Corporate printing: much more problems than it seems

The long-proclaimed era without paper stubbornly does not come. It does not work: tablets, smartphones and readers did not kill paper books, and electronic document management is not yet able to replace the classic one. This means that the market for printers and multifunction printers, although it suffers blows, is still on its feet, and has not even survived the knockdown. In large and small companies continue to print documents, and sometimes in large quantities. And the problems associated with the organization of this process (printing documents at a bank or a company that engages in wholesale trade is a real business process) remains, and can be very painful.

In fact, an enterprise that prints a noticeable amount of documents in its work (this is actually not so much - from 1000 sheets per week) faces a whole heap of difficulties. We are starting a series of articles in which we will describe how companies optimize workflow costs and get rid of problems and risks.

Unreasonable spending

The main trouble lies entirely on the surface - excessive printing costs. They can be very solid. Gartner specialists, for example, conducted a study several years ago and concluded that these costs make up about 3% of the company's budget, and $ 600-700 a year can be spent on each employee. Imagine what these amounts are in a large enterprise.
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At the same time, sending documents to printers generates 55% of internal network traffic, and printing problems cause up to 60% of employee calls to corporate technical support. The larger the company - the greater the loss, which, of course, must be fought. And to optimize costs, you need to understand the main reasons for their occurrence.

Equipment

One of the sources of unnecessary costs is an outdated, sub-optimal park of printing devices and even their improper location in the office. The performance of used printers must meet the needs of the company. This obvious truth is not always guided by financial services that provide funds for upgrading equipment. Outdated, but still workable devices, it is reasonable to use where the load on them will be gentle. Instead, IT services are often forced to install them on the most “busy” sites. The result is a reduction in print quality, increased toner consumption, increased depreciation and permanent equipment failure, which ultimately costs the company more than acquiring a modern MFP .

Not rational and approach to the location of printers in the office "on a whim". The fact is that each of us will strive to use the device to which it is more convenient for him to approach, regardless of the complexity and volume of the print job, the purpose or load of the device, and other factors. Persuading and even strict instructions to use a certain device help a little - any employee will be at the slightest opportunity to use the nearest printer. Therefore, when developing a layout of the printing infrastructure, this factor - usability - must be taken into account without fail. It does not always happen. Either employees “wind up” kilometers of office space, or a powerful system is underloaded, and the only color printer prints drafts all day long.

“I just have a passport application form printed out”

Companies have to pay for the innocent, at first glance, staff hobby - inappropriate use of devices for printing personal materials. Indeed, why not allow employees occasionally to print a couple of pages for themselves? This will not cause any significant damage to the company. But excessive liberalism does not lead to good.

For example, in one of the companies a strange problem was discovered - its administrative service was constantly forced to replace the cartridge in the printer, which was assigned to one of the working groups, where printing requirements were low. The audit showed that one of the employees began to use it for printing school assignments for her child. It ended her passion for the fact that she began to print on the service printer literary works from the school curriculum. As a result, the volumes of this unauthorized seal tripled (!) Those that generated the activity of the entire working group. Do you have such examples from life?

Inefficiency and laziness

Pretty often there are examples of inefficient use of printers, when documents for which there is enough black and white paper copy are sent to a color printer or one-sided printing instead of the duplex that is relevant in a particular case. Using this feature when printing company internal documents will reduce the cost of paper by half, which is especially important when it comes to multi-page documents. And the rejection of color, where it is not required, will give 60 percent savings on consumables.

Dear suppliers

Cheaps can cost (and often cost!) Consumables, if you buy them out of scale. Even the simplest monitoring will show how to form a budget for consumables and set up a schedule for their purchases, but many companies neglect this. And if it’s fate that this will make it possible to use the services of specialized suppliers, and not retail stores, the savings can be up to 10% of the cost of cartridges.

Surplus and budgeting problems

Finally, everyone will probably come across excess print — whole packs of printed sheets that can gather dust all day and night in the printer’s receiving tray and never need anyone. This often happens if you first sent a document to print, then noticed an error in it and sent it again. The first one is usually not canceled, and only the second is taken from the tray. The wrong choice of devices for printing different types of documents, excessive network traffic, electricity costs, and even the storage of printers and cartridges in the offices of companies (who have not seen the pyramid of boxes in the corridors?) Take off.

In many ways, these problems are caused by other, systemic - incorrect budgeting of printing costs. Quite often, they are determined “by eye”, when, as necessary, the accounting department pays the next bill for consumables. It happens that the cost of printing is taken into account in the budget of the company, but "dissolve" in the total costs of the IT department or business department. All these phenomena require elimination - otherwise it is simply impossible to restore order.

Theft

Another problem that companies face is extremely unpleasant - theft. Of course, its main reason is human uncleanliness, but it is necessary to fight this phenomenon. And it would be good if the problem was limited to thefts “for the simplicity of the soul”, when a negligent employee replaces the cartridge with a high level of toner with a new one, despite the fact that the old one could still be used for a long time (yes, in fact, it is also theft). But alas, there are more serious sins. For example, there are cases when under the guise of an expensive original cartridge, a low-cost compatible one is used, or instead of replacing the cartridge, it is refilled. At the same time, money is written off as for new original cartridges.



An example is the experience of one company engaged in wholesale trade. The volume of printing of accompanying documents in it reaches 60,000 sheets per month, while using four productive multifunction devices. The cost of the company for cartridges reaches 55 000 rubles a month. The system administrator who was in charge of servicing the printers, instead of installing new cartridges, used refilled ones, and just sold the new ones by hand. As a result, the company suffered not only direct losses - those same 55 thousand rubles, minus the cost of refilling old cartridges, but also indirect losses associated with increased depreciation and loss of equipment.

Information Security Threats

And another category of problems. It may be much more serious than higher printing costs. This is an information security company. Security specialists have learned how to track email traffic, use of instant messengers, social networks, work with external information carriers. But, as in the old days, printing confidential documents remains one of the main channels of information leaks. After all, the printing of documents, unlike the same messengers, can not be banned. And any employee can easily print a document and carefully carry it with him in the portfolio, for example, to competitors.



This may be an intentional printout, or the occasional use of a shared printer to print a secret file, but the essence remains the same - commercial secrets are made available through a printing device. Another channel for information leakage can be the use of a common feature of modern multifunction printers - scanning while sending a digital copy of a document to an e-mail or cloud storage. Defeating this attack will help preventive measures associated with the control of printing. Understanding that “all the moves are recorded” and the crime will necessarily be disclosed in the overwhelming majority of cases, it will stop the potential “mole” from stealing data. But even if he dares, the spread of information can be quickly stopped.

What to do?

And now the general answer to quite legitimate questions: is it possible to deal with these problems and how to do it? Obviously, it is simply necessary to take measures, in some cases with the help of elementary restoring order and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, with the help of special solutions designed to manage the printing infrastructure and its use by company employees.

Large companies can use the services of outsourcers who can conduct and audit printing, and develop a project to optimize it, implement a system of monitoring printing, access control and take on the maintenance of equipment in the future. It makes sense for small enterprises to use ready-made software solutions, such as PrintStat or HP Access Control, the functionality of which differs from specially designed systems, but is enough for basic tasks.

By the way, such a measure as organizing access to a printer with a smart card, which ensures that the printer works only in the presence of the employee who sent the task, allows for a reduction in print volumes and costs by 10-15%. Print quotas allocated for each employee, give another 10% savings. Given that in an average company, printing costs reach 3% of the budget, saving almost 40% of costs can have a very tangible effect. Not surprisingly, print management software solutions pay off in a year and a half of use. Next time we will tell you what popular solutions are on the market, what they can and how they differ from each other.