The majority of companies today are thinking of right-sizing their output management fleets towards more multi-functional printing with fewer vendors. Today centralising is the trend in industry but in reality most office printing environments have evolved quite independently from what is now considered as optimum practice for effective document management. Often one still sees shared print environments where the number of users per printer is between 1–10, where this number could easily be 25 or more, depending on the type of office environment. Desktop and small workgroup printers almost became status symbols, especially full-colour ones. Every office in the world, it seems, has printers with reams of printed paper stacked up on and around them, forgotten by the people who generated them, and ending in waste baskets every night.

Organisations meanwhile are paying through the nose for the profligacy of their staff: for paper, toner cartridges, wear and tear on the numerous hardware, and for the IT management overhead consumed in trying to bring some order back to multi-device, multi-driver and multi-interface environments that evolved logically because there was no real central responsibility. This leads to an ‘organised anarchy’ attitude from end-users, diluting critical IT resources. Analyst group Gartner estimates that between 1–3 per cent of big business’s annual turnover is spent on print. For example an average of 40 per cent of IT helpdesk calls is related to printing only.

It is clear we can’t move on like this today. We all know what caused the problem but how to realise the actual savings possibilities and finally how to make a long-lasting change to more homogeneous infrastructures, with the support of end-users – that’s the big question.

Figure 1. Print management ROI. Source: CAP Ventures

Planning for change

Such a change in thinking can only be initiated by top management. Support is needed from IT management and purchasing as well as the highest level of business and facility management. However end-user in the end, the evokers of the cost base are not highly cost-concerned. What’s in it for them?

A customer-oriented change approach is needed where cost is an outcome and not a stand-alone objective. To change, two simple factors are needed: improved ease-of-use and recognised added value.

Therefore organisations should spend only a little in end-user oriented document assessments instead of looking in a purely quantitative way to find actual printing costs. Who is printing what is important, but who is printing why, what and where is of much more importance. For example a 15 per cent increase in colour printing, easily reached when all visited Web pages would be printed on colour-capable devices, would bring total print TCO up by a staggering 100 per cent.

Figure 2. Levels of document output assessment. Source: CAP Ventures

A results-oriented implementation approach

Here we look at a programme that envisages four logical office levels, adding value on value in office document processes. All the levels can be managed as an in-house, outsourced business service, where per-page or demand-based payment mechanisms and management information reports on all provided services are key.

Level 1: Smart office – consolidation and re-engineering

Make sure the right user is connected to the right device for the ‘best printing efficiency’. Centralised and right-sized fleet management, where the main devices of the fleet should have a so-called ‘SMART’ multifunctional print device (MFD) profile:

• Secure;
• Mailbox-based;
• Advanced technology for the highest print and scan quality;
• Reliability for highest productivity;
• Truly user-friendly.
  

The newly designed infrastructure is based upon existing customer devices and these smart MFDs for colour and black and white, both in much smaller numbers and grouped into convenient print, copy, scan and fax ‘hubs’. By introducing mailbox printing, 10–15 per cent of the total print volume is already reduced in clicks and paper.

Level 2: Convenience office – full access and control

The smart MFD in the hub is now ‘taken back’ to the desktop for improved ‘ease of use’. This is done by non-intrusive Web-based software. The ‘big’ printer will be seen more now as the ‘convenient’ printer by users; users don’t have to walk to their convenience hubs when in use, documents follow end-users when identifying at another hub. Scan2desktop and scan2email is easily supported to increase and fasten the sharing of documents. Administrators are supported with single-point remote control, management and accounting of this shared fleet.

Level 3: Service office – new document productivities

This level offers unique output management server technology for the office to ‘increase employee productivity’. Users do not have to find the right print device to match their print requirements; this is done by the intelligent server software. It introduces a single, unified driver with intelligent job routing based on company-specific business rules, to the most cost-effective print locations. All brands of printers are supported. It even brings the print room to the user’s desktop with extended accounting and reporting capabilities. While it adds fax, email, scan, PDF conversion and even archive functionality to client workstations, it centralises the management of all connected devices.

Figure 3. Step-by-step approach for print audit

Level 4: Enterprise office – synergy across all connected document environments

This level is about an enterprise-wide document strategy that brings the largest synergies and efficiencies across all ‘inter-connected’ document environments. In all today’s organisations office document activities are often supported by separate transaction/EDP print rooms and by in-house or third party print rooms with dedicated print facilities. More and more transaction documents (invoices, purchase orders, service reports etc.) are being processed or initiated in the office, where easy dynamic e-form and overlay tools are needed to create consistent, high-value communication, supported by SAP and other business or enterprise applications. SAP-certified output management systems are needed that connect these interdependent document environments; this is also called ‘document convergence’. This transaction part is very relevant in all office operations, already 15 per cent of the total volume and still growing, making an ‘holistic’ document view relevant and creating total new efficiencies and business opportunities.

Choosing a document partner

A surprisingly small percentage of companies have a document strategy. And while some of them have it around specific defined applications, like printing statements, generally across the organisation they lack this. Yet we know from our customers that there is a major need to decrease costs, increase productivity and to have a much more defined approach to document production than the one they have today.

In choosing a document supplier one should look for a partner that understands the different document environments well enough to create synergy between document processes and has a broad portfolio of solutions, understanding what’s required beyond print technology to get there. Because while that’s important, it’s also about the tools, the software, the workflow and how end-users use the particular devices and tools to support their critical document processes. Furthermore, look for a company that shows that it understands the requirements of typical industries with the right depth and that understands the ‘human’ change needed, so that you get the assurance that new technologies are deployed to the advantage of that particular industry