g systems and MFPs, some of which can even run part of the solution within the printer or MFP, not requiring any additional hardware, just the software running on a server PC.

If you looked at this year’s energy bill and compared it to last year’s, you will have noticed it has gone up. If you looked at your old black and white toner cost and compared it with your black and color toner cost of you new MFP devices, it has probably more than doubled.

Don’t get me wrong, to stay competitive, reduce support needs, improve presentations where needed and benefit from improved duty cycles, you have to invest in new technology devices. However, you also want to have an overall reduced cost despite the extra capabilities. It is in your interest to control cost and improve productivity, while protecting you corporate secrets and the privacy of your employees and customers. Therefore, your responsibility is to deploy a state-of-the-art document output management system.

A rules-based document output management system will pay for itself faster than mos

Do you like the new color printers’ speed and capabilities? Printer manufacturers make it very easy for organizations to utilize fast printing with excellent color by reducing the purchase price but clobber them with the cost of toner cartridges and other consumables to run the devices.

On the other hand, older printers are just as costly in the long run - they are inefficient, have very few capabilities and the average price of a black toner cartridge is $60 with a 3,000 page yield. In addition, because there is no other way to dispose of it, excess toner is usually thrown away instead of recycled, adding to carcinogenic waste in our landfills.

When you buy newer printers you get better toner cartridges that totally recycle excess toner as well as a recycling policy from the manufacturer. For example, HP sells you an ink cartridge with a prepaid return envelope making re-cycling convenient for you.

Whether you are a small- to medium-sized business or a large organization, you can consolidate a number of desktop printers with limited capabilities and high consumable costs into a multifunction printer (MFP) that prints, copies, scans and can send a fax – all in one machine. For your marketing needs, your MFP may also do high-resolution color printing.

Well, all that new technology is great but at what cost? The printer manufacturers will make it easy for you to acquire the devices and from a pure maintenance angle, consolidating 10 to 20 desktop printers into one MFP makes sense.

The new printers have more efficient toner cartridges with 5,000 to 10,000 page yields per black cartridge and 3,000 to 5,000 per color cartridge. Depending on the amount of color on a page, the page yield per cartridge can be significantly less, especially when printing presentations with a lot of solid color areas on the pages – this may result in as little as a 500 page yield for a color cartridge.

A person understanding the need for self discipline and a sincere understanding of the impact on the environment will not print anything they do not really need, select draft mode for all prints until the final version, and use only color when necessary, such as in marketing materials for use.

However, most of us do not belong to that group of people and need some help. This help can come in form of Document Output Management, where the management system enforces policies that reduce paper and toner waste.

For example, a 12-page presentation when printed in high-resolution full-color mode can cost as much as $5 whereas the same presentation in draft black and white mode would cost 36 cents and if printed in duplex 18 cents. If your users do not know this or just don’t care, you can be spending thousands of dollars per printer unnecessarily.

A Document Output Management System allows you to apply rules to certain users, printers and document types, so that shop floor workers can only print black, a manager can only print reports in color, the legal department can only print final contracts in high-resolution and other documents in black and white draft mode.

On top of the waste generated due to the lack of appreciation and the time it will take to educate staff in sustainability, there is the element of abuse of office equipment by printing, copying and faxing personal documents on equipment in the office.

Do not be fooled by fixed-cost per page contracts, as you will find they are calculated on a minimum annual use as well as an average color per page. What this means is, that if you use fewer pages, the service provider will deliver the paper to you anyway whether you need it or not. Also, if you use more color toner cartridges than stipulated in your contract based on the average use they will be charged to you. The experience of almost all color MFP users is that they used more color cartridges than they projected for all the reasons mentioned.

Printer manufacturers do not want to sell you document output management systems and will only offer you proprietary solutions, to get you totally dependent on their equipment and consumables. There are independent software vendors that provide state-of-the-art output management solutions that will work with all industry standard printing systems and MFPs, some of which can even run part of the solution within the printer or MFP, not requiring any additional hardware, just the software running on a server PC.

If you looked at this year’s energy bill and compared it to last year’s, you will have noticed it has gone up. If you looked at your old black and white toner cost and compared it with your black and color toner cost of you new MFP devices, it has probably more than doubled.

Don’t get me wrong, to stay competitive, reduce support needs, improve presentations where needed and benefit from improved duty cycles, you have to invest in new technology devices. However, you also want to have an overall reduced cost despite the extra capabilities. It is in your interest to control cost and improve productivity, while protecting you corporate secrets and the privacy of your employees and customers. Therefore, your responsibility is to deploy a state-of-the-art document output management system.

A rules-based document output management system will pay for itself faster than mos

ties and high consumable costs into a multifunction printer (MFP) that prints, copies, scans and can send a fax – all in one machine. For your marketing needs, your MFP may also do high-resolution color printing.

Well, all that new technology is great but at what cost? The printer manufacturers will make it easy for you to acquire the devices and from a pure maintenance angle, consolidating 10 to 20 desktop printers into one MFP makes sense.

The new printers have more efficient toner cartridges with 5,000 to 10,000 page yields per black cartridge and 3,000 to 5,000 per color cartridge. Depending on the amount of color on a page, the page yield per cartridge can be significantly less, especially when printing presentations with a lot of solid color areas on the pages – this may result in as little as a 500 page yield for a color cartridge.

A person understanding the need for self discipline and a sincere understanding of the impact on the environment will not print anything they do not really need, select draft mode for all prints until the final version, and use only color when necessary, such as in marketing materials for use.

However, most of us do not belong to that group of people and need some help. This help can come in form of Document Output Management, where the management system enforces policies that reduce paper and toner waste.

For example, a 12-page presentation when printed in high-resolution full-color mode can cost as much as $5 whereas the same presentation in draft black and white mode would cost 36 cents and if printed in duplex 18 cents. If your users do not know this or just don’t care, you can be spending thousands of dollars per printer unnecessarily.

A Document Output Management System allows you to apply rules to certain users, printers and document types, so that shop floor workers can only print black, a manager can only print reports in color, the legal department can only print final contracts in high-resolution and other documents in black and white draft mode.

On top of the waste generated due to the lack of appreciation and the time it will take to educate staff in sustainability, there is the element of abuse of office equipment by printing, copying and faxing personal documents on equipment in the office.

Do not be fooled by fixed-cost per page contracts, as you will find they are calculated on a minimum annual use as well as an average color per page. What this means is, that if you use fewer pages, the service provider will deliver the paper to you anyway whether you need it or not. Also, if you use more color toner cartridges than stipulated in your contract based on the average use they will be charged to you. The experience of almost all color MFP users is that they used more color cartridges than they projected for all the reasons mentioned.

Printer manufacturers do not want to sell you document output management systems and will only offer you proprietary solutions, to get you totally dependent on their equipment and consumables. There are independent software vendors that provide state-of-the-art output management solutions that will work with all industry standard printing systems and MFPs, some of which can even run part of the solution within the printer or MFP, not requiring any additional hardware, just the software running on a server PC.

If you looked at this year’s energy bill and compared it to last year’s, you will have noticed it has gone up. If you looked at your old black and white toner cost and compared it with your black and color toner cost of you new MFP devices, it has probably more than doubled.

Don’t get me wrong, to stay competitive, reduce support needs, improve presentations where needed and benefit from improved duty cycles, you have to invest in new technology devices. However, you also want to have an overall reduced cost despite the extra capabilities. It is in your interest to control cost and improve productivity, while protecting you corporate secrets and the privacy of your employees and customers. Therefore, your responsibility is to deploy a state-of-the-art document output management system.

A rules-based document output management system will pay for itself faster than mos

nal version, and use only color when necessary, such as in marketing materials for use.

However, most of us do not belong to that group of people and need some help. This help can come in form of Document Output Management, where the management system enforces policies that reduce paper and toner waste.

For example, a 12-page presentation when printed in high-resolution full-color mode can cost as much as $5 whereas the same presentation in draft black and white mode would cost 36 cents and if printed in duplex 18 cents. If your users do not know this or just don’t care, you can be spending thousands of dollars per printer unnecessarily.

A Document Output Management System allows you to apply rules to certain users, printers and document types, so that shop floor workers can only print black, a manager can only print reports in color, the legal department can only print final contracts in high-resolution and other documents in black and white draft mode.

On top of the waste generated due to the lack of appreciation and the time it will take to educate staff in sustainability, there is the element of abuse of office equipment by printing, copying and faxing personal documents on equipment in the office.

Do not be fooled by fixed-cost per page contracts, as you will find they are calculated on a minimum annual use as well as an average color per page. What this means is, that if you use fewer pages, the service provider will deliver the paper to you anyway whether you need it or not. Also, if you use more color toner cartridges than stipulated in your contract based on the average use they will be charged to you. The experience of almost all color MFP users is that they used more color cartridges than they projected for all the reasons mentioned.

Printer manufacturers do not want to sell you document output management systems and will only offer you proprietary solutions, to get you totally dependent on their equipment and consumables. There are independent software vendors that provide state-of-the-art output management solutions that will work with all industry standard printing systems and MFPs, some of which can even run part of the solution within the printer or MFP, not requiring any additional hardware, just the software running on a server PC.

If you looked at this year’s energy bill and compared it to last year’s, you will have noticed it has gone up. If you looked at your old black and white toner cost and compared it with your black and color toner cost of you new MFP devices, it has probably more than doubled.

Don’t get me wrong, to stay competitive, reduce support needs, improve presentations where needed and benefit from improved duty cycles, you have to invest in new technology devices. However, you also want to have an overall reduced cost despite the extra capabilities. It is in your interest to control cost and improve productivity, while protecting you corporate secrets and the privacy of your employees and customers. Therefore, your responsibility is to deploy a state-of-the-art document output management system.

A rules-based document output management system will pay for itself faster than mos

take to educate staff in sustainability, there is the element of abuse of office equipment by printing, copying and faxing personal documents on equipment in the office.

Do not be fooled by fixed-cost per page contracts, as you will find they are calculated on a minimum annual use as well as an average color per page. What this means is, that if you use fewer pages, the service provider will deliver the paper to you anyway whether you need it or not. Also, if you use more color toner cartridges than stipulated in your contract based on the average use they will be charged to you. The experience of almost all color MFP users is that they used more color cartridges than they projected for all the reasons mentioned.

Printer manufacturers do not want to sell you document output management systems and will only offer you proprietary solutions, to get you totally dependent on their equipment and consumables. There are independent software vendors that provide state-of-the-art output management solutions that will work with all industry standard printing systems and MFPs, some of which can even run part of the solution within the printer or MFP, not requiring any additional hardware, just the software running on a server PC.

If you looked at this year’s energy bill and compared it to last year’s, you will have noticed it has gone up. If you looked at your old black and white toner cost and compared it with your black and color toner cost of you new MFP devices, it has probably more than doubled.

Don’t get me wrong, to stay competitive, reduce support needs, improve presentations where needed and benefit from improved duty cycles, you have to invest in new technology devices. However, you also want to have an overall reduced cost despite the extra capabilities. It is in your interest to control cost and improve productivity, while protecting you corporate secrets and the privacy of your employees and customers. Therefore, your responsibility is to deploy a state-of-the-art document output management system.

A rules-based document output management system will pay for itself faster than mos

g systems and MFPs, some of which can even run part of the solution within the printer or MFP, not requiring any additional hardware, just the software running on a server PC.

If you looked at this year’s energy bill and compared it to last year’s, you will have noticed it has gone up. If you looked at your old black and white toner cost and compared it with your black and color toner cost of you new MFP devices, it has probably more than doubled.

Don’t get me wrong, to stay competitive, reduce support needs, improve presentations where needed and benefit from improved duty cycles, you have to invest in new technology devices. However, you also want to have an overall reduced cost despite the extra capabilities. It is in your interest to control cost and improve productivity, while protecting you corporate secrets and the privacy of your employees and customers. Therefore, your responsibility is to deploy a state-of-the-art document output management system.

A rules-based document output management system will pay for itself faster than most other software packages that promise savings. The benefits in an MFP printing environment with predominantly color printers, where 90% of the print jobs do not require color, are huge and an amortization can be as short as a few months. But also in a predominantly black toner environment the toner savings can be as large as 30% as most documents can be produced in lower toner density.

Additional savings can be achieved with an ID-based print collection, also referred to as pull printing, where a print job remains in the print server queue until the owner of the document is identified and authenticated at the printer of choice. Rules that documents that have been in the queue for more than three days will be automatically deleted as well as allowing the user to look at the print queue and manually delete uncollected prints usually lead to a further savings of 10-15% of the cost of consumables.

If an organization is serious about sustainability and their environmental policies they will include document output management as an essential tool towards achieving sustainability. Output Management can make measurable improvements to workflow, toner use, paper waste for printing and copying as well as document tracking and accounting to comply with new governance and accountability requirements as well as reducing an organization’s carbon footprint.