Ninety per cent of printing costs could be hidden

 

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Posted on 20 Jun 2007 at 16:27

When it comes to printer costs, the inefficient use of documents and printers cost far more than paper and ink supplies, believes HP. And printing files then faxing or rescanning the same paper document is another wasteful inefficiency.

According to Vyomesh Joshi executive vice president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group, speaking at the company's Technology Forum conference in Las Vegas, some companies that the company talked to do it again and again within a business process.

"You will be shocked to find that we convert paper to information, information to paper up to 11 times without adding any value" he said.

Typically companies have no idea of the true costs of imaging and printing; according to Gartner between one and three per cent of business revenue is spent on direct hardware supplies and services but Joshi claims that's not all it costs the business. "The average annual document costs are between five and 15 per cent of revenue, all the way from less than one per cent for the oil industry to the advertising industry spending 14 per cent of revenue in managing documents and processes".

Reducing the number of printers on individual desktops and introducing printers shared by up to 15 people can reduce ink and toner costs by 70 per cent and paper costs by 67 per cent, with overall costs for producing marketing materials down by 30 per cent.

Power generator and wholesaler Constellation Energy, for example, reduced its printing costs by 18 per cent, going from 3,000 printers, fax machines and copiers to 1,000 devices.

Joshi also illustrated how a large unnamed parcel delivery company reported a 20 per cent decrease in labour costs and a 25 per cent increase in productivity, plus 10-15 per cent savings in operational costs by using HP's handheld SP400 All-in-One device. This is a combined 2D scanner and printer that employees wear on one wrist to scan the postal code on an address label and print the consignment code directly onto the parcel.

"For every dollar the enterprise spends on imaging and printing, the direct hardware cost is only 10 per cent of that, 90 per cent of the cost is hidden." Joshi blamed support costs, driver management and overall document management; "For the last 22 years we've had a lot of document based processes that are very unstructured. Paper is flowing in the organisation everywhere. We want to convert this to structured processes."

Author: Mary Branscombe in Las Vegas