Once upon a time, the printer was absolutely crucial for business to be conducted properly, but nowadays, the use of digital solutions has greatly reduced the need of printing things in greater volumes. However, this is not to say that printing is not still an important facet of your business to manage. Here, we’ll examine how print management can help a business do so.
Business Printing
In the past, businesses greatly relied on the use of their printers, but it really can’t be said that this use is particularly monitored, even now. As a matter of fact, a survey conducted by Buyer’s Laboratory suggests that a full 90 percent of companies (yes, nine-zero) don’t keep track of their printing costs – a number that can regularly add up to over five percent of a business’ total revenue. If this seems high, take a moment to consider the different expenses that contribute to this total.
Naturally, you have to consider the resources you need in order to use a printer. You need the requisite paper and ink, but not many people would think to include the electrical costs of keeping the printer in operation. You also need to take the time (about 15 percent of it) that your IT department spends dealing with printer-related issues and the 23 percent of help desk calls that are made in regard to these issues.
This all impacts your operational budget, and there’s a chance that you weren’t even aware of it.
What Can Be Done?
For starters, you need to begin tracking your printing costs, as it will be beneficial to find out how much of your budget is potentially being eaten away by unneeded spending there. Secondly, you should implement a print management solution to make it easier to continue this tracking in the future.
In order to really get the most out of your print management solution, you should have a strategy that allows you to do so. By granting you with greater insights into your printing, you can figure out ways to minimize or eliminate excessive costs, without negatively impacting the accessibility of printed materials.
When considering your options for a print management platform, we recommend that you look for the following features:
- Comprehensive Assessments – As we said, many organizations don’t use any tools to keep track of their printing costs. This tool in particular will give you a better idea of how much is being printed, where it is being printed from, and when your devices are due for maintenance.
- Print Management – A print management platform can provide you with precise controls over how your printers can be used.
- Paper-to-Digital Conversions – By transferring your printed resources into digital ones, you can evaluate the value that they provide when printed and better optimize your printing costs.
- Better Security – It stands to reason that your data security can improve when you have more control over this data. Hard copies inherently mean that you have less control, and a greater risk of a security issue.
- Tracking Capabilities – By tracking how much is being printed, you can help optimize your costs through implementing certain controls, like user limitations on how much can be printed in a set amount of time.
- Setting Print Policies – You can set up resource-saving policies like enforcing double-sided printing and establishing print quotas to prevent users from abusing the office printer.
If your business’ documents are resulting in excessive costs, reach out to our IT experts today! GeekBox IT can help you keep your printing under control. Call (336) 790-1000 to learn more.