Most companies who don’t know the cost of their printing including printers, and consumables and toners that they use in a year can blame it on a fragmented and disparate printing environment. Signing up with a print managed service takes companies straight into a laser printer environment with a centralized printing and billing system, making it easy to calculate and control printing costs.
This is the case with most organizations that are getting into a print environment by outsourcing the task to specialist firms. Despite the growth in digital communications and promises of paperless office, printed documents continue to be critical to the business operation of most enterprises. Additionally the printing and imaging environment is becoming more complex and costly to manage and, according to various industry estimates, it accounts for 1-3% of an organization’s turnover.
In today’s competitive business environment, the print environment demands the same strategic focus as other elements of the IT infrastructure. The benefits of a managed print environment are manifold—no capital and operational expenditure, pay-per-use model, keeping a tab on printing costs and who’s printing what and helping support environmental targets through more efficient printing practices.
However the reality is that most organizations simply do not know how much their print environment is costing them. Many businesses cannot even answer the following basic questions relating to printing in their organization: What is the total number of printers? How many pages are printed daily? What are the operating costs of these printing devices? What are the total printing costs across the enterprise? What is the quantum of consumables used? There are several reasons why organizations have so little insight and control.
Firstly, the management of the printing environment is often fragmented among IT [as was in the case with Blue Star], procurement and facilities department managers and even individual users. These groups typically operate independently leading to organizations owning a range of printing devices from multiple vendors with incompatible software, consumables and supplies. Additionally uncoordinated procurement is not only time consuming but also costly as it reduces the purchasing power of the organization and complicates service control.