COMPANIES OVERESTIMATE PRINTING NEEDS

[Anonymous]

Companies overestimate printing needs
July
2007Organisations have lost control of printing costs and are
overestimating their printing needs, according to figures from Dell.
Businesses
are needlessly wasting money on high-end printers they simply don’t
need, according to computing giant Dell.The company says firms badly
overestimate their printing needs because they don’t keep track of the
kind of documents their employees print. As a result, firms often have
several expensive A3 printers that are woefully underused.Dell says
that, on average, 60 per cent of the documents that are printed in
businesses are A4 mono, 20 per cent A4 colour, 17 per cent photocopies
and just three per cent are A3. It gleaned the results from its printer
management software. “Most customers believe they are printing
significantly greater amounts of A3 documents and photocopies,” said
Dion Smith, imaging sales manager at Dell.Smith claims that because
printers are frequently bought on a departmental basis, companies are
often lumbered with dozens of incompatible models. “Our experience
shows most organisations have 60 different model types of printer and
115 different types of inks and toners,” he said.

This not only
makes printers more expensive to support for IT departments, but means
they don’t benefit from economies of scale on ink and toner.Smith
claims companies should either centralise the printer procurement or
create a standard list of models that departments must buy from. “In
some cases you can take the 60 different types of printers and get it
down to four,” he said.And they don’t all need to come from one vendor.
“You can define a best of breed approach. It doesn’t complicate matters
to have different vendors on the list, as long as the
printer-management software is based on industry standards,” Smith
added.

[Author]

July 18, 2007 at 1:53 PM