Nowadays, everyone is looking for ways to cut down their carbon footprint. Unfortunately, it can be fairly expensive to “go green”. Having a green printing strategy can help you save money at the same time as saving the environment.

Office printing consumes a lot of paper and energy. Based on average usages, it is very easy for your office to contribute tens of thousands of pounds of greenhouse gases to the environment a year.

One simple and effective way to reduce your office’s carbon footprint is to set your printers and copiers to default with two sided printing. By turning two pages into one, you can reduce paper usage by 50%. This small step can save up to 60 trees annually and eliminate up to 14,000 lbs of greenhouse gases. It could also save your company money by using less paper! continue reading...

It is very easy for your IT team to become overwhelmed by end user issues and lose sight of your company’s core business initiatives. Many of these end user issues relate to office printing. Paper jams, offline systems and supply shortages consume IT professionals because rarely can they fix these issues remotely.

Luckily, there is a solution. Managed Print Services (MPS) can help your IT personnel focus on their tasks. Furthermore, MPS will make your entire printer fleet more efficient and cost effective by eliminating printer management from the tasks of your IT team and providing the following services:

· On Site Service: A certified technician will come to your office to take care of any service issues with your devices.

· Maintenance: Like all mechanical devices, printers require maintenance. With MPS, your devices will receive preventative maintenance to minimize printer downtime. continue reading...

Most multifunction systems today come equipped with advanced access controls. Despite having a large breadth in functions, these controls are actually very easy to use. Plus, by monitoring print usage, you can reduce your costs greatly by supervising usage by department, work group, or even individuals.

Access controls work in conjunction with the security features of your multifunction to set up PIN codes or card-access for desired users. By requiring every user to log in to the multifunction, you can get a clear report on how the device is being used. You can also set authorizations based on access groups. For example, you may want your Marketing Department to have access to color printing, but feel it would be unnecessary for the Sales Department. With access controls, you can minimize unnecessary color printing and reduce your costs.

Effective print monitoring also allows you to create defaults for certain access groups. You can set print jobs to automatically duplex (two-sided printing) to help save paper. This is a quick and easy solution that will yield instant results. continue reading...

By Corey Smith

When considering the many costs that an organization has to expend, one of the most mis-understood is that of printing costs.

The Gartner Group estimates that as much as 30% of organizations' print costs can be eliminated with simple print device management.

The challenge organizations have is that often there is a division of responsibility for purchasing print devices and supplies for those print devices. Different departments have different responsibilities when it comes to creating efficiencies and cost control strategies.

I have spoken with many IT directors that simply don't care how much printer supplies costs. The cost can be 15 cents for a b/w print and 50 cents for a color print but as long as the cost of acquisition of the device is low, they will buy it. continue reading...

One of of the most common, untracked costs associated with most organizations is the cost of printing and reproducing documents.

In most offices, employees have the ability to print any quantity of documents they choose. When the printer or multi-function system runs out of toner or paper, they simply order more. Many organizations have multiple printers to order toner for. They have inkjets and laserjets. They have personal printers, workgroup printers, department multi-function systems and often will have production level equipment.

There often is no clear strategy on how to contain those supply costs.

But supply costs aren't the only costs associated with printing. The acquisition cost may be nominal, but the servicing of that piece of hardware can be very costly. It can be time consuming for an IT professional to manage the various problems that will inevitably arise with these devices. Problems as simple as a paper jam to as complex as replacement of roller, gears or other internal parts. continue reading...