5 Ways to Drastically Improve your Printing Processes
February 27th, 2023 by Kevin Box
Would you believe most organizations give little thought to the costs and structure of printing within their organization? Below are some stats that might get you to think more about what can be done to improve your organization’s printing processes. I believe it was Albert Einstein who once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” When it comes to printing, it’s much worse – Most organizations don’t really know what their printers’ costs and have no real plans to change course. There is good news however, because this issue can easily be resolved with 5 Key improvements.
According to Gartner and IDC’s data found on Webinarcare.com/Print Management Statistics, there are some mind-boggling print-related expenses and activities listed that can hurt your organization’s performance. In this article, we will give you five issues and five ways to solve each issue and drastically improve your printing processes within your organization.
Issue No. 1
Printing cost consumes 1 to 3 percent of a company’s total revenue and leads to a significant increase in operating costs.
• How to Improve – Creating a floor plan within your organization will help you rightsize your printer fleet so multiple people can use a workgroup printer as opposed to a printer sitting on each end users’ desk. This will help drive down costs and improve operating efficiencies.
• Purchasing enterprise-level devices can also help drive down the Total Cost of Ownership for printers. Enterprise-level devices use jumbo-yielding toner cartridges that are typically 10% to 20% higher in print yields compared with standard and extra high-yielding toners. Jumbo-yielding toners will also help lower your cost per image printed.
Issue No. 2
Organizations completely ignore 40% of printing costs, and two-thirds never track these costs.
• How to Improve – Organizations can easily improve this issue by investing in Print Management software which can track printing across the organization to help give you the best data needed to make changes in real-time. This can often result in 20% savings across the fleet.
Issue No. 3
Organizations have no idea that 40% of their budget is spent and wasted on print.
• How to Improve – Using Pin Print at the device or printing via a Proximity Card can help reduce this issue because the print job won’t print out until the end users walk up to the device and swipes their card once they reach the machine. Using Print Management software can also help remedy this because the software will allow for “Follow-Me-Print” which means they can walk up to any device on the network and use their proximity card to print the document on demand.
Issue No. 4
90% of Organizations have no idea how many printers they have throughout their organization.
• How to Improve – Print Management software can remedy this by keeping track of every printer connected to the network. Having an accurate count of the printer fleet and more importantly how much volume is being produced can help the organization better manage fleet performance.
Issue No. 5
According to IDC, 23% of help desk calls are printer related.
• How to Improve – Outsourcing printer-related help-desk calls to a reliable Managed Print Services Partner can prevent the IT Help Desk from having to field these calls. This will free up the Help Desk to focus on IT Infrastructure, computer break fixes, and core IT competencies.
If you have any questions concerning this article or would like to have one of Function4’s Specialists conduct a Printer Analysis on your printer fleet, reach out to me directly and I will connect you with a member of our team. I can be reached at kbox@function-4.com.
Posted in: General, Managed Print Services, IT Services