Save Energy –> Save Paper –> Save Costs
If your organisation has separate printers, photocopiers, scanners and faxes, you may want to consider Managed Print Services. There are a number of suppliers who provide this service, and the financial and environmental reduction benefits have been proven!
To have an understanding of your current businesses processes and IT print infrastructure is initially required.
- Do you know how much you’re spending on paper, toners/cartridges, licenses, maintenance/support, IT energy usage (the bills), etc?
- Do you have different models/makes for printers, photocopiers, scanners and faxes?
- What is your printing policy?
- Do employees know about the printing policies?
- How do you recycle?
- Which departments/employees require their own personal printer?
- Is information secure if a printer is shared across different departments/team?
- Do you continue to keep what you have or are you just wasting costs this way?
- Are departments paying separately?
- Who actually knows the overall IT printing costs?
- Do you have to really print, fax, photocopy and scan documents?
- Are there any legal requirements to do so?
- How many support calls for IT are logged to do with print/photocopier/fax/scanner faults?
- Would it be better for the IT department to focus on their other main responsibilities within the organisation? To support the IT systems used by the business and its customers?
- How reliable are your suppliers?
- What impact does it have on your business when none of the devices work?
- How much time is spent on training staff to fix these devices, use them, etc?
- How long does it take to ‘walk to the printer’?!?
Think of the exercise and health/safety!
I could go on and on with my questions!
At a recent event I attended, Severn Trent mentioned they have a paperless office and no air-conditioning. I’m intrigued! As mentioned in a previous blog post, there are needs to print – lengthy legal standard contracts from professional solicitors which require a signature (for full/part employees, subcontractors, etc), non-disclosure-agreements (NDA), marketing material, customer documents, receipts, letters, questionnaires, etc.
Just like some mobile phone contracts, with Managed Print Services, you are paying a monthly fee. The costs may also be for page volumes, print cartridges and repair/maintenance. To have your printing services managed centrally will reduce your waste in more ways than one, as it’s a more controlled structured process. Having remote support has many advantages, such as automatically monitoring you current supply usage and any performance issues for you (in advance). By paying and monitoring monthly, you will have much better reporting, incident reports, fix response times and more.
Giving Time and Solutions Ltd is an independent company, which means the solutions given are vendor-neutral. I have selected a few suppliers who have proven to reduce the IT print costs and improve the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for large, globally and UK based companies. The Service Level Agreement (SLA) for each supplier will differ, but overall, your IT printing costs will be a lot more transparent…..which is a good thing!
MFP/MFD (Multifunction printer/devices) have replaced legacy IT equipment, as they allow you to print, copy and scan-to-email, and have many other technical features. Having to enter a pin to collect print-outs has also proven to reduce the paper waste on documents which have been sent to print, but have not actually been printed.
SAVINGS/BENEFITS | ||
1 | COST | 3 MILLION US DOLLARS IN 2 YEARS |
2 | ENERGY | 73,000 kWh SAVING ANNUALLY |
CO2 | 500 TONNES ANNUALLY | |
COST | 200,000 UK POUNDS | |
3 | UPTIME (AVAILABILITY) | FROM 50% TO 99.5% |
PAPER CONSUMPTION REDUCED | 30% | |
OVERALL DOCUMENTATION COSTS REDUCED | 30% | |
4 | OVERALL IT INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS REDUCED | 30% |
PERSONAL PRINTERS REDUCED | 3500 TO 75 PERSONAL PRINTERS IN 7 YEARS | |
The challenge will (as with most changes) will be managing the behavioural changes. Employees may no longer have their own printer, reduce their printing/copying, and they may see it as a more ‘controlled’ process. If you don’t know what each department/team is doing, how will you know how best to reduce your costs and waste? However, in time, the benefits will be seen, and employees will see an improvement to efficiency, quality and productivity. These benefits will need communicating to all staff on a regular basis, so that the difference is being recognised.
Source: Tripta Prashar's Blog
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