How a managed print service reduces print and paper costs.

Managed print services allows user authentication,reduces print/copy costs and reduces paper waste.

Installing a managed print service solution offers substantial cost savings by re-routing and managing the amount of paper and printing processed in your office.

One of the frustrating challenges for organisations is reducing the volume of print and paper processing.

The management of paper, print and print devices cost money but often overlooked because they are seen as essential for modern-day offices and not perceived as a true cost reflected on the bottom line.

Recycling paper, implementing a duplex print strategy (printing both sides) or using recycled paper as part of a company’s drive to go green won’t save a company money in the long term.

Dispensing with mountains of paper often secure or confidential information requires the services of a secure disposal company but that all adds to the costs of managing your paper flow.

Many companies believe that office print is necessary and stockpile paper, re-print if there is an error on the printer or PC without any consideration for the environment or the cost implications to the company.

When an organisation analyses when, where and how often paper is used and what the re-ordering frequency is, do the printing costs then become visible?

Implementing a managed print service strategy does help reduce print costs, removes unwanted printing and enforces print rules such as using black rather than colour or simplex/duplex printing.

Companies are overburdened with many print devices – desktop printers, scanners, photocopiers with employees territorial and protective of their printers.

Cost reductions are achievable with a reduction of 3:1 by implementing modern MPS (managed print services) and MFPD’s (multi-functional print devices).

Include sizeable reductions in consumables used across an organisation and the cost savings are evident.

With a mobile workforce, employees want to be able to print anytime and anywhere.

One critical issue that halts the adoption of MPS is security.

Securely printed information runs the risk of being visible to prying eyes without MPS implementation and the management of how and when printed documents are managed in the paper flow is critical.

• How do you prevent wasting paper prints?
• How do you keep printer consumable costs down?
• What happens to unclaimed documents?
• How do you print off secure documents without a desktop printer?

By removing the need to rely on a single printer, users are able to divert their print jobs to the most cost-efficient printer and not have to worry about a device being out of service or having to wait for I.T. to resolve the problem.

Using secure print technology with user authentication ensures that the right device is selected, when it is printed and by whom as the print job can only be released when the user authenticates the print job at the device.

A secure document release application and secure print tracking software encourages user mobility, minimises paper waste and protects personal information and customer confidentiality.

Intelligent print rules and routing software removes the burden of the user to decide which printer is best for each job because when the user hits “print” a window pops into view advising the user which printer and what the cost is for the printing of the job.

Implementing an MPS solution will save you time and money in the long term and there are some easy to implement solutions that can be put in to practice without delay in addition to utilising a managed print services solution:

1. Duplex (double-sided) printing get more out of each of the pages you print, print the odd pages first by setting your printer and then print the even pages thus reducing the number of sheets you use; particularly useful for when you want to print notes.
2. Print using a smaller font/typeface – as long as you can read you will find more content will fit onto an A4 sheet.
3. Check before you print – the print preview button ensures you see what you are printing. Changing the margins or scaling the document ensures you optimise the whole sheet for printing.
4. Print only the pages you need – using the print preview button you only print the pages you want. In the print dialog box enter the page ranges required.
5. You can adjust your page settings by reducing the header and footer and left/right margins enabling you to fit more content onto the page reducing the number of pages printed.
6. Print multiple pages onto a single sheet of paper using font size 12 which tends to be the default setting, the document is still legible.

Finally, you can significantly reduce your print costs by working with a print management specialist who will evaluate your print requirements and understand your MPS requirements.

Subscribe to our newsletter for more features and news.