Cortado offers ten ways to reduce printing costs in the enterprise

The burden of printing is a necessary cost of doing business, however, spending too much on printing isn't. Cortado, the provider of enterprise mobility solutions and a solution for network print management, through the company's ThinPrint technology, has examined printing challenges associated with the enterprise and recommends ten ways to reduce printing costs.

A recent IDC report shows worldwide page volume from digital hardcopy devices still runs into the trillions and that mobile printing is gaining traction, with more than 50 per cent of smartphone and tablet business users expected to use mobile print in the office environment by 2015. So, despite the notion of the "paperless office" being touted for so many years, companies of all sizes continue to face cost implications every time a page is printed.

Printing, however, is a cost that can be lowered considerably with the correct technologies and methods in place. With 14 years of knowledge Cortado has long recognised and addressed the challenges associated with printing and recommends the following ten ways of reducing print costs in the enterprise:

1. Analyse costs – Implement appropriate tracking tools or solutions with integrated tracking to provide an overview of device utilisation and analyse costs.
2. Implement cost-saving printer settings as default – Default settings or draft-quality printouts significantly reduce both paper and toner costs.
3. Introduce pull printing – Pull printing, user-authenticated initiation of print jobs, at the printer not only increases security but also lowers the cost of printing by up to 20 percent.
4. Reduce administration costs for printer driver management – Centralising printer drivers on a central print server and the use of virtual printer drivers reduce effort and costs to a minimum.
5. Reduce help desk calls with common print dialogs – Common print dialogs, offering users a clear interface for all printers, reduce help desk calls and require no additional training for users.
6. Print data compression – Print data places a strain on both CPUs and networks. What should be looked at here is a solution that significantly compresses print data.
7. Reduce hardware costs – Hardware costs can be reduced by introducing a solution that is not bound to specific hardware manufacturers and models.
8. Lower support costs and Implement print servers – A print management system with printer status indicators allows IT to act proactively, replacing toner in time before users can no longer print, and thus avoiding a loss in productivity, while introducing a print server allows for simplified management and maintenance of systems.
9. Use digital printouts – In many cases documents are only needed as digital printouts on a tablet or smartphone for reading, tickets, flight check-ins and so on.  Introducing the potential to digitally print documents reduces waste and cost, and has a positive impact on the environment.
10. Move printing to the cloud - Full migration of printing services to the cloud is growing in popularity to reduce costs in the complex area of printing.

Implementing the latest technology and taking these ten methods into account to reduce printing costs can be a great benefit to all businesses and organisations where printing is still considered a significant portion of operating cost.