Printerland Blog

Managed services can reduce printing and paper budgets

According to analyst IDC, printing costs account for between one and three per cent of any company’s expenditure. In cash terms, that means the average firm prints off 1100 pages per employee per year, costing between $500 and $1500 (£309 and £926) per user.

And it could be even worse than that, according to another analyst, Infotrends. In 2001, it estimated that for every dollar spent on printing, another $6 is spent on other related costs. Though that proportion has fallen since then, the hidden costs of printing are still substantial. Print costs are hard to identify and police, as aspects are controlled by different people. And any-way, even in the digital age, people love printing. Who wouldn’t rather look at a printout over a coffee in the canteen, than be stuck at their desk with their eyes on a glowing rectangle?

It has taken a long time for companies to wake up to the fact that printers are the cause of millions lost on paper and toner, not to mention the man hours yielded to opening and closing print trays, disposing of failed layouts, hopefully pressing buttons and sorting through other people’s output collections.

Until the recession, nobody cared. Environmental concerns are a low priority among end users - otherwise, why would they be working in a big corporation? Time is an infinitely more precious commodity than toner though and the only way to -rationalise printing is to change people’s behaviour. Before that can be done, you need to look at the relationship your -users have with their printers. A printer is regarded as a status symbol: the boss in each department gets their own printer, so everyone else aspires to this status. If they can’t get a laser, an inkjet will do.

“Many organisations are swarming with printers,” says Tracy Trevallion, enterprise services sales manager for HP, which sets out to make savings for clients. “People in departments buy printers for under a hundred quid imagining they’re cheap, but of course they’re not.”

Steve Saito, chief operating officer at Ricoh Europe, says that such false bargains, and the need to be seen to be green, give IT chiefs headaches.

“CIOs are under pressure to balance environmental commitments with the business bottom line, maximising efficiencies and saving costs. They should optimise performance from equipment in order to support their own business goals,” he says.

“Managed print service providers help businesses understand their needs and transform document workflows. That leaves the CIO with more time to focus on core areas of their business.

“They also need to mitigate the business risks associated with the abuse of -office equipment.