Are your colour printing costs out of control?

We’ve talked a lot recently about how print is still a critical operation in many companies – from everyday documents to marketing materials; there are still many businesses where print is the go-to workflow method. Considering this, controlling colour printing is crucial to maintaining a healthy bottom line, and managed print services can be a great way to regain control against spiralling costs. Managed print services can put you back in the driving seat of being able to set and control your print budget.

Before we look at some of the ways to control colour printing costs, it’s necessary to understand the reasons why colour printing is so expensive: –

• Consumables – colour printing requires multiple toners (generally four: cyan, magenta, yellow and black), which tend to be more expensive than their mono counterparts.
• Maintenance – colour units are more complex, and by being more complex, they are also prone to more technical problems, which can lead to more expensive support contracts.
• Paper costs – higher quality paper is more costly to get the best results from colour printing.

So, considering these additional costs, what is the best way to start addressing how much colour printing your organisation is using?

Managed print services are solutions designed to help businesses optimise their printing environment and allow you to carefully monitor and strategize which individuals need access to colour printing and set rules that enable better control over this.

The first stage is a detailed print audit, where we thoroughly audit your current print situation – we often find areas where colour printing is being overused or is unnecessary, and, in our experience, this can be a common cause of high print costs. With this data in hand, we can help you to develop a tailored strategy that aligns with the cost goals of your business.

With this information, we can implement print policies that set up rules for colour printing and help you control precisely who has access to this resource and set volume limits based upon individual user needs. These policies alone can deliver significant savings.

The print audit also allows us to consolidate your devices – we often find that organisations will have some units that are massively overused and some which are practically redundant – it may be that colour printers are in the wrong location for those who need them or don’t have the correct access rights assigned to them. A smaller, more efficient fleet can help reduce maintenance, consumables and energy costs.

Another critical feature of MPS software is it allows you to monitor print usage in real-time. By understanding who is printing what and when you can pinpoint and address any excessive colour printing and take any necessary action.

Another key benefit to implementing a managed print service is it allows you to improve your sustainability messaging – we chose our manufacturing partners carefully, and the units all include eco-friendly settings which can minimise toner usage and reduce energy consumption. All tied in with our Print Releaf scheme, which allows you to offset the pages you print with new trees in forests worldwide.

A key part of implementing a successfully managed print service contract is employee education, and we can help with the resources you need to ensure your team understand the need for the new print operation and help them to understand the cost savings that can be gained from everyone printing more responsibly.

Depending upon how you want to implement your new colour printing limits, we can help you to set up rules that always print certain documents in mono even if there are colour elements within the page – e-mails are an excellent example of this as logos and hyperlinks will automatically make the document colour when it doesn’t need to be printed in this way. We can even arrange pop-ups asking users whether they need to print this document in colour or even if they need to print it all.

Whilst colour printing can be essential in some departments, it can also be expensive. Working with Parallel to implement managed print services offers a range of strategies that can help you to manage these colour costs effectively. By conducting print audits, implementing print policies and optimising your printing environment, you can save money and enhance your overall printing efficiency.

Parallel Office and Document Solutions are a managed print services provider based in Uxbridge and can help you if you’re looking to take control of your printing, we can assist you with striking the right balance between quality and cost that ultimately improves your company’s bottom line.