5 steps to managing printing within businesses and reducing cost

Lets face it. Printing can be an expensive exercise when all the components are put together.

Fortunately, there are a number of opportunities to reduce the costs – in some cases dramatically, as not only can you reduce the actual costs, but also increase staff productivity.

Vice president of global alliances - strategic marketing at Nuance Communications, Chris Strammiello says there are several steps that businesses can take in order to print less and start saving money.

Get rid of personal printers

While a personal printer may be convenient, providing all employees with one isn't cost-effective and comes with high ink costs.

Migrating users to shared printers will not only reduce costs, but also add the convenience of being able to print to any printer on the network.

Scan more

Why not take a step towards the much hyped 'paperless office' (that isn't likely to exist anytime soon) and scan more to make to make costless pdfs?

An efficient PDF scanning, creation, sharing and storing solution can prove to be a game changer in the savings department.

Think before you print

When provided with a printer it can be easy to take advantage of it and print documents that you don't need. The simple act of making users aware of the impact of printing will get them thinking.

"If you start tracking printing and produce reports for each individual in your company, you can let them know how much money they are spending on printing," says Stramiello.

Cut colour

Sure, colour may add impact to presentation and the like, but is it really necessary for everything you print?

"You can automatically route colour jobs to a lower cost colour printer, or set guide lines around who can and who can't print in colour," Stramiello says. "So while colour is great, wasted colour is not good for your budget.

Buy the right equipment

"A good rule of thumb is to strive for an employee to printer ratio of 6:1. While it isn't uncommon for companies to have ratios of 2:1, the effective use of shared, networked printers can easily increase that ratio to 20:1 or more," says Stramiello.

"It makes business sense to only invest in the devices you need and remove the ones that you don't. In many cases, a multifunctional printer could take the place of multiple laser printers.