How to Choose the Right Printer for Your Business Needs

With so many manufacturers and models of printers on the market, choosing the correct units for your business is crucial for maximum productivity, efficiency and sustainability. At Parallel, our years of experience ensure that we can help you make informed decisions that meet your business needs and allow you to control your print environment.

Our first step with any new client is gaining a real understanding of your printing needs. We will analyse your data and look at print volumes per department/site. We will consider the types of documents you print – these may be emails, text-heavy reports, or high-quality marketing materials. As we assess each department, we will look at their needs—is speed important? Do they need copying/scanning facilities? Is colour printing needed, or will mono suffice?

It’s easy to forget about the total cost of ownership of printers. The initial hardware cost is the tip of the iceberg of what a unit can cost you over its lifetime. You must factor in ongoing expenses like maintenance, consumables, and energy usage. You may find an initial unit at a great price, but when you look at cartridge yields and the cost of replacement parts, these cheap units are not always a good investment.

Luckily, all of the above can be included in a managed print services contract where our agreement covers all of the consumables, maintenance and repairs your fleet may need – as we discussed in last month’s blog, the costs of printing go beyond the hardware and actual print costs – you need to consider the cost of lost time with offline units, wasted print, the IT departments time spent trying to fix machines and the environmental cost of not having control of your print environment.

We have already mentioned speed, but speed and quality can be important attributes for specific departments. High-speed, reliable printers are necessary if your business requires fast turnaround times. Likewise, if your business relies on high-quality marketing materials, having units that can provide a high resolution and colour accuracy is also paramount. With a Managed Print Services contract, we can specify different units across different departments based on the real-time needs of your workforce.

Modern printers offer various connectivity options, and we can ensure that the printers you select seamlessly integrate with your systems and workflow. We can specify printers that support digital workflow and cloud printing, which is increasingly needed in the post-COVID remote working environment.

We regularly discuss printers and security as they are an often overlooked vulnerability on your network. All of our supplied units are equipped with security features that protect your data, documents, and network. If you have departments dealing with sensitive data, we can implement things like user authentication, data encryption, and print-on-demand, which further protects documents from falling into the wrong hands.

As so many businesses now carry vital sustainability goals, opting for environmentally friendly printers can reinforce this important message. Choosing low-energy consumption printers can significantly impact your business utility bills. Aside from energy usage, choosing units with duplex printing and print-on-demand can reduce wasted print. With printing estimated to be up to 3% of a company’s total turnover, it’s frightening that up to 75% of printed documents end up in the recycling bin – employee education can positively impact this. We regularly support our clients with ”think before you print” campaigns that can drive a change in user behaviour.

Whilst not directly attributed to printer choice, we automatically enrol all of our clients in the PrintReleaf programme, which offsets the documents you print with new forests worldwide. This, coupled with choosing eco-friendly machines, can really bolster an organisation’s sustainability message.

It’s also important to point out that hardware is just one part of a print environment; the software used to control this hardware also plays a critical part; when you select the correct machines and then control your fleet with print software, it provides a level of visibility over your print operation that isn’t possible with hardware alone. Our industry-leading software allows you to see in granular detail what is being printed and when and implement rules across your business that provide the information and clarity you need to reduce your print spending.

As you can see, choosing the correct printers requires more than a quick Google search. Selecting the correct units for your company requires understanding ownership costs, print speed, quality, connectivity, security, and sustainability. At Parallel, we provide customised MPS solutions tailored to your business’s needs based upon strategic assessments of your requirements.

Parallel offers nationwide Managed Print Services. We are providers in Uxbridge (HO), Camberley, Kent, Wolverhampton, Cardiff, Manchester, and Edinburgh, committed to propelling your business forward through tailor-made print solutions.