HOW MANY PRINTERS DO YOU OWN?

Businesses don’t mind paying for copier service because the copier was initially an expensive investment.  Printers weren’t.  However, those occasional PM kits and toner/drum cartridges add up.  On a yearly basis it might be a lot higher than you think.  A new and popular cost savings program for printers is called Print Management.

The best way to see if this makes sense for you is to call a copier rep since it’s copier companies pushing Print Management.  That’s because the copier business is flat and people buy about 6 printers for each copier.  So they took cost per copy maintenance agreements for copiers and adapted it to printers

For those new to Print Management here are the main benefits:

All printer service and supplies are quoted on a per print basis.  You simply call when you need something.  Similar to how your copier maintenance agreement works where everything is included except paper.  Even though printers don’t break often the toner cartridges are expensive and the overall print volume is much higher.

If you have several printers and feel like you make a lot of prints invite us in to do a free evaluation.  We simply look at some recent printer bills to get an idea of your current expenditures.  Then we take a couple of meter readings on the printers about two weeks apart.

With this information we can give you a good idea of expected savings with a Print Management Contract.  Again, this is similar to what you’ve done for years with your copiers.  It’s just that today companies have a variety of printers and cartridges; some new and some re-manufactured.  This can be confusing.  Especially if you have more than one vendor.  Plus IT personnel don’t like to be bothered with toner and service issues.  They have more important things to do supporting the network.

The best way to understand the benefit to Print Management is comparing renting an apartment as opposed to owning a home.  With an apartment you don’t worry about cutting the grass and when something breaks you simply call maintenance.  When you own a home you hope the repair isn’t expensive and that Sunday isn’t too hot because you have to cut and trim your huge lawn.