As businesses are coming back to the office full time, many are looking for new ways to get more productivity from their office technology. We are firm believers that print optimization is one of the fastest ways a company can reduce costs and make your team more productive.
Despite massive investments in cloud and virtual technologies, most businesses depend on their printers and copiers to manage information moving through different departments. We have seen over and over that optimizing printers can help cut ownership costs, enhance productivity and reduce energy consumption.
A print optimization service is designed to reduce - reduce total costs, reduce the number of devices, reduce the number of manufacturers and models, reduce IT time spent dealing with devices and to reduce the number of manufacturers a business supports.
It begins with monitoring and optimizing the day-to-day operations of your printer fleet. That includes:
You can’t improve what you don’t understand, which is why optimization begins with data collection and analytics. With more information in hand, you can not only eliminate wasted resources, but you can determine corporate social responsibility targets and develop recycling programs for environmental initiatives.
For optimization and efficiency of the device fleet, you need a print monitoring tool. There are several data collection tools that automatically perform print assessments, monitor consumable levels and track printer statuses. However, you can also learn a lot about your print usage just by taking a walk-though of your facilities to map and catalog all the devices in use.
If you see single function printers sitting on desks but not being used, printers/fax machines in close proximity, or piles of papers on the output tray, you are probably not getting the best value from your printers. It might even be useful to interview users to gain a comprehensive understanding of their requirements. With this information, a managed print service partner can address these and other issues. They may also be able to offer automated asset management tools for identifying more effective printer deployment plans.
With this knowledge, you can begin optimizing the fleet by ensuring that hardcopy assets are deployed in an optimal manner. Some of our guiding principles include:
One of the primary objectives of a print optimization strategy is to sustain savings through continuous improvement. With advanced output management software, professional business analysts monitor usage to analyze and understand usage and behavior. They can analyze not only the impact of print and copy usage, but also individual device performance.
However, your goal should not just be fleet reduction, but ongoing understanding and control of the fleet. Once the size and scope of the fleet has been brought to manageable levels, the goal is to move beyond optimization to enhancing the capabilities of the fleet by using document management and document workflow to improve basic business processes and manage print output.
Learn more about what print optimization can do for your business by contacting GFC today.