Take the first step - Find hidden printing costs and start savingSafeCom Decision Support Document # 1

Have you looked into the costs of printing?

While most large enterprises have taken the necessary steps to streamline their printing and cut costs, many mid-sized companies continue to build on printer environments that waste money every day. Typical mid-sized companies simply lack the resources needed for focusing on analysis and optimization of their printing. But even without an analysis, it is relatively easy to observe the symptoms and discover the potential for savings.

Many companies are unaware of just how much they spend on printing or what they can do to reduce costs. The most alert IT managers may note that print-related costs, such as hardware, consumables, and support, represent a significant portion of their total IT budget. However, too often, this is written off as a necessary evil without further investigation.

Gartner estimates that printers, and the supplies associated with them, plus the support to keep them running represent 5 percent of a typical IT budget and a significant portion of total annual revenues. The good news is that, in nearly all cases, printing costs can be reduced and sometimes almost halved. This is achieved after a thorough analysis of the print environment, followed by well-targeted infrastructure and system changes.

Many larger enterprise companies have analyzed their printing environments, identified their problems, and taken actions to save large amounts of money through smarter print systems, printer fleet optimization, or MPS.

Most mid-sized organizations (100 -1000 employees) face the same challenges as their enterprise counterparts in terms of print optimization. Despite this, few mid-sized companies have the IT resources to focus on in-depth analysis ventures and, therefore, their potential for achieving savings is nipped in the bud.

It is generally accepted that a professional analysis of your printer environment is the most direct and accurate method for identifying print-related savings possibilities in your company. But for many mid-sized companies, analysis will seem like a big step. So before going there, you may want to confirm that there actually is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You may be asking yourself, is it possible to identify the potential for savings before initiating a full-scale analysis?

Fortunately, the answer is “yes.” Just as a patient’s symptoms will trigger tests that lead to diagnosis and a cure, so the symptoms in your company can provide fairly accurate indicators of latent areas for cost reduction.

In the following, we will look at some of the most typical symptoms and briefly mention possible solutions. You may see them every day in the office without considering them problems. You may even have spotted them as problems, but didn’t know that they have cost-saving solutions.

Are you sitting on a goldmine of savings?

Desktop printers have dropped in price, and many employees use them rather than departmental printers. Typical arguments are their cheap purchase price, security (because sensitive documents remain close by), and productivity (because the user doesn’t need to walk down the hall). But these are fallacies. The low price tag will rapidly be outweighed over time by the cost of ink cartridges. Security can be ensured using pull-printing on shared printers. Larger departmental printers are faster than desktops so, despite the short walk, users will have their stack sooner. The bottom line is: personal printers are not an advantage and they drain your budget.

In many mid-sized companies, the absence of coordinated purchasing strategies and reluctance to dispose of aged equipment inevitably leads to a jumble of printer types and models. This in turn leads to an administrative nightmare, high costs and wasted resources for maintaining different types of supplies, assorted consumables services, multiple maintenance contracts, keeping up with driver updates – and more. An optimized and uniform printer infrastructure saves both money and work.

Use of desktop/personal printers

Many different printer models

On unmanaged systems, it is estimated that up to 20% of printed output is forgotten, lost or trashed unread. For many mid-sized businesses, this adds up to vast amounts of wasted paper and toner. This represents a huge area for potential savings. Smart printing systems provide pull-print functionalities so that all documents are either retrieved or not output at all.

How many of your employees take the trouble to tick the duplex option in their print menu? Duplex printing cuts paper and ink usage in half and, additionally, is environmentally friendly. But duplex is difficult to enforce because it’s controlled by the user who may, or may not, set the option. On managed print systems you can override the user’s local settings, enforce duplex printing, and save money.

On unmanaged systems, users print almost everything in color. While the option for color printing can be important for many documents, it will not be necessary for more than half of a typical user’s output. Emails with logos, web pages, and many other document types are printed for their text and not for their colors.

Unnecessary color printing equals unnecessary ink expenses. On managed print systems, you can enforce rules for color printing so that color output is only used where it matters.

Un-retrieved printouts in the printer room

Print behavior – not enough duplex output

Print behavior – excessive color output

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Organizations without the software tools to track, monitor, and audit their printing environment are virtually wearing blinders. Their printing costs remain invisible, and so does the knowledge needed to optimize, reduce waste and save money. If your company has lacked print tracking for more than just a few years, then chances are there are areas for significant improvement and savings of which you are not even aware.

If you can identify with even one of the above scenarios, then you can likely cut your costs and should probably investigate further. But even if you are not yet ready to jump into full-scale analysis, there are alternative ways to start. Small-scaled benchmark agents can be installed on your server to track your company’s print behavior, provide statistical information, identify potential problem areas and even present a rough overview of possible savings. Such benchmark tools can be downloaded from the internet completely free of charge. They typically run on your server for 1 month and provide reports you can use in deciding if you want to move forward with a larger scale analysis – or even look into actual solutions.

There is really no good reason not to take this step. Free knowledge about your printing environment can never hurt. Truths about your printing costs will become transparent, and areas for savings will be exposed, allowing you to make the right decision for your company.

Lack of management and control

Learn more – the next step

Sources and additional information:

Gartner, “Managing Office Document Output in the Digital era,” Lundy, October 2000

HP, “Calculating the true cost of printing,” HP 2002

Quocirca, Taclin printing costs in midmarket businesses