As a business executive, you know the questions that keep you up at night, and there are plenty of them. There’s one question that too few professionals ask, though, and it correlates directly to the health of your company’s bottom line: Who owns your printing budget?

This question goes unanswered in many organizations for several reasons. First, it’s rarely asked. For many executives, a company’s printing budget is an unmanageable nightmare that’s impossible to control—it’s a necessary evil. Second, it can be hard to calculate what comes out of your printing budget. Consider this: your printing expenditures could be spread out over multiple departments, budgets, and projects, leaving your company without a clear picture of how much you spend annually. In many organizations, there’s no centralized reporting or management structure to rein in these costs, and everyone assumes it’s someone else’s job to control the printing budget.

Consider Print Management

Here’s the bottom line: if you’re concerned with cutting costs and improving your company’s ROI, managed print services is a must. Here are some facts that illustrate this clearly.

• Printing typically represents a company’s third highest operating expense. You read that right. That budget that no one in your company “owns” and that you don’t have a clear picture on—that budget is likely to be your third highest operating expense behind rent and payroll. It’s time to get serious about controlling your printing costs.
• 90% of businesses don’t know their annual print costs. The Gartner Group discovered this shocking trend, and it holds true across industries.
• Your IT department is bogged down with print-related issues. Conservative estimates suggest that anywhere between 40-60% of all IT help desk requests are related to printing problems. Your IT department should be part of your company’s core mission, implementing strategic initiatives and driving you forward—not reading printer manuals and clearing paper jams.

Ignoring your print budget comes at a high cost.

How Print Management Solves Your Problem

The good news? Managed print services can provide your employees with the tools they need to control print expenditures. It all starts with collecting the right data. Here’s how the process works.

1. Assess: First, your managed services provider will look over your current print environment, from production printers to the smallest desktop model. They’ll take a full inventory and begin to collect data on your current setup. This data will give you an accurate picture of where your print budget is going—the first step in controlling it going forward.
2. Plan: Your managed services provider will then present you with a detailed plan for eliminating any waste in your print environment and improving processes. This plan will include how to right-size your printer fleet for optimized device usage, and it’ll get at the heart of what print management does best: efficiency.
3. Implement: With the help of key staff and your IT department, your managed services provider will implement any necessary changes and begin training employees on any new equipment and procedures.
4. Optimize: Finally, your ongoing relationship with your managed services provider will continue with regular optimization. Your print environment will never be the drain on your company that it was before.

For most companies, this process results in around a 30% reduction in overall printing costs. Contact us to learn more about managed print services.

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