Top 5 printer woes for small and midsize businesses
April 16, 2010 by Steve HannafordPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
What printing issues are companies most worried about today? You can probably guess.
According to a recent survey by printer manufacturer Lexmark, here are the top five printer-related concerns from US small-to-midsize businesses:
1. Cost of consumables — No surprise here. Most offices are populated with printers and multifunctionals that cost a small fortune in ink and toner to keep running. Worst of all, those costs tend to be hidden both from the employees and from management, since most businesses don’t have a clear method for centralizing and tracking those costs.
2. Cost of paper – Actually, paper prices have declined considerably since they peaked in 2007, though that decline has leveled off recently. And while paper itself is far less expensive than toner and ink on a per page basis, it is still a major expense. Some companies are making progress in reducing paper use through more digital file delivery and with two-sided printing, but truckloads of paper are still the norm for most businesses.
3. Paper jams – This perennial problem still drives office workers crazy. Though the paper transport systems of most newer printers have been improved considerably, paper still can get jammed, thanks to poor paper storage practices, among other reasons. The problem is compounded when you have printers and copiers where the paper path is hard to reach.
4. Maximizing toner and ink use – Here, the problem is often machines that inform the user that they are out of ink or toner long before they really are. One solution is buying machines that have larger capacity consumables, so the situation occurs less often. The other solution is to ignore the warming and just run the printer till it goes dry, then replace.
5. Frequent replacement of supplies – This is related to #4. Smaller printers with small-capacity replacement cartridges, are the enemy of productivity. When a machine needs new supplies, someone has to find supplies (hopefully you have some in stock), take out the old cartridge (hopefully recyclable), and insert the new one (often a slightly tricky process). All of this is an unproductive delay, and the more often it occurs, the more likelihood of having problems — like running out of supplies and having to wait for a reorder.
Our take: Most offices have far more printing devices than they need, and too many have cheap private printers on desktops. Consolidating the number of printers and replacing them with larger shared workgroup models with low costs per page and larger capacity consumables and two-sided printing will solve most of these problems.
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