Surveys
have shown that few businesses know how much it costs to own and run
printers, even fewer large companies have a clear understanding of the
true cost of ownership.
Industry estimates the full cost of printing at up to 3 percent of a company's annual revenue
An optimised print environment could save your organisation between 13 and 40 percent in direct costs.
Print
Assessment reveals how to achieve this reducing costs by 23 percent on
average. Savings that go directly on to the bottom line.
Utilising
a comprehensive in-depth 3-stage strategic process, Image Runner will
focus on the core issues to your business, providing you with our
collective expertise in:
The promise of the paperless office has been replaced with a greater reliance on printed documents.
The prevalence of e-mails, web pages, presentations and PDF documents
is prompting employees to print more than ever before. The
enterprise print environment is often a misunderstood cost centre that
is much more expensive than most businesses recognise. Many enterprises
do not realise exactly how many printers, copiers and fax machines are
deployed, and thus have no clear understanding of the total cost of
print. To get a firm grasp on the costs of printing, companies are
turning to comprehensive print assessment services that analyse the
current print environment and reveal ways the enterprise can
dramatically reduce costs.
According to Forrester Research: “Few
companies know what it really costs to print, fax and copy documents
each year, and fewer still are actively managing those costs." "Conservative industry estimates place the full cost of printing at up to 3 percent of a company's annual revenue." "It is not uncommon for each employee in a large corporation to average 1,200 printed pages monthly, at a cost of £400 per employee each year."
IDC explains: “After
years of inattention and lack of coordinated management, the imaging
and output infrastructure in most enterprises is fraught with high
costs." ” Millions of printers purchased in the 1990s are still
being used in the workplace. Older print devices share common problems:
long wait times, low paper capacity and poor performance. The cost of
maintaining old printers is significantly more than modern
alternatives. The price for parts and toner becomes incrementally more
expensive over time and it is more time-consuming to manage devices
that lack network management capabilities.
The costs of print generally fall into three categories:
Hardware: This cost includes the acquisition of print technology and upgrades.
Consumables: This includes operational costs such as toner, drums, ink, paper and electricity consumption.
Support: Support costs include maintenance contracts, help desk calls and service calls.
According to Forrester Research: "Service calls for devices without maintenance contracts can easily cost more than £100 per call.
Surprisingly, hardware costs make up only five percent of the total cost of print ownership. Consumables and support are typically seven times more expensive than the initial investment in print technology.
To
understand the necessary steps for controlling the cost of print in the
enterprise, companies are turning to service providers that can perform
a comprehensive examination of their existing print environment.
Commonly referred to as print assessment, the service entails a
thorough review of all print devices within the enterprise. Print assessment reveals how an enterprise can optimise its print environment, reducing costs by 23 percent on average
Identifying Opportunities for Optimisation
Print assessment provides high-level decision makers the necessary information to make tactical
cost-cutting decisions. The service provides a foundation for reducing
the total lifecycle cost of print devices. A complete print assessment
provides enterprises the critical blueprints necessary to retrofit the
print infrastructure with fewer print devices that can perform multiple
functions such as printing, scanning and copying.
Removing Costs with Consolidation
Print assessment is the essential first step to optimising the print environment that has an end
goal of balanced deployment. In this optimised environment, businesses
have technologies and tools deployed where they can achieve the best
utilisations. Plus, a major part of optimising the print environment is
taking the assets a business already has and putting them to better
use. For example, a company could achieve their output requirements
with 300 rather than 500 printers—and 100 of those printers could be
assets they already own. In this case upgrading equates to better
utilisation.
Consolidation offers more opportunities for cost savings. Through the effective use of multitasking or multifunction devices, companies can trim the number of devices in use. Print environment ROI starts with the basics. Consolidating and simplifying the environment or reducing the number of devices to manage will definitely remove costs from the operation.
Print assessment begins with an inventory of all print devices in the network. This task is typically automated using powerful software tools that discover print devices and perform usage evaluations. These applications are able to determine the number of printed pages delivered by each device, over time. A more comprehensive option includes the manual examination of all desktop-attached printers that are not connected to the network.
Intelligent analysis is performed to:
Identify locations that are underutilised
Determine the costs of consumables such as toner, ink, paper and power use
Identify operating costs for existing devices
Predict costs for service and device management
Determine employee productivity impact
Soft cost analysis includes:
Floor space cost assessment
Average help desk cost savings
Supplies management reductions in both acquisition and labor savings (minutes saved to replace cartridges)
Print assessment includes workflow monitoring and analysis to determine if multiple older printers can be consolidated to fewer, more powerful print devices. Locations within the company are examined and the total monthly cost and average cost per page are provided, delineated by location or department. In addition, newer devices that do not need replacement are identified.
After the total cost of print is determined, a recommended list of replacement products is identified. The related costs of the new devices are compared to the existing environment to reveal the total savings. Part of the assessment includes a consolidation plan to departmentally reduce the number of printers to fewer, faster devices and intelligently redeploy existing assets.
The primary benefit of print assessment is the potential cost savings of consolidating the print
infrastructure. Analysis performed by IDC revealed that an optimised
print environment could save mid- to large-sized organisations between
13 and 40 percent in direct costs, with the average company achieving a
23 percent reduction in costs.
The report concluded that:
The largest savings were in IT support costs
Help desk calls for print-related topics were reduced by more than 50 percent
The cost of consumables decreased
Device availability increased
Document workflow improved with the use of multifunction devices
Additional benefits of print assessment include:
Reveals if maintaining existing equipment is more costly than new investments
Identifies ways to reduce costs and streamline workflows
Allows the enterprise to justify the consolidation of printers
Identifies inefficient technology that can be replaced with higher-performing and more energy-efficient devices
Helps understand how productivity can improve with faster queue and print times
Reveals how security can be enhanced with print technology that requires user pass codes before printing documents
Opens
the enterprise to the opportunity to centralise print queues, enabling
a user to receive a print job from any printer on the network by simply
entering a code
Simplifies management with newer efficient ink and larger paper capacities
Enables volume purchase agreements for consumables via standardisation
Reveals how costs can be better allocated departmentally with print metering
Understands your business environment: We will work with your enterprise, understanding your network topology and offering a range of technology options.
Provides a total solution: We
have the technical expertise and tools to perform a full assessment and
help with product acquisition, deployment, asset management, financing
and disposal of old print technology.
Offers national coverage: We can provide sales and service throughout the UK – an important consideration for multi-location enterprises.
Tools and methodologies: We
leverage accurate automated systems to determine print utilisation.
Automated tasks are augmented with knowledge of the print environment
and manual assessments where necessary.
Consolidation analysis: Weidentify
underutilised devices and consolidate or redeploy in areas that can use
them. We suggest solutions based on intelligent analysis of output
activity and requirements.
Financial assessments: We
will help the enterprise gain financial efficiencies by leveraging new
technology that enables a "pay-per-use" model or leasing for all
equipment and consumables.
Technology options: We
provide solutions that support a variety of print needs and can be
integrated into the overall document management infrastructure.
Return on investment analysis:
A proper print assessment will identify the length of time it will take
to achieve a return on investment. Print assessment brings to light all
the different printers and processes each customer has to help them
gain a true understanding of how and where they are spending money in
their environment. The results are often surprising. Many companies
have no real understanding of what they are spending to support their
print environment. Until now, no one has offered a way to accurately
determine the costs and the return on the cash that can be generated by
optimisation.
