Printer Doomsday?

dymanicbusiness.com.au - April 2011

 Printer Doomsday, Dynamic Business April 2011 (PDF) 

Can you imagine a world where all our printers suddenly stop working simultaneously? How would you cope? By Bill Papas

If I were a betting man, I’d back that you’re reading this article either in your downtime at work or at home.  Perhaps you’re on a bus on the way to or from the office or have grabbed a quick few minutes over coffee to expand your business acumen?

I’d also suspect that, wherever you are and whatever the time of day, you will have come into contact with at least 15 pieces of paper so far today: a bus ticket, a train timetable, today’s newspaper? Perhaps it was an invoice, a letter, a printed receipt? You might be in the logistics business – was it a delivery docket, those ever important consignment notes or next week’s roster? Need I point out the magazine you’re leafing through at the moment? Like it or not, we live and die by printed documentation.

Humour me for a minute and imagine a world where by some monumental coincidence, all our printers suddenly ceased to operate simultaneously. No industrial printers, office printers or multi-function printers. Let us call this ‘Printer Doomsday’.

Why such dramatic language I hear you ask? Wouldn’t this be a positive day for Australian business and the environment?

We’re constantly reminded how many trees are felled by Australian businesses each year as we print, flick and forget. For decades the concept of the paperless office has risen and died as we return to old habits – printing and filing instead of scanning and saving.

Let us analyse this scenario for just a moment though. Chaos would ensue as angry commuters battled to board trains and buses, ticketless and doubtless, tactless. Cashflow would falter as invoices circulate in the virtual world and mobile devices would beep and ping like instruments of torture as online receipts and dockets are exchanged with every purchase.

Granted, it’s an unlikely scenario this Printer Doomsday, but I’m sure we’ve all felt the impact of a mini doom-moment at some point or other. The minor conniptions that occur just before a board meeting as the toner runs out or the paper jams. That last minute ‘at any price’ service call to either outsource credentials printing or extend deadlines for submission as the blessed machine dies.

The simple fact is that, 600 years on from the invention of the printing press, too often we take printers and the important role they play in our businesses for granted. If this Printer Doomsday actually happened, we’d realise very quickly.

Fundamental to business operation

When was the last time you dedicated committed thought to the printers and printing peripherals in your home or office? How often have you paused to consider how frequently your staff will print and the types of documents they’re printing? When was the last time you checked your monthly office order to ensure the toner, paper and inks requested are still the appropriate match for your machines or the most cost effective option available? You’re struggling aren’t you?

If you were to analyse your engagement with them, you’d quickly realise that printers play a major role in the functioning of an organisation, and yet, we rarely focus on them until they stop working. If I were to put printing in a context that most business operators understand though, I suspect your perspective will change dramatically. Let’s look at printing as a percentage of your overall business expenditure.

According to analyst house IDC, printing can account for more than three percent of a business’ total expenditure over the course of a year. That may seem like a low percentage but the same report suggests that the average employee within an organisation will print 1,100 pages per year. For a company with 20 staff, that means they will spend an average of $30,000 per year on printing.

Further to this, a similar report suggests that of those documents printed; more than 40 percent will either end up in the bin or ‘orphaned’ at the printer – unclaimed by their owner, too busy or too lazy to retrieve them (we all know we’ve done it). This is where the alarming figures come into play. For Australian businesses prone to orphan printing, they are effectively throwing away $12,000 per year in wasted paper, ink and service fees. Not a figure to be sneezed at in the current economic climate.

So how do you get a grip on the printing habits and requirements of your business? There are five simple steps you can take.

1. Conduct a printer audit

Printing audits can help businesses understand not only print volumes within the organisation but also metrics like optimal ratio of devices to users and total current output (including service and consumables). Often the total number of printers in your organisation can be reduced, suppliers can be streamlined and printing minimised which amounts to hard cost savings. These savings can only be realised though if you take the time required to analyse and understand your current habits. It’s easy to relegate this task to the low urgency, low importance quadrant of your prioritisation matrix but let me remind you that our research shows your printing costs can be slashed by up to a quarter following a quick audit. Using the 20-person business scenario above, that’s a potential cost saving of more than $7,500.

2. Implement smart scanning

Count the number of filing cabinets in your office – both official and ‘mushroom’ cabinets. Mushroom cabinets are those that crop up all over the office as your business grows, your staff grows or your systems and processes evolve. These might be empty draws, empty shelves or opportune flat surfaces ripe for the ‘stacking’. Either way, if you have more than one filing cabinet in the office, you are probably encouraging staff to print too often. Ask yourself what the primary purpose of these documents is. Is it to be stored for prosperity or to be moved around the organisation? Either way, it can probably be scanned and an electronic copy saved to file.

3. Ditch the snail mail

While more than a decade of business evolution has shown the ‘paperless office’ to be an unachievable ideal, the good news is that printing less paper is not that hard a nut to crack, particularly if you focus on specific scenarios in which to apply this approach. Take an action in your business to convert all frequently posted documents (via ‘snail mail’ or traditional post) to PDF so they can be emailed instead of printed and posted. Many business management software packages will also enable businesses to send invoices and statements electronically.

4. Commit to duplexing and multi-up

This is printing lingo but duplexing refers to printing on both sides of the page while multi-up refers to printing more than one page per sheet. These are standard features of most modern print devices but few businesses take advantage of these capabilities unless they are configured as default options. Defaults can be set to vary depending on the type of document being printed but all businesses should be able to manage these manually to help reduce their printing volumes.

5. Communicate

The final step an organisation can take to address bad printing habits is often the simplest. Communicating explicitly with staff about the impact of their printing both on the business and the environment can make a significant difference. By creating a culture where printing less is a priority, staff are much more likely to think twice before printing a document.

Every organisation can save money and reduce its carbon footprint by examining its printing habits and implementing a managed printing approach. The biggest surprise is often just how significant a difference this can make. So, the next time you consider your office printing process (hint, hint – you should) – rather than a doom and gloom scenario, consider the positive impact a simple change in approach can make.

- Bill Papas is Executive General Manager Sales and Marketing, Upstream Print Solutions.