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Executive Debrief
Do monthly meter reads tell you?
- Which printer is breaking down the most
- Your peak printing times
- Which printer has frequent jams
- Have new printers come & old printers gone
- When were toner cartridges changed (page & time of day)
- Your peak printing times
- Which printer is costing the most
- Where I can save money
- What's going on with you fleet on a daily basis
That's managing Printer fleets!
ROI calculatorfor managing your printer fleet
Grant's Tech Tip
Bandwidth used by PrinterRx
- less than 2 MB per 100 printers.
Discovery takes no bandwidth for searching for printers.
The only network traffic is due to actual printers discovered.
The time spent to perform the poll or discovery task is
adjustable by setting the number of threads.
For more information refer
to:
printerRx
Support portal
PrinterRx training highlight
Retiring Printers
If a recently swapped or replaced printer had daily
printing increase drastically (or shows negative printing), this may be due to
procedures not followed when exchanging printers. This occurs when a printer is
swapped with one that had a much higher pagecount (or lower) while keeping the
existing NIC (or print server).
In PrinterRx, we track printer changes based on the NIC-MAC
address link, as serial numbers in printer engines are not 100% reliable.
Basically, if the software detects that a MAC address (or serial number) has
changed for a given IP address, it is treated as being a new printer, and the
old printer at that IP address is "retired", keeping all historic printing
records. The problem arises if either the internal NIC is put into a replacement
printer, or if the printer is simply hooked up to the existing print server (eg
jetdirect server). The software, therefore, cannot detect that the printer is
new, and will use the new printers internal pagecount, whatever that may be.
This type of printer swapping could lead to erroneous page counts.
The recommended procedure if you swap printers & retain the
MAC address is to "Retire" the printer within PrinterRx before physically
swapping the printers.
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Continuous Printer Monitoring
Our last
newsletter discussed printing behavior of the employees in the corporations
and how User printing behavior is integral in developing a printer fleet
strategy for a corporation. Until recently, most businesses had no strategy to manage
print and didn’t know they needed one. Now the printer and copier vendors are
all telling their customers that they can help them save money by managing their
printer fleets. How are they doing this?
After developing a print strategy which usually involves
hardware refreshing, how does the corporation sustain the print savings? Best
practices say the only
way to help organizations maintain & sustain their corporate-wide print strategy
is to measure & manage the print environment on an on-going basis. This
refers to continuous monitoring of all the printers in the fleet including
regular reporting and comparative tracking of ALL device activities -- not only
meter reads. Printer activities such as uptime, printing
peak times, repair activities can be graphed and used not only as predictive printing
requirements, but for on-going, intelligent fleet decisions.
Continuous printer monitoring automates service request
tickets. When a printer jams or requires a break/fix visit, continuous
monitoring should automatically notify the appropriate technician to handle the
problem. Automating ad hoc service requests improves repair time, uptime and the bottom line.
Continuous printer monitoring better tracks costs.
When toner or ink cartridge is replaced, with continuous monitoring you should be able to track actual toner yields and per page costs,
not rely on the manufacturers published data. This may be valuable information for future printer model and fleet decisions & from an independent source - You.
To maintain your print strategy which was developed using valuable
corporate time, resources & dollars, the entire print environment need to be
measured & managed on an on-going basis …and with a focus on continuous
improvement. Best practices in printer fleet management indicate you should:
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Measure your baseline print environment which include
all cost components
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Identify & Quantify cost reduction opportunities
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Develop a corporate-wide strategy with target savings
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Deploy your strategy throughout the corporation
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Sustain your savings through
independent monitoring & measurement
You can not manage what you cannot measure.
Get more
information on a PrinterRx solution
What's wrong with Monthly meter Reads?
Of course you need monthly meter reads for billing. But meters alone do
not help you manage your printer fleet!
Printer fleets are dynamic. Something is always occurring : Offline,
online, printer out for repair, printer replaced, printer moved, printer
removed, toner replaced, new printer added.
And what about service requests and break/fix? A device does not break
down on a schedule. And a monthly meter read does not identify these
service requests.
Companies are bleeding money from their bottom line thanks to unmanaged
printing. Total cost per page skyrockets from printers that are beyond their
"best before" dates and suffering from jam, break/fix, and downtime woes.
Monthly pages printed, whether b&w, color or copy, tell you nothing about the
health of the printer or where it would be more effectively used in the
organization.
Monthly meters reads give no information about supply costs and yields.
Print vendors and dealers are being asked to provide more service that simply supplying
hardware, ink & toner, and repair. To provide the value add to the customer, the
vendors need to know more than their customer about the customer's print environment.
They should be able to identify which printers are underperforming or a cost drain,
and provide fleet recommendations to the client. A vendor's on-going
recommendations for continuous improvement of the printer fleet will
help secure their value to the client.
Printer and copier vendors are all telling their customers that they can help them save money by managing their printer fleets. But are they doing this through monthly meter reads?
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