Printing in a company: pennies that save millions
One of the clients turned to us in the "Onlanta" for the service of a print service, received a price list and retired for a while. A little later, he came back and said that he considered the potential costs, and he got cheaper. That is, he went to Yandex.Market, took prices for office printers, chose the one he liked. Then he found the life of the printer - 5 years, or 60 months. Divided the price by months - received printing costs per month. Costs, of course, it was arranged, and our price - not very. Have you been with this?
In this case, the client did not take into account the cost of maintaining the printer, or the cost of cartridges, or even the cost of paper. That is, the client has the most superficial idea of ​​what the price of printing a single page in his company consists of. Expectations for the price is extremely low. And in general - how can printing cost something to a company in the age of the victorious electronic document management?
')
Well, firstly, not the winner - and you will see for yourself. Secondly, it can. Even as you can. Let's count.
Well, if your business is a small company, in which one printer or even multifunction printers and documents are printed from time to time, and then for personal use. Retailers, cellular operators, gas stations, state-owned companies, design institutes, wholesale trading companies and many others have a completely different view on this process. They need MPS, it’s a print service, it’s also an outsourcing of print services.
Outsourcing printing services, or MPS (Managed Print Services), is a popular service all over the world and in Russia in particular.
There are several definitions of MPS from different analytical companies. One of them is given by Gartner , and its main thesis in translation is as follows: Managed Print services - MPS (managed print services) is the optimization and management of document printing processes. This is usually done by an external service provider. He assesses the company's needs in printing, selectively or everywhere changes equipment, maintains equipment, supplies resource parts and accessories for equipment, monitors how printers and multifunctional devices are used, solves user problems.
In the age of kopek printers and the growing electronic document flow, business continues to spend considerable amounts of money on printing documents. Based on my experience in the company “Onlanta” , I will tell you what to take into account in order to transfer the support of printing equipment to outsourcing and switch to a copy-based payment model (for the number of printed pages) to achieve maximum economic effect. You will see a table for calculating the cost of a print under various conditions of the contract entered into by the customer company with the outsourcing company (service provider), and you can form adequate expectations from the Print Service service.
The cost of office printing is composed of the cost of equipment, consumables, paper and repairs. These costs often dissolve among other organization expense items. Financial services are not always able to evaluate them, despite the fact that the total amounts can be quite substantial, especially in large organizations where printers print a lot. Typical examples of high-loaded printing are the formation of shipping documentation for the shipment of petroleum products in tank trucks for delivery to gas stations or extracting documents for payment and warranty for goods in retail stores.
If you transfer the support of the corporate printing equipment to the outsourcing and switch to copy-by-copy payment (payment per print), the cost of printing will become transparent for the accounting department and understandable for the management. Savings in this transition can be, according to various estimates, approximately 20-30%.
Enlarged, the advantages of outsourcing print service.
There are pros - there should be cons. Among the latter - one weighty and two very doubtful for the Russian realities.
Some time ago, in the media, information slipped that a Moscow-known car sharing service charged a client with more than half a million bills for car repairs after an accident due to the client’s fault. This came as a complete surprise to the culprit of the accident, who hoped that insurance for such cases was included in the rental price. His expectations, alas, did not materialize.
Customer frustration is probably the softest language describing this situation. The car-sharing company, by the way, subsequently introduced a new, more expensive fare that takes into account the possibility of an accident and limits the amount that the driver of the rented car must pay in case of an accident due to his own fault.
Between the car sharing service and the Print Service service provided by IT outsourcing companies, you can draw an analogy: in car sharing, payment per minute, and in print service, as a rule, per print. In both cases, the attractiveness of transparent and understandable pricing can lead to frustration, if not take into account the details.
The price of one print is the most common indicator of the cost of printing. It provides an integrated assessment of all costs, not only direct, but also all kinds of indirect costs that the company incurs in order to get one piece of paper from the printer with the necessary information. This indicator, as a rule, is estimated by real and potential buyers of printing devices and customers of an external printing service. Often, only when switching to a second-hand payment can you find out how much an imprint is actually worth.
Prior to the transition to this model, the cost of printing, as a rule, is considered completely different - most often the "boiler" method with the summation of not all, but only the most obvious costs. Moreover, not all IT managers and IT directors know exactly how many printing devices there are in their company, how many cartridges they consume, how loaded these machines are, how often they have to be repaired, etc.
Another advantage of the copy-based form of payment is that it motivates the provider of this service to ensure maximum efficiency of the printing technology. After all, while the equipment is idle, printing does not go, therefore, the provider does not earn anything.
Additional features for the customer are provided by software monitoring and collection of print statistics that allow you to automate the recording of the number of prints and track the loading of printing devices. Based on the monitoring data, it is possible to change the working conditions of the equipment and the service to reduce the cost of the print. For example, to quickly adjust and redistribute the load on printers. In addition, knowing who prints how much and on which devices, you can spread the cost of printing across departments or users - this will allow you to plan costs more precisely and at least partially reduce the volume of unjustified printing.
Another caveat: a copy-of-payment method motivates an enterprise to abandon devices with a high print cost (including old ones, often broken and not very productive) and switch to cost-effective multifunction devices.
The total cost of one print with the service "Print Service" is affected by several components:
Consider in more detail each of them.
There are three possible options.
A separate point: the use of non-original or refilled cartridges often entails problems with print quality, and this again is an extra cost.
When calculating the total cost of the print, you should not forget about the amount of text (images) on the page. The cartridge resource indicated in the specification is calculated on the average on the basis of a 5% page fill - for example, as an application for leave. In my practice, the average parameter for filling in the printed pages was 7-9%. Obviously, the higher this indicator (for example, when printing contracts, commercial offers, instructions, project documentation, etc.), the smaller the life of the cartridge and, accordingly, the greater the cost of the print.
Resource parts are parts of the printing equipment that have a certain resource or service life: for example, thermal blocks, image transfer units, paper feed rollers. In modern devices there are service counters that let you know when scheduled maintenance of printers or replacement of individual components is necessary. Thus, the cost of replacement will be included in the cost of the print in accordance with the resource of replaceable parts.
The mouse also deteriorated
The replacement fund is the equipment provided to the customer for the period of repair or instead of the failed printing equipment.
As a rule, the replacement fund is approximately 5% of the total printing equipment (for a distributed company, this figure is higher, since the operator needs to create a minimum supply of equipment in all cities where the organization is present). This is sufficient to ensure the continuity of the print service. More stringent customer requirements for the Service Level Agreement (SLA) may also affect the percentage of equipment for the replacement fund.
The value of the replacement fund is allocated to the number of prints corresponding to the duration of the contract.
Why should a customer be interested in a substitute fund? Isn't that a performer's headache? Alas, if the contractor saves on the replacement fund, the customer will receive an idle time in the service, which as a result may cost him more than the cost of the replacement fund.
It happens that the customer already has a replacement fund or he buys it independently. In such cases, the cost of replacement fund in the cost of the print is not included.
A source
Customers with a fairly large number of printers from different manufacturers often turn to the Print Service service. It happens that the printing equipment in the offices is not optimal and the load is unevenly distributed. The print infrastructure is ineffective, the basis of which is personal printers on the desks of employees: they are not used intensively enough, and they require considerable attention, since they all need to be maintained in working condition, changing cartridges and resource parts in time.
High-performance devices used by a large number of employees are more efficient and cost-effective in terms of the cost of a print. True, there is a nuance: they must be placed so that each employee of the company is close to the printer, and the devices themselves do not have a queue. The key requirement in this case is the following: the correctly chosen and installed printing equipment should contribute to the effective implementation of business processes (including low cost of printed documents) and not slow down them in any way.
It is reasonable to leave personal printers in the offices of management and in places where especially confidential documents are often printed, for example, in the legal department. Whether a desktop printer is needed in accounting is a moot point and depends on the company's profile.
The optimal choice of equipment and its location in the office is one of the key issues that the print service provider decides during pre-project research. Before preparing a technical and commercial proposal, the service provider conducts an audit of the printing infrastructure: collects and analyzes print statistics, identifies irrational press devices and incorrectly organized virtual queues to them.
The subsequent change in the arrangement of printers in the customer's premises and the fine-tuning of print queues can significantly reduce the time and cost of printing and, moreover, creates a more comfortable working environment for staff. Layouts are selected individually. It should take into account several points: technical aspects of the placement of printing equipment on the recommendations of the vendor (distance from walls, from batteries, etc.); wishes of the customer (for example, how far the user is willing to go for the printout). It is also not recommended to put the equipment in long corridors or in narrow places.
At the next stage, the service provider develops a detailed print optimization plan: it takes into account the results of the audit, the specifics of the customer’s business processes, as well as the load on existing printers, print volumes and tasks performed by various departments of the organization. Target indicators of efficiency (first of all cost), safety and efficiency of the printing system are determined together with the customer, and then the optimal layout of the printing equipment is developed. At the same time, a fleet of vehicles, as a rule, comes down to the equipment of one or two manufacturers.
In summary, by optimizing the printing infrastructure:
Losses from forced interruptions in the work of the print service are individual for each company. For some, they are insignificant, but for others they can amount to tens to hundreds of thousands of rubles a day. However, they may be direct or indirect. Direct - this is the actual monetary losses from idle printing service. For example, each order from an online store must be accompanied by a package of documents. If the printer breaks down, the online store will not be able to print documents and, accordingly, send orders. And this is the loss of profits and the possible loss of the client.
Indirect losses manifest themselves more as the consequences of the discontinuity of print service.
When a customer self-maintains his equipment, he pays for failures. In the case of an outsourcing model, the service provider bears serious monetary obligations to the customer for the SLA: first, it disciplines the contractor, and secondly, for the customer, it is an opportunity to at least partially compensate for losses associated with downtime.
Rental of printing equipment by the company-customer from the service provider allows you, first of all, to avoid significant one-time costs for the purchase of equipment. The cost of rental equipment at the same time will affect the cost of the print. I note that with a longer rental period, the total cost of one print is lower, because reduced monthly rental amount pledged in its cost.
As an example, I will give a calculation of the cost of a print for different volumes (figures are taken from a real technical and commercial proposal), with different rental periods of equipment (outsourcing model) and customer use of their printers (insourcing model). As can be seen from the tables, the cost of a print and, accordingly, ownership per year with an outsourcing model is significantly lower than with an insourcing model, and it decreases with an increase in the rental period of the equipment.
A little explanation about the cost of printers. Table 1 and Table 2 present calculations for single-type printers of different models. For obvious reasons, we do not specify vendors and printer types. The first two types of printers by default cannot provide maximum savings. These are small personal printers with a small resource, “liters” consuming consumables. They are ideal for home use, and in some cases used in the office. Printers 3-5 types are already serious machines with a large supply of resources.
In Table 1 (rental options), we present a calculation for printers that offered to deliver to the customer to optimize the print fleet.
Table 2 shows the calculation for printers that stood at a particular customer (and in our practice, such printers are often found at customers).
In total (if you multiply and add up the cost of printers), it turns out that the customer has all the equipment cheaper, but at the same time savings on the print service are still achieved in the rental option.
Leasing the same printers that the customer works for, but new ones and making the service cheaper at the same time is unrealistic. If the customer says - I want to rent the equipment and get an efficient copy-on service, then, as a rule, we agree on the vendor of the printing technology. And then we need to pick the "right" printers in the right places - and only then we can talk about a full service.
Table 1 (clickable)
Table 2 (clickable)
Renting also makes it easier to optimize the fleet, as the service provider leases printing devices and it is unprofitable for him to use outdated equipment. In turn, the optimization of the park and the reduction of the range of equipment used is more profitable from the point of view of maintenance. In any case, the money and prints must be considered, the conclusions may surprise you unpleasantly.
An equally important item of expenditure that the service provider includes in the cost of a print is human resources: specialists are needed to change cartridges, set up and block repairs (that is, to replace life parts), as well as to monitor statistics.
This item of expenses is made up of the cost of a specialist’s norm of hours and associated costs, such as, for example, fare, the cost of which depends on the availability and number of objects. Customers who maintain the printing technique on their own, bear the cost of training specialists, and the staff has to pay for all the time they work in the organization, and not just the hours spent on work.
You also need a print service project manager or, if the organization serves the equipment independently, the department head or an responsible IT-service employee who organizes and supervises the work of printing specialists. In the print service project, it serves as a “single point of entry” for the customer, his work is also taken into account when calculating the cost of the print.
The cost of a print consists of the cost of cartridges, resource parts, rental of printing equipment (if used), a replacement fund, human resources (specialists and a project manager) and in general terms are determined as follows:
For different types of printers, the cost of prints can vary greatly, and therefore it must be calculated separately for each type. Calculating the average cost is about the same as calculating the average temperature in a hospital: this indicator will not say anything specifically and, moreover, is more likely to mislead. Depending on the printer model, the cost of the print may vary over a wide range: from 0.2 to 4 rubles. The difference is achieved due to the fact that for different models of printers the cost of cartridges and resource parts will be different, and their resource can also vary greatly. As you can see, the average cost of a print can give false ideas about the real value.
We should not be content with approximate estimates of printing costs - they will surely turn out to be erroneous. To estimate the real costs, you must carefully consider all the components of the cost of printing. It can be improved by optimizing the park and proper placement of printing equipment, as well as using a monitoring system and collecting statistics - this will help to achieve real, and not ghostly, savings.
I told you how the cost of the IT outsourcing service “Printing service” is calculated when switching to the second-rate payment, and set reference points for which you need to build calculations and negotiations with the service provider. As in the carsharing case described at the very beginning, you need to carefully study all the nuances of calculating the cost of a print, which is offered by the service provider. I hope that my article will help with this.
In this case, the client did not take into account the cost of maintaining the printer, or the cost of cartridges, or even the cost of paper. That is, the client has the most superficial idea of ​​what the price of printing a single page in his company consists of. Expectations for the price is extremely low. And in general - how can printing cost something to a company in the age of the victorious electronic document management?
')
Well, firstly, not the winner - and you will see for yourself. Secondly, it can. Even as you can. Let's count.
Outsourcing printing services and what it eats
Well, if your business is a small company, in which one printer or even multifunction printers and documents are printed from time to time, and then for personal use. Retailers, cellular operators, gas stations, state-owned companies, design institutes, wholesale trading companies and many others have a completely different view on this process. They need MPS, it’s a print service, it’s also an outsourcing of print services.
Outsourcing printing services, or MPS (Managed Print Services), is a popular service all over the world and in Russia in particular.
There are several definitions of MPS from different analytical companies. One of them is given by Gartner , and its main thesis in translation is as follows: Managed Print services - MPS (managed print services) is the optimization and management of document printing processes. This is usually done by an external service provider. He assesses the company's needs in printing, selectively or everywhere changes equipment, maintains equipment, supplies resource parts and accessories for equipment, monitors how printers and multifunctional devices are used, solves user problems.
In the age of kopek printers and the growing electronic document flow, business continues to spend considerable amounts of money on printing documents. Based on my experience in the company “Onlanta” , I will tell you what to take into account in order to transfer the support of printing equipment to outsourcing and switch to a copy-based payment model (for the number of printed pages) to achieve maximum economic effect. You will see a table for calculating the cost of a print under various conditions of the contract entered into by the customer company with the outsourcing company (service provider), and you can form adequate expectations from the Print Service service.
The cost of office printing is composed of the cost of equipment, consumables, paper and repairs. These costs often dissolve among other organization expense items. Financial services are not always able to evaluate them, despite the fact that the total amounts can be quite substantial, especially in large organizations where printers print a lot. Typical examples of high-loaded printing are the formation of shipping documentation for the shipment of petroleum products in tank trucks for delivery to gas stations or extracting documents for payment and warranty for goods in retail stores.
If you transfer the support of the corporate printing equipment to the outsourcing and switch to copy-by-copy payment (payment per print), the cost of printing will become transparent for the accounting department and understandable for the management. Savings in this transition can be, according to various estimates, approximately 20-30%.
Printing Service: Pros and Cons
Enlarged, the advantages of outsourcing print service.
- Reducing the load on the company's IT-service - it definitely has more important things to do than repair printers. All problems related to equipment malfunctions and problems with printing fall into the outsourcer's tickets and are solved immediately when contacting the customer service.
- Printing without failures - in case of breakdowns, a so-called replacement fund is allocated, and the company does not notice any problems.
- Security. Alas, paper documents are one of the biggest ways to leak corporate information (intentional and accidental). MPS provides control over printouts - printing confidential information in the form of a list of customers with contacts or product specifications will not go unnoticed.
- Less paper consumption. A centralized and well-organized printing procedure in a company will save paper, even if the number of contracts, invoices, reports and statements remains the same. This is not magic, it is an elementary human factor: when the printer is set up correctly, it does not make spoiled prints. In addition, when an organization has print under control, employees are more attentive to what they send to a shared printer, and less print for personal use. For example, in one of the large Russian companies, system administrators could make 2-3 thousand prints at a time — instead of buying books, they printed them. For the company, this personal savings flew into a pretty penny: 2 thousand prints (mixed printing and color and ch. B.) X 2 rubles. = 4 thousand rubles.
- Additional savings: on consumables, service, parts and even wages. All this is included in the bill for the services of an outsourcing company, which, due to experience, wholesale purchases of consumables (which are cheaper for outsourcing companies) or, for example, a more optimal choice of printing equipment will help reduce customer costs.
There are pros - there should be cons. Among the latter - one weighty and two very doubtful for the Russian realities.
- Significant - managers do not want to print their documents on public printers and strive for confidentiality. This problem is solved by installing personal printers for employees with special security requirements (but this is not a panacea).
- The print service is aimed at creating paper prints and to some extent inhibits the development of electronic document management and electronic communication between employees. However, there are processes and instructions that require working with paper, and they will not be ignored.
- The printing service is “not environmentally friendly” - because even the orderly consumption of paper leads to the cutting down of trees and stimulates non-ecological pulp and paper production. For example, in the United States, an average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper annually. And they panic, draw infographics and generally feel sad. We did not find statistics on Russia: a figure of about 3,200 sheets per office worker slipped, but we believe that the numbers are much higher. And we are fine, but sorry. By the way, if you think that the consumption of paper is falling at a frantic pace, alas, this is not true - although there is such a trend , it is still very weak.
Pay attention to details to avoid failure.
Some time ago, in the media, information slipped that a Moscow-known car sharing service charged a client with more than half a million bills for car repairs after an accident due to the client’s fault. This came as a complete surprise to the culprit of the accident, who hoped that insurance for such cases was included in the rental price. His expectations, alas, did not materialize.
Customer frustration is probably the softest language describing this situation. The car-sharing company, by the way, subsequently introduced a new, more expensive fare that takes into account the possibility of an accident and limits the amount that the driver of the rented car must pay in case of an accident due to his own fault.
Between the car sharing service and the Print Service service provided by IT outsourcing companies, you can draw an analogy: in car sharing, payment per minute, and in print service, as a rule, per print. In both cases, the attractiveness of transparent and understandable pricing can lead to frustration, if not take into account the details.
We pay for the print
The price of one print is the most common indicator of the cost of printing. It provides an integrated assessment of all costs, not only direct, but also all kinds of indirect costs that the company incurs in order to get one piece of paper from the printer with the necessary information. This indicator, as a rule, is estimated by real and potential buyers of printing devices and customers of an external printing service. Often, only when switching to a second-hand payment can you find out how much an imprint is actually worth.
Prior to the transition to this model, the cost of printing, as a rule, is considered completely different - most often the "boiler" method with the summation of not all, but only the most obvious costs. Moreover, not all IT managers and IT directors know exactly how many printing devices there are in their company, how many cartridges they consume, how loaded these machines are, how often they have to be repaired, etc.
Another advantage of the copy-based form of payment is that it motivates the provider of this service to ensure maximum efficiency of the printing technology. After all, while the equipment is idle, printing does not go, therefore, the provider does not earn anything.
Additional features for the customer are provided by software monitoring and collection of print statistics that allow you to automate the recording of the number of prints and track the loading of printing devices. Based on the monitoring data, it is possible to change the working conditions of the equipment and the service to reduce the cost of the print. For example, to quickly adjust and redistribute the load on printers. In addition, knowing who prints how much and on which devices, you can spread the cost of printing across departments or users - this will allow you to plan costs more precisely and at least partially reduce the volume of unjustified printing.
Another caveat: a copy-of-payment method motivates an enterprise to abandon devices with a high print cost (including old ones, often broken and not very productive) and switch to cost-effective multifunction devices.
The total cost of one print with the service "Print Service" is affected by several components:
- cartridges;
- resource details;
- replacement fund;
- printing technology itself;
- human resources.
Consider in more detail each of them.
Cartridges
There are three possible options.
- The use of original cartridges offered by manufacturers of printing technology. The manufacturer controls cartridge occupancy, on which the number of prints for a single cartridge depends, as well as the high quality of the cartridges. Factory refueling and quality control have a positive effect on the service life of the printing equipment, reduce the cost of servicing the fleet of equipment and the maintenance of the replacement fund and print.
- Use of non-original cartridges. The quality of such cartridges is usually acceptable, and at the same time they are noticeably cheaper than the original ones. However, there is no guarantee that these cartridges are 100% full, so it’s hard enough to accurately estimate the number of prints that can be made with them.
We just leave it here.
In addition, the use of non-original cartridges automatically deprives the printers of the manufacturer’s warranty support. This means that the repair of equipment will fall on the shoulders of service providers, who, if they take on such obligations, will put all the additional risks in the total cost of the print.
The use of non-original cartridges to reduce the cost of a print (at the initiative of the client) is possible in cases where the warranty support of the equipment has already expired or when the equipment belongs to the customer himself and he is ready to take all the risks. - Refilling cartridges. This is probably the most risky way. Cartridges will be refilled by experienced employees (and these are additional costs) or specialized companies, but no one is insured against poor-quality work. In addition, refilling cartridges, which the organization subsequently receives, can be carried out not only in Russia, but also, for example, in China. Minimal losses - the cartridge may not be 100% full, but in the event of a bad deal - a non-professional refueling will damage the printing equipment itself. And, of course, the equipment loses warranty service.
Source of This is done not only at home - even in very large companies.
A separate point: the use of non-original or refilled cartridges often entails problems with print quality, and this again is an extra cost.
When calculating the total cost of the print, you should not forget about the amount of text (images) on the page. The cartridge resource indicated in the specification is calculated on the average on the basis of a 5% page fill - for example, as an application for leave. In my practice, the average parameter for filling in the printed pages was 7-9%. Obviously, the higher this indicator (for example, when printing contracts, commercial offers, instructions, project documentation, etc.), the smaller the life of the cartridge and, accordingly, the greater the cost of the print.
Resource details: all good things deteriorate over time
Resource parts are parts of the printing equipment that have a certain resource or service life: for example, thermal blocks, image transfer units, paper feed rollers. In modern devices there are service counters that let you know when scheduled maintenance of printers or replacement of individual components is necessary. Thus, the cost of replacement will be included in the cost of the print in accordance with the resource of replaceable parts.
The mouse also deteriorated
Swap Fund
The replacement fund is the equipment provided to the customer for the period of repair or instead of the failed printing equipment.
As a rule, the replacement fund is approximately 5% of the total printing equipment (for a distributed company, this figure is higher, since the operator needs to create a minimum supply of equipment in all cities where the organization is present). This is sufficient to ensure the continuity of the print service. More stringent customer requirements for the Service Level Agreement (SLA) may also affect the percentage of equipment for the replacement fund.
The value of the replacement fund is allocated to the number of prints corresponding to the duration of the contract.
Why should a customer be interested in a substitute fund? Isn't that a performer's headache? Alas, if the contractor saves on the replacement fund, the customer will receive an idle time in the service, which as a result may cost him more than the cost of the replacement fund.
It happens that the customer already has a replacement fund or he buys it independently. In such cases, the cost of replacement fund in the cost of the print is not included.
A source
Equipment cost: how to optimize the fleet of printing equipment
Customers with a fairly large number of printers from different manufacturers often turn to the Print Service service. It happens that the printing equipment in the offices is not optimal and the load is unevenly distributed. The print infrastructure is ineffective, the basis of which is personal printers on the desks of employees: they are not used intensively enough, and they require considerable attention, since they all need to be maintained in working condition, changing cartridges and resource parts in time.
High-performance devices used by a large number of employees are more efficient and cost-effective in terms of the cost of a print. True, there is a nuance: they must be placed so that each employee of the company is close to the printer, and the devices themselves do not have a queue. The key requirement in this case is the following: the correctly chosen and installed printing equipment should contribute to the effective implementation of business processes (including low cost of printed documents) and not slow down them in any way.
It is reasonable to leave personal printers in the offices of management and in places where especially confidential documents are often printed, for example, in the legal department. Whether a desktop printer is needed in accounting is a moot point and depends on the company's profile.
The optimal choice of equipment and its location in the office is one of the key issues that the print service provider decides during pre-project research. Before preparing a technical and commercial proposal, the service provider conducts an audit of the printing infrastructure: collects and analyzes print statistics, identifies irrational press devices and incorrectly organized virtual queues to them.
The subsequent change in the arrangement of printers in the customer's premises and the fine-tuning of print queues can significantly reduce the time and cost of printing and, moreover, creates a more comfortable working environment for staff. Layouts are selected individually. It should take into account several points: technical aspects of the placement of printing equipment on the recommendations of the vendor (distance from walls, from batteries, etc.); wishes of the customer (for example, how far the user is willing to go for the printout). It is also not recommended to put the equipment in long corridors or in narrow places.
At the next stage, the service provider develops a detailed print optimization plan: it takes into account the results of the audit, the specifics of the customer’s business processes, as well as the load on existing printers, print volumes and tasks performed by various departments of the organization. Target indicators of efficiency (first of all cost), safety and efficiency of the printing system are determined together with the customer, and then the optimal layout of the printing equipment is developed. At the same time, a fleet of vehicles, as a rule, comes down to the equipment of one or two manufacturers.
In summary, by optimizing the printing infrastructure:
- The number of units of printing equipment in the office is reduced - the working space is freed up, it becomes possible to place more workers on the same rental area;
- The number of names of cartridges and other consumables is reduced, and, as a result, logistics costs are reduced, machinery downtime is reduced due to the lack of the necessary cartridge;
- Reduces the number of required certificates of specialists who support printing equipment, this reduces the cost of service;
- The convenience of warranty service is provided - there is no need to maintain contractual relations and provide the appropriate logistics with various service centers.
Print service continuity
Losses from forced interruptions in the work of the print service are individual for each company. For some, they are insignificant, but for others they can amount to tens to hundreds of thousands of rubles a day. However, they may be direct or indirect. Direct - this is the actual monetary losses from idle printing service. For example, each order from an online store must be accompanied by a package of documents. If the printer breaks down, the online store will not be able to print documents and, accordingly, send orders. And this is the loss of profits and the possible loss of the client.
Indirect losses manifest themselves more as the consequences of the discontinuity of print service.
When a customer self-maintains his equipment, he pays for failures. In the case of an outsourcing model, the service provider bears serious monetary obligations to the customer for the SLA: first, it disciplines the contractor, and secondly, for the customer, it is an opportunity to at least partially compensate for losses associated with downtime.
Equipment rental
Rental of printing equipment by the company-customer from the service provider allows you, first of all, to avoid significant one-time costs for the purchase of equipment. The cost of rental equipment at the same time will affect the cost of the print. I note that with a longer rental period, the total cost of one print is lower, because reduced monthly rental amount pledged in its cost.
As an example, I will give a calculation of the cost of a print for different volumes (figures are taken from a real technical and commercial proposal), with different rental periods of equipment (outsourcing model) and customer use of their printers (insourcing model). As can be seen from the tables, the cost of a print and, accordingly, ownership per year with an outsourcing model is significantly lower than with an insourcing model, and it decreases with an increase in the rental period of the equipment.
A little explanation about the cost of printers. Table 1 and Table 2 present calculations for single-type printers of different models. For obvious reasons, we do not specify vendors and printer types. The first two types of printers by default cannot provide maximum savings. These are small personal printers with a small resource, “liters” consuming consumables. They are ideal for home use, and in some cases used in the office. Printers 3-5 types are already serious machines with a large supply of resources.
In Table 1 (rental options), we present a calculation for printers that offered to deliver to the customer to optimize the print fleet.
Table 2 shows the calculation for printers that stood at a particular customer (and in our practice, such printers are often found at customers).
In total (if you multiply and add up the cost of printers), it turns out that the customer has all the equipment cheaper, but at the same time savings on the print service are still achieved in the rental option.
Leasing the same printers that the customer works for, but new ones and making the service cheaper at the same time is unrealistic. If the customer says - I want to rent the equipment and get an efficient copy-on service, then, as a rule, we agree on the vendor of the printing technology. And then we need to pick the "right" printers in the right places - and only then we can talk about a full service.
Table 1 (clickable)
The table shows that:
- With a contract period of 1 year and printing 229 thousand prints, we get a benefit of 670 051.07 rubles a year . compared to the insourcing model (when the customer himself manages his fleet of printing technology);
- With a contract term of 2 years and printing 229 thousand prints, we get a benefit of 842,575.47 rubles a year . (for 2 years 1 685 150.94 rubles) ;
- With a contract period of 3 years and printing 229 thousand prints, we get a benefit of 900,083.60 rubles a year . (for 3 years 2 700 250,80 rub.) .
This is because the substitute and rented equipment is “smeared” for the duration of the contract and the longer the contract period, the less the share of printers in the print is seen (the cost of one print decreases).
The most profitable was and remains a long-term contract for printing service with the customer from 3 years.
Table 2 (clickable)
Renting also makes it easier to optimize the fleet, as the service provider leases printing devices and it is unprofitable for him to use outdated equipment. In turn, the optimization of the park and the reduction of the range of equipment used is more profitable from the point of view of maintenance. In any case, the money and prints must be considered, the conclusions may surprise you unpleasantly.
Human resources
An equally important item of expenditure that the service provider includes in the cost of a print is human resources: specialists are needed to change cartridges, set up and block repairs (that is, to replace life parts), as well as to monitor statistics.
This item of expenses is made up of the cost of a specialist’s norm of hours and associated costs, such as, for example, fare, the cost of which depends on the availability and number of objects. Customers who maintain the printing technique on their own, bear the cost of training specialists, and the staff has to pay for all the time they work in the organization, and not just the hours spent on work.
You also need a print service project manager or, if the organization serves the equipment independently, the department head or an responsible IT-service employee who organizes and supervises the work of printing specialists. In the print service project, it serves as a “single point of entry” for the customer, his work is also taken into account when calculating the cost of the print.
Draw conclusions
The cost of a print consists of the cost of cartridges, resource parts, rental of printing equipment (if used), a replacement fund, human resources (specialists and a project manager) and in general terms are determined as follows:
Listed expenses per month / Number of prints per month = Cost per print.
For different types of printers, the cost of prints can vary greatly, and therefore it must be calculated separately for each type. Calculating the average cost is about the same as calculating the average temperature in a hospital: this indicator will not say anything specifically and, moreover, is more likely to mislead. Depending on the printer model, the cost of the print may vary over a wide range: from 0.2 to 4 rubles. The difference is achieved due to the fact that for different models of printers the cost of cartridges and resource parts will be different, and their resource can also vary greatly. As you can see, the average cost of a print can give false ideas about the real value.
We should not be content with approximate estimates of printing costs - they will surely turn out to be erroneous. To estimate the real costs, you must carefully consider all the components of the cost of printing. It can be improved by optimizing the park and proper placement of printing equipment, as well as using a monitoring system and collecting statistics - this will help to achieve real, and not ghostly, savings.
I told you how the cost of the IT outsourcing service “Printing service” is calculated when switching to the second-rate payment, and set reference points for which you need to build calculations and negotiations with the service provider. As in the carsharing case described at the very beginning, you need to carefully study all the nuances of calculating the cost of a print, which is offered by the service provider. I hope that my article will help with this.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/325128/
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