It is a fact that some of the ink you put in an inkjet printer at your office costs more than perfume. More importantly, managing your output fleet can impact your enterprises bottom-line. Who cares? The CIO and his or her staff think printers are boring. The CFO certainly cares, but needs to be able to count on the CIO to get this under control. The fact remains that office printing is VERY expensive.
Ten years ago I wrote a note about printing costs that became famous (Rightsizing Output Fleets, The Hidden Goldmine). That was 2001. Today, as we enter 2012, the sense of urgency to manage the cost office printing still isn’t there. In just ten years, the rise of office Color printers and MFPs have caused costs to soar. This is due to the four sets of supplies needed to print a document in color, and the fact that printer vendors have become very clever about how they package ink and toner (you often get less in a cartridge).
While some organizations have actually gotten their fleet costs under control to some degree via Fleet Management (Managed Print Services), the problem in many organizations is out of control. The bigger problem for most enterprises is that IT thinks that printing is boring, which it is.
However, the costs are so great, that even by putting a few measures in place, millions of dollars can be saved. Stay tuned, we have some new research in the works to set the record straight on what to do about one of the largest unmanaged expenses in your enterprise.