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The company says firms badly overestimate their printing needs because they don't keep track of the kind of documents their employees print. As a result, firms often have several expensive A3 printers that are woefully underused.

Dell says that, on average, 60% of the documents that are printed in businesses are A4 mono, 20% A4 colour, 17% photocopies and just 3% are A3.It gleaned the results from its printer management software. "Most customers believe they are

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printing significantly greater amounts of A3 documents and photocopies," says Dion Smith, imaging sales manager at Dell.

Smith claims that because printers are frequently bought on a departmental basis, companies are often lumbered with dozens of incompatible models. "Our experience shows most organisations have 60 different model types of printer and 115 different types of inks and toners," he says.

This not only makes printers more expensive to support for IT departments, but means they don't benefit from economies of scale on ink and toner.

Smith claims companies should either centralise the printer procurement or create a standard list of models that departments must buy from. "In some cases you can take the 60 different types of printers and get it down to four," he says.

And they don't all need to come from one vendor. "You can define a best of breed approach. It doesn't complicate matters to have different vendors on the list, as long as the printer-management software is based on industry standards," Smith claims.