Printing costs can quickly spiral out of control, especially as the price of materials such as ink and paper rise every year. In order to control printing costs, businesses can look to the following seven methods to learn how to cut print costs in a business.
Measure Everything
No matter how much advice you follow, you will never have true control over printing costs unless you know exactly what they are. Use printer settings to document how many pages have been printed, and compare those numbers to the volume of materials being ordered on a regular basis.
By measuring, you can learn things like:
- Which departments print the most
- How much money you spend per printed sheet
- Your average costs per day/week/month/year
- Most common printing sources
Managed print services can provide even more-granular oversight and attach meters to every printer for precise measurement. You can then use these baseline numbers to set goals and implement policies that reduce print costs.
Encourage Efficient Printing Habits
Too often, an article online that appears one page turns out to be 17 pages at the printer, 15 of which are comments, meta data or mostly blank.
To cut these wasteful print jobs out, start by sending every print job to a print preview mode. There, the employee can select only the pages they are interested in and avoid printing out unnecessary pages.
Going a step further, copying the text you need into a word processor can eliminate space-wasting elements like photos, headers and ads in order to print only the text you need. Some programs, such as GreenPrint, automate this process, allowing employees to quickly modify print jobs and only send off requests that are logically organized.
Make Draft Mode Default
Unless you are handing off a packet to a client or printing a legal document that must stand the test of time, grayscale draft mode printing works fine for most needs. When set to the default, fewer employees will bother to manually change it back to higher quality.
Use Centralized Network Printers
If an employee has to walk to retrieve their print job, they may think more carefully than if they have a printer right at their desk.
Default to Black & White
Color printing is on average at least 5 times more expensive that black and white printing. Setting the default server settings to print black and white ensures that color is only used when specified, not as an accident. Because as an example, printing an email with one line of blue because of a hyperlink constitutes a full color print, and that’s a huge area of expense that can be contained.
Make Duplex Printing Automatic
Look for printers that can efficiently and automatically print to both sides of the paper without the employee having to handle it in between.
Encourage PDF Captures In Lieu of Printing
A simple way to reduce printing costs is to print less. Encourage employees to capture and store digital versions of files and print a physical copy only when absolutely necessary. Providing easy-to-use PDF converters and reminding employees to make smart decisions about printing can encourage a reduction in printer use.
Enlist the Help of a Consultant to Teach You How to Cut Print Costs in a Business
Freedom Profit Recovery can help you achieve printing savings while only charging a small percentage of the recovered costs. We can also manage the implementation and use of your printing solutions over time to ensure that they maintain a good fit with your organization.
Learn more about we can help you save by reviewing our Managed Document Output savings services.
About FPR
FPR is a privately-held North American-based consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Through our industry-unique VISIONAnalysis™ process, we have successfully combined unparalleled expertise and comprehensive intelligence to deliver significant value and cost management to our clients. FPR collaborates with its clients to help them achieve high performance.
For more information, please feel free to contact Mr. Brent Newton at FPR at (972) 650-0700.