For businesses, the costs of printing are not always black and white. Several factors must be considered when determining overall costs of printing.. The ordering, processing, storage, and waste of printing can turn a .14¢ copy into a .44¢ copy. Managing these incidental costs will ultimately help your budget, even more so than just controlling the cost of paper alone.
Here are a few tips Tri-Copy Office Equipment has learned along the way.
- Get everyone involved. Don’t just take a policing tactic when it comes to managing your costs at the office. Ask employees to identify time-wasters and tasks with a poor return on investment. Spread the ideas and share the results of implementing them.
- Communicate your policies and expectations clearly to your employees. Here are some examples of money saving policies: Prohibit personal printing, ask them to use double sided printing and asking them to turn off the printers before they leave for the day. When clearly communicated policies are given to employees through good training, this not only cut costs, but also creates an atmosphere of clear expectations.
- Use technology more. This one seems obvious, but sometimes we can develop habits that endure despite advances in technology. For example, stop printing office memos and begin to send emails instead. You can also begin digitally archiving. Instead of printing hard copies of important documents, backup them up and consider moving to cloud storage.
- Reduce redundancy! Identifying unnecessary printing in the workflow such as two employees printing the same document; A PDF being printed, only to be rescanned at a later point. Seeing where the waste is happening in the workflow can save much over long periods of time.
- Use a managed print service. If you haven’t considered this, think about the time and energy that goes into managing your office equipment, budgeting and ordering. Our managed print service (MPS Program) will maintain your fleet of printers, create usage reports, keep your ink and supplies at optimal levels, and offer help desk support. Also, our MPS Program manages digital copies of documents.
- Get a free print audit. Tri-copy will analyze your costs and identify weaknesses in your printing management. We will suggest a plan to reduce your costs and streamline your printing system.
Every $1 spent printing a page involves another $9 managing it. Spend your time and money wisely with these tips and the only paper you’ll be seeing more of is the green kind with presidents on it.
