When it comes to managing a printing environment, many organizations find themselves without even a road map. Most companies don't realize how many documents are wasted daily – money literally thrown away.
It comes up regularly on long car rides with my wife – what did we ever do pre-smartphone GPS? My answer: There was always, of course, the trusted Rand McNally map, along with the refined technique of folding it back adequately enough to fit back into your glove box. The Rand McNally, for me, is a sentimental relic from family vacations past.
But whether you were navigating via paper from the passenger seat, or using your smart phone for directions today, these tools afford you the ability to track progress, monitor mileage and confidently move forward to your destination.
When it comes to managing a printing environment, many organizations find themselves without even a road map. Most companies don't realize how many documents are wasted daily – money literally thrown away.
Costs are unclear. Overall direction, policies and practices are lacking. As a result, costs related to printing company-wide are higher than they should be. Consider this statistic as a basic example: According to a recent InfoTrends report, 85 percent of all 8.5X11 paper printed in offices in the United States is printed single-sided. By utilizing printing practice as simple as utilizing duplex, costs could be greatly reduced.
Have you looked at the area surrounding the MFP at your office? How much of your output goes uncollected, sitting on top of and around your copier for days, weeks or even months? This common occurrence becomes more than just a housekeeping issue. You could also be potentially exposing your sensitive corporate information to the wrong people.
According to a reduce.org study published by Canon, just 25 percent of unclaimed output – aka wasted pages – could have a significant impact on your business. Consider 10K pages printed by an employee over time. Twenty-five percent waste would equal 2.5K pages wasted. For every 100 employees, that’s 250K wasted pages.
Such waste has three major impacts on an organization:
- Financial. Assuming 10K pages at 5 cents per print (includes paper, equipment, toner and related software). This equates to $12,500 in direct printing costs for every 100 employees.
- Environmental. The process of manufacturing a ream of office paper requires significant quantities of trees and fresh water. According to Canon’s release: 250K pages equal 300 trees, and the same amount of pages accounts for 650,000 gallons of water. That’s enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
- Information Security. Some documents left uncollected can harm the security of your company if accessed by unauthorized individuals. As a few examples, consider: Company financials, employee salary, client financial data and personal data.
Do the printing habits you’ve developed have an impact - positive or negative - on these three impactful areas?
Specific print management solutions provide various levels of control and can help business owners of all-sized organizations better track usage, from features like Secure Print available directly on your MFP, up to robust enterprise, server-based solutions. Among these solutions is a Managed Print Services Program.
10 Advantages of a Managed Print Services program:
1. Cessation of new equipment acquisitions until a Print Strategy is developed2. Identification of print devices, usage, and applications
3. Identification of hidden print costs
4. Development and deployment of Print Strategy
5. Consolidation of print responsibilities
6. Outsourced fleet management
7. Managed print expenses
8. Optimization of fleet deployment
9. Streamlined workflow
10. Minimized carbon footprint
Are wasteful practices costing your team? Are they affecting your printing costs and your overall document security? Rather than navigating aimlessly into the unknown, it might be time to set out your Managed Print Road Map.
