6 Secrets to Decrease Printing Costs
The average small-medium business spends 1-3% of its total revenue on printing costs. With the number of options available to decrease printing costs, that total should be much lower. There are FREE ways to decrease printing costs, like educating employees on the best practices for office printing. Also, Managed Print Services can reduce your printing costs by about 30% and the money you save can be repurposed for other necessary business expenses.
SMBs spend too much money on print-related costs. Decrease your printing costs with these simple steps and Managed Print Services.
Creating a culture that practices reducing your office printing, adjusting your default print settings, auditing personal printer use, and saving money on supplies are cost-free choices of actions to decrease your budget. However, our Managed Print Services take a proactive approach to assessing your print environment, optimizing your office print fleet, and managing your print environment for you afterward.
Reducing your print costs is essential for the success of SMBs. How will you take action to reduce your budget?
6 Secrets to Decrease Printing Costs for SMBs
1. Reduce Printing
It probably seems obvious that one way to decrease printing costs is to not print as much, but it isn’t always easy to do. Asking everyone to make a conscious decision to choose PDFs over printed documents is a good first step. Scan more, copy less. Another good practice is to consolidate your office printers. Instead of having three smaller units, opt for one large multi-function printer. Proofing your prints first for mistakes before pressing the print button and checking the queue before pressing the print button AGAIN can definitely cut down on extra unnecessary prints.
2. Adjust Default Settings
Some simple adjustments to your print settings can also save your company a lot of paper (and money). The first step is to widen your margins. You can fit more text on a page if you have less white space. The same rule goes for not using double-spaced lines if necessary. Printing double-sided can also cut down on paper use and changing this to a default setting can automatically save you money.
3. Save on Supplies
We discussed a couple of ways to save paper, but what about all that ink? Colored ink costs about 40% more than black ink, so limiting your unnecessary colored prints is a best practice for saving on supplies. Color printing can cost 3-5 times more expensive than printing in black and white, so choose grayscale as much as possible (adjust your default setting on this one too). Also, certain fonts are toner-hogs like Arial. There are more ink-economical fonts like Century Gothic, Ecofont, and Times Roman, that can save you over 30% of ink.
4. Audit Employee Use
Employees tend to use work printers for personal use. This is generally acceptable for occasional prints but excessive use can technically be considered stealing company resources. If this tends to be an issue in your organization, consider putting a Personal Printing Policy in place.
5. Print Awareness
Creating a culture of awareness among your employees can go a long way in reducing your printing costs. The average employee prints 7-8 times a day, 10,000 pages annually, which is equivalent to one whole tree. Plus, most businesses throw away over 15% of all printed documents and you’re paying for them all. If they know about how to reduce printing, adjust their default settings, save on supplies, and limit their personal printing, then they can do their part in lowering your company’s printing costs too.
6. Managed Print Services
As a Managed Service Provider, WTS offers print assessments with optimization advice and Managed Print Services. You can have a solution that tracks and monitors your print practices with a cost-per-page model. With MPS, you eliminate the need to order print supplies because that comes with the service. You’ll never be out of the supplies you need because they’re based on your print assessment. Also, you’ll have a technician to handle any printer problems to make troubleshooting fast and more efficient. The best way to decrease printing costs is to partner with the professionals and have us handle it for you.
Want to learn more? Let’s talk. Contact our team at 843-236-6436.
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