Look to document output service providers that can offer guaranteed savings

In a tight economy where businesses are under pressure to drive down costs, many enterprises are missing out on opportunities to better optimise and manage office automation environments in partnership with service providers that will offer them guaranteed cost-savings.

That's according to Itec Distribution chief operating officer, Philip Perkins. He says many companies that are trying to drive down costs across other elements of their IT infrastructure, such as their PC, network and telecoms environments, are neglecting to address high levels of wastage and unnecessary cost in their document output environments.

Most companies could save vast amounts of money by looking closely at their printing and imaging environments to identify opportunities to drive down support, maintenance and consumable costs; boost employee productivity; and consolidate printers, support contracts and vendors to eliminate unnecessary duplication.

Companies should embark on balanced deployment strategies by working with office automation specialists that can help them understand their total document output environments with a view to identifying opportunities to reduce costs and improve workflows, says Perkins.

Says Perkins: “Balanced deployment is an approach that is fundamental to achieving the best results from your document output environment. Balanced deployment focuses on striking the optimal balance between cost and productivity by right-sizing printer and copier fleets while ensuring that the right devices are matched to the right end-users and applications.”

The service providers companies work with should be able to ring-fence the printing environment and then reduce and manage costs on their behalf. Importantly, the service provider should be able to guarantee the cost savings.

“Working with vendors in this manner allows companies to buy a printing service that addresses their business needs rather than buying document output devices as pieces of capital equipment,” Perkins adds. “Such a strategy means that companies turn printing into an operational cost rather than a capital expense.”

Perkins says that balanced deployment is all about choosing the right solutions to fit specific business needs in the office, irrespective of vendor or printing technology. For example, general administrative staff might be best served by shared multifunction products (MFPs) that support large black and white copying and printing volumes while the marketing manager might need his or her own full colour printer to produce high-quality collateral.

Some strategies companies could embark on with their service providers include reducing the number of devices they manage by sharing them among users when it makes sense and replacing certain standalone printers, fax machines, scanners and copiers with MFPs; reducing wastage by enforcing policies that eliminate unnecessary full colour and high quality printing; consolidating service and support contracts; and managing document output devices centrally and remotely.

“While companies can achieve significant cost-savings by consolidating printers and sharing them among a number of users or by limiting the functionality that certain users have access to, they need to remember the importance of user productivity when optimising their environments,” adds Perkins.

The balanced deployment strategy can be supported using software tools that give the enterprise visibility into document output devices across the enterprise, their costs and how users are using them. These tools can allow companies to create and enforce policies that reduce costs in the document output environment.

The benefits of balanced deployment are numerous and include direct cost savings on hardware, consumables, and support; improved workflow and employee productivity; and higher levels of uptime in the document output environment, concludes Perkins.