Printing used to be easy. Everyone shared one device, or everyone had a personal printer. Now the output environment includes a fleet of connected printers and MFPs. Print servers, data streams and drivers are all part of the picture. Users want more options and faster results. IT wants to ensure security. Finance wants to know how much it costs, and how to maximize savings. Environmentally conscious executives want to promote sustainability. At the same time, administrators are dealing with supplies, maintenance, service calls and upgrades.
RBC Business Solutions Managed Print Services MPS) are designed to take full responsibility for the management of your entire printing infrastructure, from Copying, Scanning, Printing and Faxing. Our MPS includes everything from print lifecycle management to comprehensive maintenance support including the supply of consumables. It’s designed to allow your organisation the flexibility to focus on core business activities by removing the burden of managing your print device fleet. MPS solutions cover not only Ricoh products but a wide range of multi-vendor printing devices. In summary, it’s the implementation of an effective print and copy strategy designed to deliver increased visibility and control over print service’s with improved device availability, environmental benefits coupled with significant cost reductions.
To put it simply, MPS is the effective governance of your output environment. The perfect solution to give you peace of mind.
To minimize the complexity and spend less on printing, organizations need a process-driven approach. RBC Business Solutions delivers MPS that are specifically designed to reduce output costs. This flexible program makes it easy to outsource anything and everything in the output environment—without giving up any control over speed, quality or performance. Best of all, our program can measurably reduce cost-per-page.The benefits for Managed Print Services are varied and specific to each site but they commonly include:
- No Capital Outlay
- No ownership or maintenance worries
- Agreed cost per print
- Off Balance Sheet Financing – operating lease
- No Fixed Term with standard agreement – growth in volume will reduce term
- One Invoice covers rent and maintenance
- When agreed prints for each function are paid for arrangement ceases
- Variations program for easier upgrading
As an example, here are five key areas that we investigate and formulate implementation strategies as a partner for your business.
1. Rationalise your office automation
There is no longer a need to buy and run individual printers, photocopiers, scanners and faxes – a multifunctional device can do it all for you. By consolidating your office equipment with less devices you’ll reduce electricity, floor space requirements and ultimately reduce your bottom line costs.
RBC Business Solutions can help you through the consolidation process with a consultative audit. It’s simple. With no obligation we’ll undertake a comprehensive print cost analysis of all the devices in your printing fleet, including copiers, printers, multifunctional devices, faxes, and inkjets. It only takes a few hours and includes a:
- Site survey
- Software-based printing cost analysis
- Executive summary
You’ll then be able to see where your money is going, and can identify solutions towards cutting your office costs and reducing your carbon footprint.
2. Shrink energy bills with Power Save Mode
Make it a mandatory policy in your office to have every office printer on power save mode when it sits idle.
Quick Start-up (QSU) Technology on Ricoh printers and multifunction devices offers a quick recovery from energy-saving and auto-off modes, allowing users to output and pick up prints whenever they need to without delays.
3. Review documents on-line to save paper
Start promoting the reviewing of documents on-line, using the ‘Track Changes’ tool in Microsoft Word, or circulating PDFs for approval rather than printed copies. RBC Solutions usually integrates this option within a follow you print service where we can temporarily hold the print job on its way to the device. Once a user is in front of a suitable and available printer or MFD and provides user identification via the device to the Follow-You Print solution all waiting print jobs can be accessed, released and printed either selectively or in full.
Follow-You Print allows all users to select the closest suitable device that is available and ready to use. If the closest device is out of order or is currently used by another person the user simply keeps walking to the next closest device and uses this on. Frequently users print pages but never collect them. With our Follow-You Print solution these pages are never produced at all, which means less wastage and both a cost saving and an environmental impact reduction.
4. Cut costs by printing on both sides
It’s simple but effective: set ‘duplex’ as your default preference for all your office printers and copiers. By printing on both sides of a sheet you’ll reduce paper usage by as much as 50%.
5. Reduce paper use by preventing uncollected printouts
Everyone gets annoyed when they see uncollected and forgotten printouts on the office printer and MFP. One way to prevent this is by using Ricoh’s Enhanced Locked Print (ELP) feature. ELP means that when a document is sent to print, it is stored on the printer and will not be printed until it is ‘unlocked’ by a user at the device. Punch in a user code, or make your staff ultra efficient by enabling them to release jobs with a simple proxy card swipe. ELP will not only reduce paper waste, but it will also increase your organisation’s security as well.
More organisations are recognising that operating an uncontrolled print environment is a huge cost and productivity drain. Unfortunately the money and productivity are not the only impact documents will have on your organisation – there are also environmental and IT impacts from your organisation’s copy and print.
According to the Gartner Group, office printing can consume up to 3% of a company’s annual revenue. This means that a $1 million company will spend up to $30,000 every year. To make matters worse, print volumes are steadily growing year by year. Wastage from accidental and unnecessary printing, especially if produced in colour, adds to the ever growing expenses.
Managed print services (MPS) has emerged as a way to create efficiencies in the print environment through device consolidation, ongoing print management and document workflow solutions to support business processes. Device consolidation follows an assessment, and looks to achieve a balanced deployment strategy where cost, productivity and device utilisation are optimised.
This may include, for instance, replacing outdated single function printers, which are often energy inefficient and expensive to run, with latest multifunction peripheral technology (MFP). However MPS does not require capital investment, and through implementing a more effective cost per page or utility approach to pricing, organisations can make immediate savings to operational expenditure.
If an organisation has already invested in MFPs for example, simply removing or retiring desktop or single function printers to reach a device ratio of 1 device to 10 employees rather than a more common 1:4 ratio or less.
This leads to both financial savings and environmental benefits. Implementing services such as proactive supplies replenishment or predictive service features means that device availability is improved, and therefore improves overall business continuity. Fewer paper jams or toner-out problems also mean less dependence on the IT department, which can focus on other activities.
The foundation of any MPS should be to focus on exploiting the capabilities of multifunction printers (MFPs) which have evolved to become sophisticated document processing and information management hubs. Advanced scan-to-email and scan-to-file capabilities enable MFPs to function beyond the standard print, copy and fax features.