Reduce Printing Costs
Here are 3 quick tips to help reduce printing costs and save the environment while you are at it!
Default to black & white
– If you have a color printer/copier make certain that all of your users are defaulted to print black and white rather than color. Both at the print driver level and at the physical machine make sure that your vendor sets the default mode to Black & White rather than Color. If your users require color make them have to choose that option. A mistake making a color copy/print will cost more than 5X over producing a simple B&W page. This is a simple adjustment that could save you big money therefore will reduce printing costs.
Force users to login and track usage
–How easy is it to produce a piece of paper when you don’t really even need one? By utilizing built in access control in your copier/MFP/printer will make your users think twice before hitting that print button. Even if you are not charging back usage, you’d be surprised how many people think twice when the think they are being watched. A great way to reduce printing costs.
Setting “Duplex” as the default
– This is more of a paper utilization cost savings then actually being able to reduce printing costs. Think of it as only needing to produce one piece of paper for every two pages. That is a 50% cost savings in paper usage and cuts down on trees being “cut down”!
As you can see these are simple yet effective ways to reduce printing costs. Making users understand their impact on the bottom line and how they can help the environment will also go a long way to savings. Educating and creating a culture of responsible document output starts from not only being responsible but having the good common sense to realize that our resources are not indefinite. We all need to make minor changes in the way we produce documents and when possible not print at all. If your worst offenders feel as though they are a part of a growing movement, even they will relent to the pressure of being responsible.
Using the 3 tips above will certainly not eliminate your printing costs, but will definitely be a great start to being able to reduce printing costs. If we slowly introduce new technologies and make our workflows more efficient, we can easily create new methods of savings. Eventually the amount of output will be cut down substantially and the savings will become evident in the recurring costs of operating our output devices.
