How to Reduce Printing Costs
Whether you print out advertisements for events or important client documents, your business likely invests a notable amount of money into printing. When you consider the costs of premium paper and ink, printing expenses can quickly add up. While printing is a necessary part of every business’s operations, it doesn’t have to take up a significant portion of your budget.
Are you looking for cost-effective strategies to minimize your printing expenses? With a bit of effort and planning, you can implement the right steps to reduce your printing costs. This guide offers actionable tips to decrease expenses while maintaining quality, plus the different ways a managed print service can help meet your needs.
5 Innovative Ways to Reduce Printing Expenses
Many companies underestimate their printing costs, and they can add up in a substantial way. By pinpointing the cause of your printing costs and applying the proper strategies, you can maximize your budget without cutting corners. Here are five effective ways to lower your business’s printing costs:
1. Evaluate Your Current Printing Habits
Various unnecessary printing practices and habits hold companies back from reaching their true earning potential. Before you start trying different techniques, spend time assessing your current printing habits so you can find areas for improvement.
For example, team members may be printing more pages than needed, causing your staff to waste time, resources and money. Installing print management software or multifunction printer technology can provide insights into how much printing happens during specific time periods, such as monthly. Then, staff get a clear picture of how much they’re printing and can take steps to reduce that number.
Other improved printing habits to implement include reducing page margins and font size, printing in draft mode for less important documents to reduce toner and ink use, and adjusting default printer settings so that everyone automatically uses better printing practices.
2. Implement Smart Printing Policies
If your business doesn’t have any policies in place regarding how to print, it’s time to create some. This way, staff can follow best practices every time they print something. Make your new policies visible and easily accessible so everyone can access them.
For example, you might make it a rule to mainly print documents in black and white — color printing may only apply to specific projects. As a result, your company can save costs on color ink. Another idea would be to only allow printing in certain situations. If team members can email or message documents instead, they likely don’t need to print them.
3. Optimize Ink Cartridge Use
Typically, ink is the most expensive part of the printing process. If your printers run out of ink frequently, you should look into ways to optimize ink cartridge use — the more you can get out of each cartridge, the more you can save.
A great strategy for reducing ink use is using fonts that require less ink. Times New Roman, Ecofont and Century Gothic use less ink than fonts like Arial, helping you save on ink costs. To further increase your savings, high-yield ink cartridges are a convenient way to reduce costs. These cartridges are larger than standard equivalents, contributing to a lower cost per page and fewer disruptions during the printing process due to empty cartridges and time spent replacing them.
4. Use Digital Document Management Systems
Depending on your business, it may be necessary to print certain documents. However, all companies can take advantage of digital document management systems to store and organize digital copies. This strategy allows your team to only print physical papers as necessary while keeping everything else secure and easy to find on a computer or online. Lowering how much you print is the easiest and quickest way to cut printing costs.
5. Replace Your Outdated Printing Equipment
Is your current printing equipment outdated and in need of an update? Using old copiers and printers can lead to numerous inefficiencies that impact how much your company spends on printing. For example, you may have an old printer that frequently causes printing errors like misprinted text, resulting in your team needing to print the same documents more than once to get them right.
Consider evaluating your current machines so you can determine whether it’s time for an upgrade. Choosing modern equipment with multiple functions can be a wise investment that improves printing efficiency and eliminates printing errors. When your team has access to a printing machine that can do it all with ease, printing becomes a simple task instead of one that requires troubleshooting and wasting time.
Managed Print Service Benefits: How an MPS Can Save You Money
A managed print service (MPS) provides comprehensive printing insights with cloud technology, analytics and software that helps to address areas for improvement and improve your print budget. An MPS can integrate with your existing IT services to reduce disruptions and ensure compatibility — the right MPS will provide enhanced security measures, backup solutions and other protection features. Having complete support from an MPS can help your business improve its printing methods and reduce associated costs.
With an MPS, you get increased printing efficiency from advanced printing software. Additionally, you can enjoy less maintenance due to comprehensive print audits and valuations for optimized print system performance. Compared to an in-house printing team, an MPS will also help you save time — their priority is your printing needs, allowing your staff to focus on other important duties.
To understand how much you can save by partnering with an MPS, calculate your cost-per-print on each device and all other related printing costs. Then, consider the costs of hiring an MPS to manage your printing needs. In many cases, you’ll find that an MPS can help reduce your operating expenses, especially when you consider time savings.
Embrace the Doceo Difference for Your Printing Solutions
At Doceo, we offer countless solutions you can use to reduce your printing expenses. With our print and mail services, your business can save time and resources, allowing you to focus on expanding your operations. If you’re interested in equipment that can help you save on costs, we also supply multifunction printers and copiers that combine copying, printing and faxing capabilities — everything you need is all in one machine.
As a family-owned business, we know how to put our customers first and work to meet your needs of finding cost-effective printing strategies — our expert team can help you implement the most effective strategies to streamline printing while limiting expenses. Are you ready to reap the benefits of managed printing services? Contact us at Doceo today to get started with a personalized printing solution.
