Turn paper into profit

Of the variety of costs associated with technology in a firm, the cost of printing is often either overlooked, or incorrectly calculated. Law firms are still very document-intensive environments and print volumes are very high as
a result.

The cost of printing is often disguised as the marginal cost of toner and paper, but there is much more to consider, including the cost of the equipment, the cost of staff maintaining it, additional warranty payments on devices, and the administration of printer stacks.

Administrative burden

Moreover, many firms still have numerous distributed printers of varying types, and don’t always match the print output to the type of material, for example, printing in colour when monochrome is fine, adding yet more to the cost and administrative burden.

There is also a cost associated with not being able to print when machinery is unreliable or not fit for purpose, so reliability is important.

As a result, many firms have switched to a ‘managed print solution’ to reduce costs and admin, and gain other advantages. Broadly speaking, a managed print solution is a contract from a third party to look after your printing requirements. This generally includes copying and printing, and will normally also encompass scanning, fax, booklet production, etc.

The third party supplies the hardware and toner supplies and charges a combination of lease cost for the equipment and a (metered) pence-per-page charge for the number of prints produced. The supplier also maintains the fleet of equipment and the better ones run monitoring programs and pre-emptive maintenance to ensure the maximum amount
of uptime.

To gain the maximum efficiency from a managed print deal, you will need to consider a couple of initial steps. The first is a print audit to determine how much and what type of printing you are doing and at what cost. The second is to plan to rationalise the number of machines employed to a comfortable minimum in order to minimise the lease-cost element.

A print audit is something that a supplier is likely to offer during an initial consultation, by monitoring count functions in your existing devices. This will give you an accurate picture of volume and type and, with enough extrapolation, a view on the actual cost of printing.

Hardware estate

A potentially contentious element of the process is redesigning the hardware estate to minimise the amount of machinery required. Large multifunction devices can serve a sizable number of people and, unless your buildings are particularly geographically challenged, should not end up being too far away from users.

Users with individual printers will often claim time or security issues force them to have their own machine, but this is easily debunked by simple time and motion studies and a security audit. I have seen piles of confidential papers in the output tray of an unlocked room on many occasions.

If there is still resistance, explain that the cost of running smaller individual machines is significantly higher than their larger shared counterparts.

Once you have decided to go down the managed print route, there are a number of factors to consider. Start with a print policy; nothing too heavy required here, but think about defaulting to monochrome, printing bibles in A5, and routing print jobs to machines most suited to the print job, all of which will save money and improve efficiency.

Once you have a group of suppliers lined up to quote, check that they are like for like in every aspect, including length of contract, type and quantity of devices and cost for each type of print. Also, check the service-level agreements and look for inflationary rise clauses to make sure you know if they cover just the metered print costs or include the lease costs.

Finally, some suppliers will offer refurbished machinery at a lower cost. This looks good on paper, but you need to consider reliability and service levels if you decide to consider this option. SJ

Damian Blackburn is director of legal IT consultancy firm SLFtech