Executive Debrief
Who's managing your Printing
assets?
Many organizations currently own
Asset Management Software. These tools manage asset inventory
tracking, software license management and contract management. Why do
these software tools not address printer assets?
Printers and copy devices churn
trillions of pages a year in businesses across the world. Corporate
Executives pay little attention to the exorbitant costs associated with
these assets. We believe lack of attention has come from little or no
industry printing standards, multiple global & national manufacturers
protecting intellectual capital, and well kept secrets in the industry.
What’s their Big Secret? Toner = Big
Profits!
Sounds like a
conspiracy theory! Next time your Purchasing group
buys a batch of toner; have them calculate the cost
per ounce of toner. You will be shocked; the cost of
toner per ounce is more than the cost of gold per
ounce. Would you let employees squander thousands of
ounces of gold a year? Of course not, your
organization would automate processes to manage the
gold, ultimately creating better returns for your
business.
Financial management of IT assets is
critical to the profitability of your organization.
Let PrinterRx provide you with the
real cost of printing
Learn More
Grant's Tech Tip
Which printers aren’t being used effectively?
To check on desktop
printers, click on Reports on Printing, then Desktop
Printer. To identify under-utilized desktop
printers, click on the columns you want to sort by,
such as Pages or Total Cost.
To check the print servers, click on
Reports on Printing, then Print Servers. To identify under-utilized
printers, you can click on various columns to sort by Pages or different
Costs. This window will also identify printers with potential issues by
displaying Uptime, Standby time, and Total Alerts.
Request PrinterRx Technical
information
What % of
your printers will be discovered?
Not all devices can be discovered using IP &
other discovery techniques. This is primarily because some older
printers and cards use older technology or specific printers do not support
standards.
You can expect to
discover on average between 95% -100% of your devices.
You can expect to
obtain page counts from 90% -95% of your devices.
Learn More |
The BIGGEST Hidden Costs in Printing
Last
month's newsletter looked
at printing costs as much more than paper & ink. In fact, the bulk
of per page costs are the misunderstood & ignored costs associated with
supporting the network printers. These hidden costs are shown on
average to be between 60% to 75% of cost per page. You can expect this to
be on the high end of the range for unmanaged printer fleets.
So what causes the biggest
hidden costs? We will talk about 3 areas which can cause you grief
and escalate your cost per page.
-
Underutilized devices - This is just another way of saying that you have too many printers.
With too many printers, the average page count
per printer is low. The overhead & fixed
costs become a larger portion of the printer's
costs, resulting in a higher cost per page.
Some underutilized printers can have these
hidden costs as high as 90% of the total cost
per page. Corporations always
underestimate the number of printers they own.
We have NEVER come across a corporation who
estimated more printers than the discovery
found. So how do you reduce the number of
underutilized printers? A balance is
needed the number of employees per printer and
the (average & maximum) distance that an
employee walks to
pick up a print-out. But you cannot get
there without a detailed print  assessment that
printer asset management tool provides.
-
Desktop inkjets -
Here we are referring to 2 critical items
relating to hidden costs: (1) Printers that are
directly attached to personal computers and
(2) inkjets.Parallel or USB-attached
printers, by definition generally have only one
user. Because of this, they are often underutilized.
Fixed/overhead costs are spread
over a fewer number of pages printed resulting
in a higher cost per page. Because of the
proximity of the printer to the user, often the user
prints indiscriminately, increasing total
corporate printing
costs. Shared printers, located a short
walk from the desktop, may cause the user to
reflect on the importance of a specific printout.
Without question, inkjets have the lowest
initial purchase cost, but have the most
expensive printing costs. Black ink costs
$1700 per gallon; Color ink costs $4700 per
gallon. We should quit complaining about
the price of gasoline & start complaining about
the cost of ink for inkjets!
-
Page coverage - Long
gone are the days of printing b&w text.
It's all about color. On a unit basis,
color is 3X the cost of black ink, but it is
coverage that causes color printing to become
10X the cost of b&w. Because of the
internet and the move towards visually appealing
electronic media, we are printing more web
documents which have more page coverage,
particularly in
color. Our actual page coverage is
increasing. Page coverage of 5% has a
consumable (ink) cost of 2-5¢/pg; A
typical web page with 40% coverage (mostly
color) can have a consumable cost of 30-45¢/pg.
This is a real hidden cost that can be changed
through education in user printing behavior.
Do not print this newsletter - Pass it on
electronically!
What is driving your printing
costs high? Essentially corporate printing & printing costs are
not being managed.
Actively managing your printer assets using a printer
fleet cost management system can help you get your biggest hidden
printing costs under control.
Discovery
is only the Beginning
The Discovery of printers, mfp's
and other devices is an important first step in managing your Printer
Fleet. If you truly
wish to save costs by managing your printer fleet assets, discovery is
only the beginning.
Business environments are dynamic and variable
in nature. New employees will come and go. The
assets associated with these employees will be
retired, switched, come off lease, swapped and
are in a constant state of fluctuation.
Understanding the state of your assets is a
continuous, on-going process for they feed the
lifeline of your organization. Managing your
fleet means determining which assets need
attention, which assets should be retired and
which assets are the most expensive. Discovery,
or more appropriately printer fleet management,
is an ongoing process not a static point
in-time. Setting up the correct time increments
determines the effectiveness of the data
gathered from discovery process. For example, if
we only wish to see what devices have recently
been added to the network, we should measure
increments in the number of days, weeks or
months; If we want to be able to respond to
costly activities such as downtime and printer
faults (jams, out of ink,...), the frequency of
discovery and polling should be in much smaller
increments. The first example is not critical
to the overall lifeblood of the organization.
Discovery, therefore, is a checkup based on your
objectives. The discovery tool should go beyond
a point in time or a monthly page count, but
rather continuously gather information t o assess
whether all is well.
Are your
volumes in line with past history? Are there new
assets to manage? Do your supply inventories for
printers and toner meet your current demand for
print? We users constantly cost the
organization more money with our printing
behaviors. PrinterRx can act as a preventative
measure to identify problems before they occur,
or for areas that have been identified as
problematic, act as data assimilation and
intelligence that maps ways to improve, reduce,
and support your entire printing environment.
PrinterRx encapsulates the true definition of
Printer Fleet Management which is:
"The
discipline of managing finances, contracts and
usage of printers assets throughout their
lifecycles for the purpose of maintaining an
optimal balance between business service
requirements, total costs, budget predictability
and contractual or regulatory compliance. "
Remember: Discovery is not the Holy Grail.
To truly reduce printing costs, ongoing & active management of your
printer fleet is required.
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