Reduced Budget? It’s Time to Control Your Printing Costs
Budget reductions mean tough decisions for small and large businesses. For companies or departments that are handed a new (and smaller) annual budget, the next step is carefully examining all aspects of operations for any waste or inefficiency. There’s one area that pops up almost every time: the business print environment.
Printing represents one of the most common areas of waste for businesses – and it costs a lot of money. When faced with budget reductions, companies can no longer afford to have unchecked and out-of-control printing processes. This major pain point for businesses is why companies are increasingly turning to Managed Print Services (MPS). Here’s how these solutions cut the fat in a print environment and help businesses made the best of a reduced budget.
How do Managed Print Services and Document Management Solutions Save Money?
The push-back is common: why would a business spend money on MPS solutions in the wake of budget cuts? Spending any new monies during a time of cutting as many costs as possible seems counter-intuitive. In reality, effective management of a document and print environment simplifies and consolidates dozens of processes – which saves companies up to 30% on printing costs by:
- Managing print devices: Decrease unnecessary IT calls for printer downtime, print driver issues, and maintenance.
- Controlling supply spending: Purchase the right consumable print supplies at competitive industry pricing – and never run out of toner again.
- Establishing better document processes: Improve document access and security while eliminating unnecessary printing and resource consumption.
For most businesses, a brief budget audit will show that consolidating the costs from these operations into a single, streamlined process will deliver powerful returns. Organizations can see how much they’re actively saving anytime with a MPS provider through simple online printing service management tools and dashboards.
Stop Overspending on Toner and Printer Ink
Several years ago, the Gartner Group published findings from a large research study demonstrating that businesses spend up to 3% of revenue on printing. Not surprisingly, a large portion of this spending is from toner and printer ink. Still, companies are rightly wary of cutting costs by turning to cheap third-party inks, which have a very inconsistent track record for quality. While some third-party inks are competitive to brand names, others can wreck printheads and lead to low-quality output.
MPS solutions present businesses with another option. Remanufactured cartridges offer all the same reliable benefits as brand name cartridges, but at a fraction of the cost. To be considered a “remanufactured” cartridge, a used cartridge undergoes a process of chemically cleaning and drying, refilling, sealing, and testing against the same standards as the original brand-name products themselves. Not only can MPS providers offer businesses remanufactured print cartridges, but can provide even more savings through competitive pricing on these products.
Budget Cuts Happen in Any Industry – Smile Has the Solutions
Budget cuts can happen anywhere – and print needs will vary significantly between organizations. These needs aren’t just dictated by structure, but also by compliance rules and federal and state-level regulations. At Smile, we have dedicated teams with expertise in these regulations to help organizations facing budget downsizing maintain compliance and save money.
1. Government Agencies
Security is the cornerstone of effective document management in federal and state-level agencies. When budget cuts happen, these organizations cannot compromise on security — but it’s not enough that documents are protected if the right users cannot readily access them. Smile’s exclusive solutions balance the highest levels of document security against ensuring that the appropriate users have access when and when they need it.
2. Health Care Facilities
Managed Print Services are very useful in documentation-heavy industries such as health care for eliminating waste and cutting costs in the event of budget cuts. However, for these organizations, choosing an inexperienced MPS provider can lead to catastrophic results. HIPAA-compliant document management software and processes are essential to maintaining compliance with federal protections for health-related information. In the print-environment, this means selecting hardware such as MFPs with encrypted, removable hard disks to avoid breaches of healthcare data that may be saved on flocked printers which are still very common.
3. Educational Institutions
Schools have unique and variable needs in a print environment – and almost always, tight budgets. Universities might need a keycard-release system to charge users to print from a library MFP, K-12 institutions may need a complex rule-based system for color vs. grayscale printing, and students may need to access cloud-based documents in classrooms or groups. Smile meets the needs of these schools through customized solutions for each client.
Budget cuts don’t mean businesses have to sacrifice the quality or security of their document management and print environments. MPS solutions represent an effective way to reduce the cost of printing while streamlining and improving print processes across an entire organization.
Ready to see how much your business can save with Smile’s Managed Print Services? Contact us today and discover how a simplified, streamlined, and secure print environment can meet your budget needs.
