How Print Optimization results in Significant Savings for your Business

Ever thought how print optimization can cut costs significantly for your business? To survive in today’s competitive environment, businesses are interested not only in increasing profits but also working towards reducing expenses. One of the major expenses falls under operational costs.

Paper consumption and printing can come with huge costs if misused. Whether you are an energetic startup with tight margins or a multinational enterprise, minimizing the amount of paper your office departments unnecessarily use will cut into your costs and free up budget room for other things. Implementing a few conscious print procedures in your organization will help save money as well as reduce the carbon footprint of your company.

The various techniques currently employed for managing the existing environment are only the beginning with more anticipated changes in days to come. As such, the ongoing multi phased managed print services (MPS) solution is in a continuous process of improvement.

By itself, studies indicate that the managed print service can save between 10% and 30% of print costs. Conversely, implementing recommendations from a print optimization plan, a business can save an additional 20% to 30% in costs.

Thus, the total reduction of costs can reach up to a significant 50%!

Often, print optimization is mentioned during discussions of printers and software that are responsible for variable data printing. It is a model that typically isolates text and graphics that will be similar to single documents in a print run from those that will be different on each document. It also allows the printer to process a code describing text and graphics only once for similar documents instead of doing it all over again in each print run.

Print optimization is based on the printing industry’s best practices. Using a combination of efficient faxing, printing, and copying, coupled with IT accommodating project management principles, a company can create a progressive print cost saving strategy inclined towards better services, short term benefits, and lowered costs. Print optimization management (software) lies on the principles of environmental sustainability, user-friendly interfaces, rapid ROI (Return on investment) and corporate solution. The process takes a proactive approach in monitoring services, ensuring continuous improvement and automation of business and printing processes. Accordingly, the main idea behind print management is to produce variable-data documents much faster than when a company was not using the optimization technology.

Let’s have a look at some steps to follow when optimizing the print environment:

• Choose an economical printer to Save Printing Costs

More often, we choose printers based on the manufacturer’s claim of speed and quality. However, there are various other features you need to consider if you are looking to cut paper and printing costs.

First and foremost, be aware of the expenses in replacing the ink cartridges and also if high capacity versions are easily available. Standard cartridges may be seen cost effective initially but a high capacity cartridge will allow you to print more pages. If your business requires high volumes of printing every day, a high capacity cartridge can prove to be 30% cheaper than the standard one.

Another point to consider is whether you require a color printer or will a black and white printer will suffice. Black and white printers are not only cheaper but also cost you less when it comes to replacing ink cartridges. Also, knowing how energy efficient is the printer will save your money on its electricity bills.

• Define the paper quality as per the document quality

Paper comes in a variety of grades and thickness. It usually starts at 60gsm and goes up to 160gsm. While the thinnest paper will not produce results with the same clarity as higher grade papers, it is perfectly adequate for most of your everyday printing which is much cheaper than higher grade papers.

As per a research conducted by the World Wide Fund for Nature, switching to 60gsm instead of 100gsm for everyday usage could save you 47% in paper costs. It is worth saving your paper of 100gsm and over for the occasional really important document, rather than allowing employees to use it every day.

• Control printing access for employees to Save Printing Costs

Not all the employees will require access to the printer. You can define which designations would require access to the printer and the IT team can either restrict or give the access accordingly. Also, setting up individual user profiles on each computer or laptop is a sensible idea if you want to save money. This will enable the administrators to identify employees who might be misusing the printing access.

A lot of the management software available today also allows you to apply limits on the amount an individual or group can print. Raising awareness that unlimited print resources are not available will cut down on wastage due to all users checking their documents more carefully for mistakes before printing them.

• Make use of print preview before giving the print command

Print Preview is an effective money saving tool which often underused. By showing you exactly how the final document will look, it makes it easy to select just the parts you need to print rather than printing the whole document if you don’t really need it. Also, this helps the printed documents to have only the required content.

For example, if you are printing a resource material directly from a website, it will allow you to check whether you will be printing out blank pages with nothing but the web address on at the end. It will also help you choose if the document needs color or monochrome version.

• Ask the question “Do I really need to print this?”

In this digital world today, most of our communication happens virtually. It has also changed the way we consume paper for business. Encouraging employees to make use of digital media instead of printing can drastically save Printing Costs & paper consumption. One way to do it is by encouraging employees to carry their laptops for the meetings instead of printing their content.

• Make Duplex (Back to Back Printing) as your default setting to Save Printing Costs

Documents printed every day or for internal use can be printed on both the sides of the paper instead of on one side per sheet. Every printer today has a duplex option. Setting the default option to duplex can save up to almost 50% of your paper costs. Important documents, especially for external communication can be printed on one side per page.

• Single side waste printed papers can become notebooks for daily scribbles

A lot of paper is thrown out once there requirement is over. The ones with one side blank can be converted into scratchpads and given to employees for scribbling their daily notes. A waste paper can be reusable. This will help the company to Save Printing Costs and most importantly their paper requirements.

Fair warning if these papers contain confidential content which cannot be made easily accessible to anyone should be discarded.

• Multiple pages printed in single sheet Saves Printing Costs

Most software packages, including Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, have a setting that enables you to fit two or even four pages of text onto one sheet of paper. Activating this setting can double your print economy or more, while still being legible.

Furthermore, if you use a lot of PowerPoint slides in the meeting rooms and print them out as reference materials, select to print them as Handouts instead of Slides. This automatically prints six slides per page instead of one. This simple change, in combination with printing in duplex, could result in as much as a 92% saving in paper usage.

• Use a smaller but legible font size to Save Printing Costs

Reducing the font size is a simple and easy way to reduce the use of paper and save on printing costs. Switching from a twelve-point font to ten will make a surprising difference, while still being perfectly clear to read. It is also worth considering which font you use as a default. Some fonts, due to their thickness, consume more ink and paper than others.

For example, the most economical font is Times New Roman, which on average produces 44% more prints from an ink cartridge than Verdana.

• Use Draft mode while printing to Save Printing Costs

Setting your printer to Draft as the default setting will drastically reduce your ink consumption. It automatically reduces the resolution at which it prints documents to 300dpi, which is perfectly adequate for everyday printing. The name varies from one manufacturer to another.

It may be “Toner Save” or “Economy” but it is usually under the “Paper/ Quality” tab in “Properties” on your printer settings. A draft printing can also increase your print speed.

A print optimization software makes it possible to enjoy having multiple sites while amalgamating your print environment and optimize the general traffic. Such software can integrate well with WAN (wide area network) hoarding technologies.

The process of downloading printer drivers usually consumes excess bandwidth for workstations. The software can avert the process of WAN downloading across different devices by storing the drivers locally. As a result, download speed is improved and so is efficiency.

Since this software is based on the principle of user-friendly interfaces, employees in the company can also help themselves with installation and other related tasks which sometimes are ignorantly extended to service personnel.

The print optimization software creates a centralized management system that can organize printers individually from a single source. It offers an innate control over the printers within the company.

Some of the key benefits of using a Print Optimization Software can be as follows

• Monitoring and Controlling

Print process optimization software allows organizations to monitor and report all printing done within the company, through statistics, user interfaces, log files, etc. In other words, the system gives the company full control over what is printed, when and where, which has a strong impact on business processes, production and costs.

• Lower environmental impact

Through print optimization you have the ability to send jobs to more efficient printers thereby  reducing waste, saves toner and optimize archives, which also reduces energy consumption and mitigates the environmental impact of the company, while saving time and money; a very appealing combination of benefits.

• Toner Saving and Printing Costs

Many print optimization solutions offer the option of configuring toner saving settings according to printer name, department or user profile, which substantially reduces costs.

In addition, those systems help reduce several key cost aspects of printing, such as consumables, servers and assistance from the IT department, which would undoubtedly like to see end users become more autonomous and need less support.

• Optimizing print files

When files are very large, print processes are slowed down. However, with the right print optimization software, print files can be compressed without compromising document quality.

This, in turn, reduces bandwidth consumption and speeds up print processes, especially when they involve remote printing (for example, from one office to another or from the employee’s home to the customer’s premises).

The opportunities for print cost savings and productivity improvements are continuous and evolve along with changes in your business. Managing the existing environment is only the beginning. The successful implementation of a managed print services solution is a multi-phased on-going process, not a one-time quick fix.

So, how do we help an organization optimize office printing?

Primarily, by understanding your printing and imaging environment trends by looking at the history of device performance over a period of time. This information is readily available since it is continually collected on the printer fleet. Over time, trends emerge, providing an opportunity for device optimization and consolidation.

Secondly, by understanding printing and imaging costs right down to each specific device. Each device has an ideal utilization range, measured in recommended pages printed per month or duty cycle. Print costs are optimized when the device’s actual use is aligned with its recommended duty cycle.

Thirdly, by placing each device in the right location to optimize costs and address user needs. Substantial savings are seen when you align your most cost-effective devices with your highest volume areas. We also provide a variety of reports to identify over/under-utilized devices and make recommendations for realigning print device locations according to print volume.

Without all that time spent on printer optimization, your IT team’s time will be freed up to focus on your bigger business goals.

Schedule a free call and discover how we can optimize your print environment for increased productivity and reduced costs.

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