Printer providers promise to bring waste under control

Time to bring printing under control?

Look towards the end of any set of work desks, and the chances are there is a printer beavering away there, churning out jobs that are never picked up; documents that are printed in colour when monochrome will do; sheets of A4 printed on one side; and piles of papers unrelated to the business.

And the cost to the business includes not only capital expenditure on printer hardware and supplies, but also wasted time caused by technical problems. So how can the cost-conscious IT leader bring this waste under control?

One possible option that is gradually gaining traction is the use of managed print services (MPS), where a third party takes on the responsibility for enterprise printing.

According to Cecile Drew, principal research analyst at Gartner, one of the benefits of MPS is that it allows firms to trim costs in an area they are usually too busy to manage properly.

"For some firms, print fell off the radar because they had other priorities, like perhaps losing people and having to focus on that particular problem," she says.

"We actually have more and more firms calling us and asking how to better understand practices with relation to MPS. It's really an opportunity for both MPS providers and organisations. I see more companies looking at MPS."

One such firm is Proctor & Gamble (P&G). It recently signed up to a five-year MPS contract, under which its worldwide print operations - including print shops, offices and home-based work settings – will be overseen by Xerox.

P&G aims to shave 30 per cent off its print-related power costs, and between 20 and 20 per cent on paper costs annually.

However, not all firms should expect such significant cost savings, says Jason Slater, IT manager at food packaging company Single Source. The larger a firm is, the greater potential for cost savings, he argues.

"We talked to one of Xerox's partners, and we were needing to commit to a minimum print level every month. When you're in a large organisation you can devote a resource to actually tracking that, but it's not easy when you're a small business," he says.

Service levels can also be a problem for smaller firms. Many MPS providers were quoting four-hour response times if the equipment develops a fault, says Slater.

"If I phone somebody at lunchtime and say my printer's failing, if I'm using a managed service there's no longer anything I can do with it, then I have to wait until tomorrow and that's no good to us – we're a 24-hour operation," he says.

For firms that lack P&G's global scale there can be benefits using a MPS, says Louella Fernandes, a principal analyst at Quocirca. By identifying which specific services are most relevant to their needs firms "can still make significant cost savings by starting with a smaller, scaled-down MPS".

"One thing we shouldn't forget is that it's cheaper for an organisation to manage their fleet themselves - if they know what they're doing," says Gartner's Drew. However, that detailed knowledge can be thin on the ground.

For firms that lack that in-house expertise and cannot justify a third-party service, there is another option. There are a number of free tools, such as HP's Web Jetadmin package, that can "implement things like colour print control, and understand device usage for certain locations and departments," says Fernandes.