It’s one of the most mundane items in your office. The brunt of curses and jokes, and even a laugh at the office holiday party, the lowly photocopier. But it’s that very same photocopier which can help your business recover costs that you may have not been paying attention to.
Although digital technology is supposed to reduce the amount of paper being used, the average office worker is still using more than 10,000 sheets of paper per year. In fact according to the Gartner Group, office printing consumes up to 3% of a company’s annual revenue. Let’s think about that. A company with $15 million in revenue will spend up to $450,000 on document output every year. And fashion and apparel companies have a much greater demand in designing their brand thereby spending more for color output, proofs and, regrettably, waste.
The salt on this wound is that equipment acquisition is generally up to 10% of these costs with 90% or more on supply costs. (Supplies, managing multiple types of systems, maintenance contracts, time to retrieve documents)
While having a small desktop printer for each user may be convenient, it can be seriously costly. Print cartridge yields are rated at only 5-6% coverage which means a fully printed document can run up the costs and, with color, we’ve seen page costs easily surpassing $1.00 per page.
Printing costs from your printer are totally based on what’s on the page. If you’re one of the few who only print a paragraph of text you’ll be lucky if it costs you what the supply cost comes to, generally $.015 per page. For the normal world, we print much more – reports, invoices, Power Point presentations, contracts, and suddenly that $.015 promised is looking like a nickel-per-page, seven and a half cents per page, ten cents per page – it just keeps going.
This is where your lowly copier comes in. Since the 2000’s, most multifunction copiers have had the ability to function as the central hub for all of a company’s document functions thereby eliminating the need for desktop printers. With faster speeds and higher toner yields than a standalone printer, businesses can lock in print costs for the length of the equipment leases. That 17 part contract? That lease agreement? That Power Point presentation that you needed to hand out to everyone? All can be printed out at a significant savings of up to 30% or more of the cost of doing it on your printers.
“But what about my confidential documents?” With the addition of security features in today’s copier systems along with password protected virtual mailboxes, users have the ability to send jobs privately to be retrieved as needed so nothing gets left for prying eyes.
So you’ve streamlined the office, reduced your printing costs significantly and now you have a closet full of printers. Now what? This is where you can put those printers to good use. Organizations like the National Cristina Foundation’s (www.cristina.org) online nonprofit locator enables donors of used computers and other electronic hardware to select a local charity or school in their area of the country to receive their donation of equipment. So now you’re saving your company, and you’re making a difference.
Having a strong document output strategy provides reduced costs, increased productivity, sustainability and most importantly helps you concentrate on what’s most important, running your business.
