Companies urged to formalise printing

Organisations should formalise document production processes and leverage the technology on offer to avoid wastage in print services.

This is according to Andrew Griffith, product manager for office products at Konica Minolta South Africa, commenting on the findings of the ITWeb and Konica Minolta South Africa Managed Print Services Survey, which determined that many organisations discard their print-outs, albeit to varying degrees.

The survey attracted a total of 116 respondents. The majority of them (49%) defined managed print as services of the printing and imaging infrastructure, while 23% viewed it as an outsourced service. 21% revealed that it is the active management and optimisation of document output devices.

Regarding print-outs that are abandoned by companies, 12.37% revealed they discard about 11% to 15% of their print-outs, 15.46% said they throw away 16% to 20%, 19.5% said they dispose of 21% and more of their print outs, while 30.93% do away with 6% to 10%.

Griffith says: “One of the potential pitfalls of centralised printing is that as a consequence of multiple users printing to the same device, there is a high percentage of 'lost' print-outs that either get mixed up in someone else's job or are taken in error.”

He adds that companies can eliminate such wastage and unnecessary prints through utilising the multi-function digital mailbox functionality or a print server-based document accounting software package that allows users to release documents purely on-demand.

It was almost a close call in regards to organisations' awareness of the impact of managed print services on the environment. However, it was disappointing to note that the majority (55.1%) said they aren't aware of the environmental effects with the rest saying they are conscious.

educate and inform as many people as possible about the direct and indirect benefits and continuously promote awareness.

The survey determined that the majority of organisations expect managed print services to affect their bottom line with 33.33% saying the effects of the services were more than expected while 20.24% said it was much as anticipated. Only 9.52% said the effects on the bottom line were less than expected. However, 5.95% said they were unsure.

Most companies, the survey also found out, do not have software to measure print services cost. A high of 57.58% of respondents noted that they do not have such software against a 26.26% who do. Also, 16.6% said they were unsure.

Griffith says deploying such software is crucial for any organisation. “In a medium to large business environment, being 50 users and up, we would say it is crucially important with regards to control, accountability and on-going cost and productivity optimisation.

“In smaller business environments, the standard user authentication that most multi-function devices provide will be sufficient in controlling the usage of the device or devices,” says Griffith.

The survey also discovered that most organisations (31.31%) rely on standard device user authentication and account tracking as a security and document control measure. On the same note, 26.26% revealed they implement company-specific print policies while 10.1% said they trust document accounting and device optimisation software.

Nonetheless, 19.19% said they don't think it is necessary to secure their documents with 13.13% revealing that though they currently don't have security measures in place, they would want them.

Griffith notes that document security is fast gaining importance, “as more and more people realise that in today's modern and sophisticated business environment, an organisation's proprietary and confidential data is no longer stored in the company vault or in a filing cabinet, it's distributed and stored as electronic data within their network.

“And with important business information travelling across the network all day and all the time, it is vitally important that the security and sanctity of that data is protected,” he says.

Many organisations (60.42%) do not think it is necessary to outsource managed print services with the others saying they don't mind.

Griffith says: “This depends on your definition of outsourcing, but by our meaning and understanding, we agree with the respondents saying no.

“This is on the basis that one of the biggest purposes of managed print services is to look at the feasibility of every possible opportunity to bring any and all of the business's printing requirements in-house. This is because it can provide a major productivity and cost benefit to the organisation versus ceding that work to outside print providers who will charge an exorbitant fee for what the business could produce at the print provider's cost.”

Concerning energy efficiency measures that organisations use, 43% said they use none, followed by 23% who disclosed that they use TEC values with 16% depending on recycled or recyclable products

The majority of the respondents (70%) revealed that as a cost cutting measure, they would prefer printing selected material internally while 22% said they don't have the capacity to make such decisions with a low of 8% on the negative.

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