Save Money on Printer Costs With Managed Print Services

Have you noticed an increase in the cost of running your printer in the office? Are you spending more money on ink than you want, or does your printer need maintenance too often? Are you calling out a tech just to fix connectivity issues?

The source of your high printing costs is likely a combination of wasteful habits, expensive service fees, and a need for company policies. All of these things are under your control. Whether you’re set with your current employees or hiring new team members, now is the perfect time to get your printing costs under control.

This article will share several strategies to cut your printing costs and explain how and why choosing managed print services will save your business money.

Why Is Printing So Expensive?

There’s no denying that the cost of ink is high. If you calculate the cost per ounce, printer ink is one of the most expensive substances on the planet. However, it’s more than that. Sometimes toner cartridges are inefficient, you have an old printer, or your staff is being careless with their printing habits.

So how much does a printer cost? That depends on the brand and model. For a high-end laser printer, you’re looking at spending anywhere between $500 and $1,300. However, you might only need a mid-level inkjet printer. When you have managed printing services, your provider will find you the perfect printer for your budget.

Here are just some of the factors that contribute to high printing costs:

The cost of the printer. If your business is small enough, you might be able to use a desktop printer. However, you can’t have 50 employees using the same small, home printer in the office—that’s asking for trouble. If you have a large number of employees, you need something better and more durable, which requires a budget.
High-density print jobs. These are mostly color print jobs, but can also be black and white or grayscale. This type of printing uses a larger amount of ink to fill in backgrounds.
Personal use. Are your employees using your printer for personal purposes? Maybe you’ve given them permission to do this, but it’s costing you money.
Unnecessary prints. Sometimes people print documents they don’t really need. Do you have a lot of printed copies being recycled in the office? If so, it could be a sign that people are printing unnecessarily.

How to Save Money on Printer Costs

Want to avoid these expensive issues? Here’s how:

1. Use Managed Services for Printer Maintenance

An easy way to cut down your printing costs is to use managed printing services for all of your office printer maintenance needs. First of all, when your printer needs to be serviced, you’ll end up with more wasted paper and ink if you let it go without being addressed.

For instance, if you have an inefficient toner cartridge, but you don’t know that’s the source of your issue, your employees will keep using the printer, draining your toner. When you have managed print services, you can get a technician to solve the issue fast, and you don’t even need to know the cause.

Your managed print service provider will also conduct regular preventive maintenance to keep your printers and all related components working properly.

2. Use a Professional Printer When Necessary

The biggest problem with trying to print everything from your office is that not everyone can prepare a print-ready PDF file. Print jobs that require high quality and perfection should be prepared and printed by a professional. Otherwise, your employees will print a bunch of bad copies in an attempt to get it right. This will waste plenty of paper and ink.

Things you should have professionally printed are generally anything that requires dimensions, colors, and images to look good.

3. Aim to Reduce Printer Waste With “Follow Me” Printing

Printer waste is a massive problem. A study conducted by Xerox found that 30% of office print jobs are never picked up, and nearly half of all printed documents are discarded within a day. Discarded documents make sense when a paper copy is necessary for someone to complete their tasks, but that’s not likely the majority of these cases.

How do you avoid all of this waste? The easiest solution is to use Follow Me printing. This requires employees to scan their ID or enter a PIN number to release a print job, but it’s convenient because they can release the print job from any printer connected to the network. This system forces people to walk to the printer to get their documents printed. If they don’t, their print job will be canceled.

When employees use Follow Me printing, any job they forget about or ignore won’t get printed in the first place. It’s also more secure, since documents containing sensitive information won’t just be hanging out at the printer for everyone to see.

When you work with managed print services, your provider will set up this secure printing system for you and help you understand how it works so you can train your employees.

4. Set Strict Printing Policies

If your printing costs are high and you don’t know why, you probably have more waste than you realize. Work on getting your waste ratio under control using secure printing or strict policies. For example, you may want to set basic rules for printing:

No personal use of the printer.
Limit prints to 10 copies per day per employee unless more copies are approved.
No color printing.
Use the lowest quality paper whenever possible.
No printing in fancy fonts or Impact; always use classic options like Times, Courier, or Garamond.

You can even use an application called “Ecofont” to further reduce the amount of ink used. This is an excellent option for documents that are only being used temporarily and aren’t part of a presentation or professional document.

Need a Reliable Printing Solution? Connected Office Technologies Can Help!

If you’re ready to upgrade your office printer and get hassle-free maintenance and support, we can help. Our printer experts will set you up with an office printer that meets all of your needs.

We’ll help you reduce waste by analyzing your print usage to find out which departments are printing excessively or using too much color. We’ll also stay on top of regular maintenance tasks to ensure you don’t have to deal with any preventable surprises that can disrupt workflow.

Save Money on Printer Costs With Managed Print Services

Why Is Printing So Expensive?

How to Save Money on Printer Costs

1. Use Managed Services for Printer Maintenance

2. Use a Professional Printer When Necessary

3. Aim to Reduce Printer Waste With “Follow Me” Printing

4. Set Strict Printing Policies

Need a Reliable Printing Solution? Connected Office Technologies Can Help!

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