Many tech watchers may have thought that the introduction of computers throughout the workplace would decrease the amount of paper we consumed. It was, we were told, leading towards the dream of a paperless office becoming a reality. After all, looking at documents on screen would negate the need to print them off, wouldn’t it?
Not so, according to a report in the Economist. Use of paper at offices around the world more than doubled between 1980 and 2000 – mainly due to digital technology making printing cheaper and easier, while the rise of Internet access in the workplace opened up a whole new world of documents that people could access and print to share with colleagues.
Paperless office?
Since 2001 however, we have seen a decline in the amount of paper being printed in the workplace. This is most likely due to the rise of email throughout the business world, but the emergence of a younger generation of workers that are much more comfortable with reading, writing and editing documents on screen also helped. So is the notion of a paperless office still a possibility? Or have we woken up to the reality that people will always need to have hard copies of documents?
"The dream of the paperless office has been around for a very long time," says Jeremy Davies, co-founder and CEO of analyst house Context. "But it’s not going to happen; people will always need to print documents. I just can’t see it happening, although I am sure that there are plenty of printed documents lying around gathering dust that describe the paperless office!"
So hard copies of documents are here to stay, it would seem. What can companies do to get to grips with what Davies calls the, "last uncontrolled IT cost"? Consultancy firm InfoTrends estimates that for every £1 that is spent on printing a document in the office, another £9 is spent on other burdened costs that are not being exposed, such as departmental stationery budgets or budgets that are consolidated under the umbrella of invoices, meaning the source and nature of office print costs are often difficult to understand.
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If you add to that the fact that printers can be so cheap these days that purchasing one often doesn’t need company approval, it’s clear that the print infrastructure at many companies is out of control, with bosses having little or no idea what’s actually going on.
How out of control? Printer vendor Kyocera claims that 37% of workers have increased the amount of printing they do in the last year, just 60% of companies have audited their print services in the past year, workers print 10,000 sheets a year on average, of which 6,800 are wasted or unnecessary, and, most worryingly, only 24% of companies have a formal, written print policy. Nearly half (46%) have loose guidelines relating to printing in place.
To MPS or not to MPS?
One trend that is picking up steam in the printer space is MPS – managed print services. "It’s something we’ve been in for about two and a half years now, which started as demand from the market," says Greg Wilson, Canon’s MPS and services marketing manager. "It means that the skills around the print infrastructure come from the vendor, not the company. The company becomes responsible for looking after print and maximising savings."
Canon can put figures on those savings: Fife Council in Scotland had its Canon MPS contract independently assessed, with the results suggesting that the council was looking at a projected cost saving of £1.4m over 5 years and a 50% reduction in electricity consumption. They have also reduced the print hardware they use, down from 25 devices to just two.
Outsourcing the management of your print infrastructure can free up IT staff to concentrate on more business-relevant tasks, says Context’s Davies. It also has other benefits that an uncontrolled environment simply won’t see. "You can audit and manage costs and it means somebody is properly accountable for print. MPS has been spoken about a lot over the last few years but with the recession forcing companies to focus on reducing costs it has now been given a real boost," he said.
Wilson agrees: "It is the paradox of print; the cost of hardware and contracts are going down but overall costs are going up because companies are not controlling the environment and there is very little monitoring. MPS means a policy will be in place around who can buy printers and what individuals can print – the sort of thing that senior IT people don’t want to have to deal with."
While outsourcing is one way of helping to reduce print volumes – and therefore reduce costs – vendors are in agreement that educating users is a critical task. "You see messages at the bottom of emails asking people if they really need to print it off. But people are still doing it. Page volume is key to costs and people really need to start thinking about whether they need to print or not," says Alan McLeish, senior product marketing manager at OKI Printing Solutions.
"Of the overall documentation costs, 50% is paper and toner," says Anthony Penton, head of marketing at Samsung’s print division. "And people just print without thinking. That’s where basic stuff like double-sided printing comes in. We have something called AnyWeb Print, where you can select any section of a webpage you need and print that. You don’t always need to print out the full page. It’s about education."
Lean, green, printing machine
Schemes such as the Government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) – designed to encourage UK organisations to reduce their power usage through financial penalties and inducements – have seen the green issue rise up the corporate agenda. Data centres may have been the main focus area of CRC so far, but print vendors are keen to emphasise their devices.
"One of the things the print industry has been doing recently is making sure that the products themselves are greener," says OKI’s McLeish. "Very few people actually turn off a printer at the end of the day and IT would be inundated with reports saying the printer was offline. Our newer printers, for example, consume 1.2 watts when idle, which is down from around 17 watts in other models."
OKI has also implemented a cartridge recycling scheme where customers can print off an address label and send the empty cartridge back to OKI, who then either refill it or recycle it. McLeish says that while it’s very easy for people to just throw cartridges away when they’re empty, providing firms with an address label makes the process much easier.
Samsung does the same. "We also have a trade-in programme that enables users to get rid of their old products, which we then make sure are responsibly recycled. We will give them money for their old product in support of their new investment," Samsung’s Penton says. "We also include the option to download an address label so users can send the cartridge back to us."
While vendors may still be pushing the green credentials of their products as a way of helping the environment it is something that end users are not particularly focused on at the moment, Davies argues, despite the potential cost benefits a more environmentally-friendly print infrastructure may bring.
"Green was very fashionable three or so years ago but the number of green initiatives are definitely not at the same level now. The concern is with saving costs so green is not too high on the agenda," Davies says. But what about the financial benefits that may bring? Printers that consume less power and users that print fewer sheets of paper are making a positive financial impact, Davies agrees, but that is no more than a by-product, he tells CBR.
CBR opinion
In these times of economic strife it is incredible that so few companies have a clear picture of just what is going on with their print infrastructure. An uncontrolled print environment is almost a licence to print money, and not in a good way. Every document printed unnecessarily costs your company money. The Fife Council is a perfect example of what an organisation can save by simply taking the time to examine their print infrastructure and not simply regard it as a bit of kit sitting in the corner, waiting to be used.
