Hold the Front Page!
Why not Hold All the Pages and Reduce the Cost of Printed Material
In
previous newsletters we looked at how organisations can reduce the cost
of printing through undertaking a Print Audit and following up on the
output from it. This is an excellent start on the path of reducing the
cost of printing and there are numerous examples where organisations
have benefitted from this approach. However this is just the start and
not the end if organisations are to keep their cost base under control
in this area.
Remember, industry research shows that organisations
typically spend 5% of revenues on printing, copying and scanning, so
there are real, tangible benefits to be achieved through applying some
management focus.
The second phase is to carry out an organisation wide
analysis of what is being printed, how much is being printed and by
whom, and importantly, why it is being printed.
By carrying out this review the organisation will have a
very clear picture of its printing behaviour and can undertake a series
of actions to address the issues discovered. But what types of issues
are they?
Below are some of the common costly behaviours that most of us will have exhibited at some point. We are all human after all.
- Printed emails to take to a meeting
- Printed documents for later reference but never used
- As an organisation, printed, packaged and posted unnecessary material
- Didn’t use Print Preview before printing and had to reprint
- Didn’t use the Shrink To Fit facility before printing
- Printed PowerPoint slides (one slide per page), just in case
- Printed single sided and in best quality colour needlessly
Changing behaviour requires the right touch where it
becomes self policing and socially unacceptable to squander resources,
not to mention harming the environment. It is important to share the
findings of the review with everyone in the organisation and use
imaginative ways of having your own people lead the way of behavioural
change. Using department champions and incentives can help.
The most important question everyone should ask before
hitting the print button is “Why am I printing this. Is it really
essential?”
At the same time there are technology changes that can
be applied to help reduce the total volume of material printed. For
example, preventing emails from being printed, pop up warnings to the
users giving the cost of the print job being submitted and offering to
cancel or divert the job to a less costly method.
However, if we accept that much of what we print is
unnecessary then why not look to other ways of communicating the
information; such as making material available on the web; both Intra
and Internet.
Unfortunately the part that many organisations struggle
with is keeping a constant focus on behaviour and resulting cost and
following up regularly to keep the volume down and the cost low. To
help drive forward these practices our clients believe that a short
injection of external consultancy can really make a difference. How
much of the 5% of revenue cost do you really want to save?
