Sometimes Printing Just Doesn’t Make Sense (Or Cents)

There was a time when business was run through the printer. These days, there are many digital solutions that can really limit the need for high-volume printing. Today, we’ll take a look at how the average business can cut their printing costs and do it while improving their business using print management.

Printing at Your Business

Traditionally, businesses have used the printer liberally. In fact, according to a survey by Buyer’s Laboratory 90 percent of companies don’t bother tracking their printing costs. While this may be surprising to some--especially considering that number makes up for over five percent of a business’ total revenue--with so much attention being put into organizational efficiency, printing is often ignored. If your business is one of the vast majority that doesn’t calculate printing costs, you should consider what it is costing your company.

Printing costs are not limited to the cost of paper, ink, and electricity. Today, costs include the 15 percent of the time that your IT department spends dealing with printing issues and the 23 percent of help desk calls that deal with faulty printers, or printer-related issues. This money is coming out of your operational budget and you may not even know it. 

What You Can Do?

The first thing you should do, if you haven’t already, is to begin tracking your printing costs. It will be very beneficial to learn just how much money you are spending printing out papers that you may not have had to. Next you will want to consider putting in place a print management solution to help you get more transparency about what your associated printing costs are.

Print Management is a strategy as well as a software, but you can’t really have one without the other. A print management strategy will allow you to get control over your organizational printing through controlling access and prioritizing the efficiency of document production. The main point of the print management strategy is to lower operating costs without making it difficult for your company to have the ability to print the necessary documents. 

Some of the biggest benefits that a print management platform can provide include:

• Clear Assessment - As stated above, most organizations don’t bother tracking their printing costs. This tool will give you a clear view of your business’ print volumes, printer and copier maintenance logs, and print routing information.
• Management - The print management platform gives day-to-day control over the organization’s printers and user print settings.
• Paper-to-Digital Conversion - This is where you would determine the utility of printed solutions. If you can transfer them to digital-only ones, you will invariably spend less money on printing.
• Improved Security - The more control you have over data, the more secure it is. When you rely on paper-based correspondence, there’s a higher chance of a security lapse.
• Real-Time Tracking - By tracking your print volumes, you can keep costs low, control user print limitations, and more. 

If you are spending too much money on your business’ documents, call the IT experts at Managed IT Force today to learn how to curtail those costs at 724-473-3950.