We are constantly hearing about businesses and government moving towards a paperless environment. The reality, however, is that documents will remain critical to the operation of almost all enterprises. I believe printing will remain a common activity that spans the enterprise, from general-purpose activities to specific workflow applications.
Most enterprises still devote substantial resources to print and related services. This results from fragmented processes where IT, procurement, line of business management and facilities departments are unduly burdened due to a lack of centralised print management.
End-users are also subjected to inefficiencies and low productivity because lack of print management results in ineffectual document processes and unnecessary document obsolescence.
According to research conducted recently by Info Trends, the total cost of general printing and related activities accounts for approximately 2% of revenue or funding and the total print costs from desktop to external print average 6% of revenue.
Delivering solutions
Historically most companies treated print and printing technology as an afterthought - but, as the study confirms, this is slowly changing. More companies are revisiting printing practices to find ways to manage them more effectively, provide higher levels of satisfaction to users and become more cost-effective. Services vendors now deliver solutions that enable businesses to achieve these goals through print optimisation.
On another note, with organisations moving into digitising various business processes, although printing is becoming an area of focus, many organisations have no clear ownership or a definitive vision and strategy for managing print. This results in disjointed print management practices and unnecessary hard costs across the organisation. Companies lack a holistic view of print-related costs and end up using manual approaches to gather information about spending, devices, utilisation, uptime and maintenance costs. This leads to inconsistencies in how vendors offer services due to varying relationships with different departments and interfacing with different individuals who have varying needs.
The main drivers for print optimisation are cost reduction, improved performance and efficiency. In order to capitalise on these, companies need to centralise ownership of print strategy. The research shows there is a correlation between centralised roles, responsibilities and robust change management with the achievement of significant cost savings.
While looking to optimise print infrastructure, as a first step it is important to ensure buy-in and collaboration between departments and ultimately enable deployment across the enterprise - this helps in aligning key players across the enterprise on common processes and strategies, from vendor selection to implementation and ongoing management.
Objectives
More companies are revisiting printing practices to find ways to manage them more effectively, provide higher levels of satisfaction to users and become more cost-effective.
Shane Tyrell is enterprise business unit head of the Imaging and Printing Group, HP SA.
Secondly, programme ownership is essential. Whether it is directly owned by IT or another department, it must be clear who is responsible for ensuring objectives are being met, decisions about refreshing technology are being made and that the programme is evolving as the company's needs continue to change.
Lastly, and most importantly, there is a need to manage change. Initial resistance is likely therefore the project team must develop specific strategies and tactics to cultivate approval and support. It is important to communicate the value of the programme and its benefits to staff, addressing the unique requirements of different organisational groups and the transition plan for each. The migration should be facilitated through the use of workflow automation tools and continuous training, as well as developing accountability policies and metrics to drive and maintain the strategy.
Once the plan is in place, think about reducing the number of vendors. This will mean the consolidation of purchasing power and lower costs as well as improved service control.
If looking for opportunities to cut costs without impacting productivity, this is achievable through capitalisation on technological innovation. This innovation enables standardised and balanced deployments consisting primarily of single- and multifunctional general office devices that increase the number of users per device, but place much needed functionality closer to users.
Companies can quickly realise 30% hard cost savings in the general office printing environment if infrastructure optimisation is successfully carried out. To date, successful customers have implemented a balance of single- and multifunction printers to achieve a perfect mix of cost-efficiency and user productivity.
With effective print management, besides hard cost savings, organisations can expect phenomenal productivity improvements for IT, staff and even procurement and facilities.
* Shane Tyrell is enterprise business unit head of the Imaging and Printing Group, HP SA.
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