firm such as Pro Buyers to help. How can a Managed Print Strategy help you conserve more?

First, stop buying equipment until you’re clear on what you have already and whether you’re using it to your full advantage.

Next, do an assessment of how much paper is going through your printers, how much toner and ink you’re using, and which printers are being most heavily used on a monthly basis. The volume data is easy to gather using a tool you likely already have access to:  HP Web Jet Admin's Tracking function. Purchasing can likely isolate the toner cartridge money spent by item number.

You should also estimate the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your printing infrastructure. This is basically the cost of hardware averaged over three years, plus the cost of supplies plus the cost of maintenance (IT hourly support time or outside service contracting firm).

Next, devise ways to optimize everything:

bulletMake sure heavily-used printers are robust enough to carry the monthly average print load. If some printers are used rarely, take them out of service to save on supplies and maintenance.
bulletCut paper usage by adjusting the printer default settings on each computer to duplex or two-sided print.
bulletReplace hard copy forms you use with electronic forms wherever possible.

Finally, there are two common, nevertheless perplexing, myths regarding changing printer strategy that must be dispelled before you can be successful in reducing the cost of printing:

  1. "You're going to take my printer away." Not necessarily true. Your answer could be:  "If you are underutilizing your device, yes, it might be taken away. If you are overutilizing it, we'll get you a faster one."
  2. "I sometimes print confidential documents, so I can't print to a centralized multifunctional device." Here's an answer you might want to use:  "We need to show you how to send secure print jobs to the MFP with a passcode so you can retrieve them when convenient."

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Contact us today for more information on our independent print assessments!

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Last modified:  May 1, 2010