Should You Standardise Your Print Fleet?

Many businesses and organisations unintentionally end up with many different manufacturers across their printer fleet – with no clear print strategy in place, this can cause issues. At Parallel, we specialise in helping businesses to standardise their fleet and seeing our clients benefit from the many positive effects, including improved efficiency, reduced downtime and cost savings.

Saving money for businesses is currently more critical than ever – we’ve previously mentioned that print can be a significant cost within an organisation. Therefore, it makes sense to look closely at your print operation to see where things could be improved. One of the first benefits of standardising your fleet is streamlining your consumable purchasing.

It is common to find a cupboard in an organisation packed full of toners, drum rolls and other replaceable parts. As is often also the case, despite this cupboard being filled with ten years of products, inevitably, the one you need to get your printer online again isn’t there!

Having one manufacturer can ensure the parts you need are available when you need them – your supplies department can also take advantage of the economies of scale that come with purchasing in bulk and can stop wasting money on parts that are not needed.

Cost savings can also be found in the energy-saving modes available in modern units – you can put them into automatic stand-by mode when not being used and schedule them to all be turned off when the office is closed. Whilst one or two machines being left on may have minimal impact, if you have many units within your offices, these cost savings can add up.

Having one brand of printers does not necessarily mean you only have one printer model in your organisation – a print audit will look at what you have at present and suggest replacement models based on the need for the units. Your design team may need to print in A3 colour, whereas your sales team will only need mono but the ability to duplex. Even after rationalising their fleet, businesses will end up with a mixture of different-sized MFPs, mono and colour lasers which suit users in particular departments.

Efficiency is another great reason why you should consider opting for one single brand – rather than having four or five units that all work differently, your IT support team will quickly be up to speed on the process of fixing your one brand and will be able to troubleshoot minor issues sometimes without leaving their desk!

The quicker units can be fixed when they have problems, the less downtime your business will experience – even having staff members walk across the floor to a different machine can seriously impact productivity.

In recent years print security has become an important issue – often overlooked from a security point of view, there have been many reports of hackers being able to access networks through unsecured printers – managing network security with 5 or 6 printer brands can be a logistical nightmare for an IT team but having one brand means you can take full advantage of the management software that ships with the units to ensure you don’t have any weaknesses from printers on your network.

Alongside security, cloud-based management has other benefits – you can implement data encryption, remote monitoring and even schedule the machines to update conveniently, which all result in less downtime and more productivity within your business.

If you are thinking about moving to a single manufacturer, it may be worth considering doing this under a managed print service contract – rather than having to outlay the cost of the machines up front, all of the costs of the hardware are rolled into a monthly or quarterly contract that is calculated based upon your print volumes.

As well as benefiting from having one single manufacturer, you will also have a support contract to fix any issues with your print network. Parallel’s Printanista Software remotely monitors all of the devices and ensures any updates they need are added – if it picks up an error code on an IP address, it can automatically dispatch a part and engineer to site – often before the end user even realises there is a problem!

A fully managed print contract also negates the need to purchase and store consumable items for your fleet. Printanista will also monitor your fleet’s consumable levels and automatically dispatch consumables well before your devices need them, ensuring maximum productivity and efficiency across your printer fleet.

Parallel can also help in situations where a standardised fleet is simply not an option for your business. In some specialised circumstances, there is a need to have different manufacturers. For example, a print room environment may require high-end colour output that is not needed across the rest of your fleet. Our 24/7/365 monitoring of your fleet, coupled with automated consumables replenishment, means that you will no longer need to keep stock of multiple manufacturer consumables when taking out a Managed Print Agreement with Parallel.

As you can see, there are many benefits to standardising your fleet, from cost savings to increased productivity – if you would like to discuss the options for your business, don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of our team.