Management Saves Money
Print and imaging solutions are good for the environment
- By Mathew Lopez
- Jun 01, 2011
Organizations of all sizes use networked printers, scanners and devices that integrate scanning, printing, copying and communication functions into a single unit known as a multifunction printer (MFP). The increasing sophistication of these devices makes sharing documents, even the most sensitive papers, as easy as pressing the ubiquitous “scandirectly-to-email” button.
This sophistication, combined with increased requirements for data confidentiality and regulatory compliance, has made it critical that organizations put into place policies governing use of printers, MFPs and other imaging devices.
Cost control, environmental awareness and security are all equally important reasons for organizations to embrace printing policies, including managed print services (MPS) programs.
With the average company spending 3 percent of its revenues on print-related expenses, organizations are evaluating how to consolidate and optimize their printer fleets for cost reasons alone.
The proper print management solution can deliver a number of immediate cost-saving benefits by giving companies the ability to monitor and control printer usage and costs by individual, department, location and many other parameters. They also can be used to establish quotas, implement charge-backs and establish rules-based printing and client- and project-based billing policies.
There are other factors that, while difficult to quantify, can contribute to additional savings. For instance, print management solutions can streamline the use of ink, ribbon, spare parts and other consumables, and can reduce power consumption by ensuring that printers are operated when only an employee is present, and only after authentication by the employee. The same concept applies to shredding services, which typically charge by the pound or by the hour. MPS programs also reduce MFP downtime and maintenance fees while extending system life cycles, as usage is better controlled.
Controlling document printing also enables organizations to focus on being “green.” Print management solutions reduce print waste and the associated oil and water consumption that goes into paper production, along with the gas emissions that result from each print operation. These solutions also reduce electrical costs by enabling printers to go into power-saving mode after working hours. Studies have shown that the average employee prints 10,000 pages per year, and 17 percent of those pages are waste. Print management saves 1,700 pages per employee annually, equating to annual cost savings between $102 and $221 per employee.
Those 10,000 printed pages consume 51.5 kWh of electricity in the print process. Almost 9 kWh was spent on printing the 1,700 pages that the user didn’t really want. Manufacturing those 10,000 pieces of paper produced 284.5 pounds of greenhouse gases, which is the equivalent of just over one week of car exhaust. Controlled document printing enables organizations to significantly reduce this print waste, minimize carbon footprints and meet corporate social responsibility objectives.
One example of the benefits of MPS programs can be seen at ASSA ABLOY Hospitality brand TrioVing, which launched a secure print management project in 2007 to reduce costs and improve environmental sustainability. The company implemented a print management system for its MFPs that required magstripe card authentication before releasing print jobs to users. During a two-year period, the company reduced paper consumption by 1.2 million sheets annually, or approximately 30 percent. This contributed to an annual cost savings of $372,000. At its largest site, the company reduced paper consumption even further, by approximately 40 percent.
“Our goal was to remove all personal printers and replace them with central multifunction network printers,” said Erik Vibekk Westbye, ASSA ABLOY’s global IT infrastructure manager. “We met some initial resistance, but after explaining the costs of using personal printers and the benefits of the ‘print-asyou- go’ concept, we got the green light to continue.” Additional measures can be taken to further reduce the environmental impact of high-volume printing environments. This includes defaulting to double-sided printing and to black-andwhite printing in the queue. The latter option avoids unnecessarily printing in color, which typically costs 10 times as much as black and white printing.
There are three main steps to any MPS program deployment:
- Internal audit: This will provide an organization with a complete picture of every device in the organization and the location of each.
- Consolidate the fleet: This will entail removing seldom-used devices and individual desktop printers, and strategically placing MFPs in high-traffic areas for multiple individuals to access. Most managed service providers, both vendor-centric and vendor- neutral, will maximize use of an organization’s existing fleet, if possible, and then add the appropriate number of devices to create a complete network of MFPs for printing, scanning and copying requirements.
- Implement intelligent print management: In this phase, the MSP will implement an intelligent print management solution. This solution will be embedded within the hardware, and will enable the IT team to establish user rules, minimize scanning and copying requirements by moving documents electronically, and authenticate the identity of an employee using the device.
Integral to the solution is a secure-document print release system, coupled with a contactless smart card and integrated reader system that, in most cases, is already being used for physical access control. The secure release system requires employees to present their card to a reader integrated into the printer and be authenticated before a document can be printed. Users can be granted or denied certain rights and privileges based on department, hierarchy and position.
By using existing physical access control cards, companies can seamlessly add other solutions, such as secure print authentication, that continue to enhance the value of the physical access system. This enables organizations to implement an MPS program that can significantly enhance cost-control, environmental efficiency and security.
This article originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Network-Centric Security.
About the Author
Mathew Lopez is the business development manager at HID Global.