Grieg Ross Associates
Welcome to the February edition of PrintCut
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Helping organisations to significantly reduce their print costs, consumption and waste.

By the tail......

As the Uk’s primary independent printing consultants we never fail to be surprised by the amazement on clients’ faces when they realize the scale of the printing costs their company has been incurring for many years.This often moves from shock and disbelief to anger at current suppliers and those placed in authority to keep these costs in check. The truth is that print cost management is not sexy and unfortunately it is often relegated to someone like a print manager who in all honesty usually knows a lot about panatones and ink compositions but little about how to leverage prices and manage print costs. Our stories this month focus on trying to help these people.

This month’s first article, “Deal or No Deal”, has some factors in common with the current Noel Edmunds TV show. In many companies it is a lottery as to whether they will end up with the jackpot of low printing costs or be taken to the cleaners. Dik McFarlane, GRA senior consultant, provides some tips and guidance for intrepid buyers.

In our second feature, “Heal the Pain of Printer Cost Management”, we are reminded of a new client who ‘discovered’ the print management software they had received as part of their last ‘printer deal’ and wondered if it would help manage their costs better. This only demonstrated their own internal management style and it certainly was not the software they needed to manage the various enterprise printers.

‘Green Corner’, this month shows the issues we should all be only too aware of, but regrettably too many of us continue to believe that paper mysteriously turns up on our doorsteps and because it comes from trees that must be good – yes?We should all take responsibility for reducing paper costs for the planet’s well being.

If you've any feedback on how things are shaping up for 2009 or any aspects of Reducing Print Costs we would be very interested to hear from you - and may circulate a summary of feedback in future editions of PrintCut.

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Deal or No Deal?
In today's challenging economic climate negotiating the most advantageous contract for Printing Services is essential as part of an organisation's control of its cost base.

  There are many factors involved in achieving the best deal from a vendor, such as:

  1. Does the organisation have skilled negotiators to engage with the vendor
  2. Is there recognition of the value of developing a strong business relationship with the vendor
  3. Concentration on price only, or price with other services the vendor may provide for free
  4. For small organisations, how to achieve the kind of deal that large organisations can command

Remember, industry research shows that organisations typically spend 5% of revenues on printing, copying and scanning, so negotiating the best possible deal can make a significant difference to a company's future.

Click here to read the full article.
Heal the Pain of Printer Cost Management

Enterprises usually adopt printer cost/device management solutions only after output costs reach pain points and device management has become a resource-wasting headache. It is important for businesses to recognize and identify the present management strategy and then look ahead to the next level.

Approaches to Printer Cost/Device Management Printer cost/device management solutions range from tools that are bundled with ink-jet printers that track consumables status to software suites that track IP addresses and cumulative error times for thousands of print devices. Companies can incorrectly use the wrong type of software thinking they are taking a step forward when quite often they are regressing or worse still providing unsuitable or incorrect management information. Here we attempt to guide clients through the right approach for each size of company/enterprise.

Generally, enterprises deploy three levels of print cost/device management software:      

    Server operating system solutions use the print server software included with the server operating system to pool print jobs, secure access, and centralize job administration.
     
    Mid-level solutions track costs and generate reports, empower Web-based administration, and centralize consumables tracking/management.
    Enterprise-grade solutions automatically discover print devices, centralize update/patch provisioning and troubleshooting, provide features for manual or automatic repair order generation, and integrate with major single-pane-of-glass management suites (e.g. OpenView, Tivoli etc.).

IT deploys these solutions to reduce administrative workload and supply the business with clear usage statistics to inform cost-saving strategies. Quite often though, these are technical statistics which no one reads or cares about and rarely if ever lead to print

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