Your company probably has several printers of various types located throughout the various offices and on several floors. Each office seems to think that they need the biggest and the best printer on the market. What you end up with is far more printer/copier expense than you need and in this day of finding every possible way to cut corporate expenditures, you need to look into a print management program to help get this under control.
It is estimated that up to 3% of your annual budget can end up being spent on print costs, between the huge amounts of docuwaste and the cost of the equipment service. Docuwaste is described as the overindulgence of printing that so many of your employees seem to partake in. This ends up wasting countless reams of paper and hundreds of gallons of both ink and toner. The net result is a significant drain on your operating capital.
If you choose to implement the right print management options and software, you can easily save as much as 30% of your total printing costs. All of this starts with a simple Document Assessment that is designed to take a very close look at your current printing usage. This includes things like how many printers and copiers you have, whether they are ink jet, laser jet, black only or color and where they are distributed within your company.
One of the biggest cost factors with regard to printing in any business is the use of the wrong printer for a particular printing project. Consider this: you have an employee who wants to print out a two page document and does so with his desktop ink jet printer. This is a perfectly acceptable use of the printers he has available to him and is relatively cost effective.
Now you have another employee who needs to print a 200 page document and turns to use his desktop ink jet printer -lis this a wise use of resources? Absolutely not – as the cost of printing such a big document with this type of printer would be excessive. When you have far less expensive printing options available to use, your print management program should be established in such a way that every employee is well aware of his options and automatically knows which printers he should be using for what type of project.
However, since most employees are not as cost conscious as they should be, you need to have software in place that can help you track all of your printing costs. You need software that will help you track who is doing the printing, what they are printing and which printers they are using. This type of software can help you calculate your printing costs down to the price per page. Only when you have access to this type of information can you start to make the necessary changes.
Once you have this information you will also be able to look at what you are spending on printer and copier supplies. You need to pay particular attention to this area as you can very easily end up spending far too much for your supplies. This applies not only to how much you are paying for each item such as a laser toner cartridge. The point here is that if you are paying too high a price for your supplies you need to find a new supplier. At the same time, if you are buying bargain brands because you think you are saving money, you may be fooling yourself.
In many cases you are going to find that this is a false economy that does little to help with your print management program. Consider this example: Toner cartridge A costs you $39.95 and prints 750 documents, this is the bargain brand. Toner cartridge B, the OEM cartridge, costs you $34.95 and prints 1,250 documents. Using the so called bargain brand cartridge each page is costing you 3.9 cents per page, but using the OEM cartridge costs you 2.9 cents per page. Now you can see where the real savings resides and how you have been fooling yourself.
The same applies to the type of copiers and printers that you are using. The assessment will look at each one and determine your needs and the age of each piece of equipment and recommend any necessary upgrades or in some cases downgrades to help you bring your print management under control. When you are ready to bring your printing costs under control, you can turn to Copier Headquarters to help as a leader in Xerox Copier sales and service.
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