Written by: Justin West; Vice President, MPSA and MPS Specialist, Nationwide Insurance

The daily decisions of a knowledge-worker are rarely focused on the cost of printing.

Since Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker,” the daily digital content to comprehend and decisions to make has steadily increased. In 2002, digital data storage surpassed non-digital storage for the first time. By 2007, 94 percent of all information on the planet was in digital form.

With accessibility to digital information expanding through the consumerization of IT, ever-connected mobile devices and social networking, knowledge workers have better technology, access to information and freedom to make decisions than ever before. However, as John Stuart Mill once said, “It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.“

With so much work to do in an endless sea of digital information and with so many disjointed tools, it’s no surprise that workers become inefficient and fall back on the perceived reliability of tangible media and the predisposition of the “need to print.” For many, printing brings digital information into a more tangible world, enabling the worker to more comfortably capture, modify and share content.

This “need to print” hindrance is not due to a lack of hardware, software or will of the worker to be more cost efficient and work effective, but due to a lack of information.

For managed print services (MPS) to be successful at a company, the plan must focus on informing workers how to print smarter.

“Fleet optimization, predictable billing and enhanced service” are NOT a panacea. When it comes to reducing print expenses, optimizing an environment with the right types and number of devices, and ensuring the devices have best-in-class availability, can only take a company so far.

A company will reach its fullest savings potential when you combine an optimized environment with employees who are knowledgeable, responsible and accountable for their print activity.

Most employees, even the ones that unknowingly copy and print indiscriminately, are good corporate citizens and want to be good financial stewards. And for those that might not care, certainly all employees want their work to be easier. By providing employees with cost-based information and more control over printing and copying, you can empower them to curtail the inadvertent misuses of office print equipment.

I want to share these 10 best practices (supported by actual studies) because I feel they are a great beginning to informing employees and helping put print costs into their own hands.

Print Smart: only what you need, and print it right the first time.

By carefully considering alternatives to printing or by using already available features, employees can increase their productivity and save money at the same time. Educate and encourage employees to use these different “Best Practices for Printing.”

1. Ask “do I have to print?”

A typical employee prints an average of 4,800 sheets of paper annually. The quickest and easiest way to reduce your company’s print expenses is to avoid printing documents that do not need to be printed.

2. Use Print to PDF, Collaboration tools or other digital tools instead of printing

Do you print a document and then scan it to turn the document into a PDF? Do you print and then fax documents? Installing a free Print to PDF tool on each PC can give employees a cheap and effective digital alternative to printing. Convert files to PDF and then send and share documents, reports and presentations via email, rather than printing copies and distributing them or mailing them.

3. Duplex whenever possible

By configuring your network print devices to default duplex, paper can be reduced significantly. However, even with this setting pre-configured, many employees choose to print one-sided. Allow for exemptions when business needs require it, but be sure employees understand the impact of not printing duplex.

4. Select the correct features and preview your print

Avoid waste by keeping employees informed about available print features and how they can interact with the features they’ll need (like duplex, collating, stapling, mono vs. color and size or orientation). Many devices also have a “print draft” feature, which allows employees to send multiple copies of a job to a printer, but only print one draft. If the draft looks good, you simply press “Continue” to finish the job; if the job is not how you expected it, you cancel it and avoid waste.

5. Consider the cost of color

Color has its purpose; it can convey certain types of information that would be near impossible in monochrome. Keep in mind, color that doesn’t convey specific information is a waste. To avoid this, reduce access to color devices when possible and encourage those that have access to never set a color network printer as their default printer. This will reduce accidental use of more expensive color devices.

6. Build black and white friendly documents

The quickest way to reduce color print for your company is to encourage a practice of creating documents that can be easily read and printed on black and white printers. Mandate that all internal document templates be created in monochrome unless there is a specific message that requires color.

7. Use secure-print to avoid abandoned or lost jobs

The secure print feature is ideal for printing confidential documents. Also, consider using this feature to avoid abandoned, lost and shuffled print jobs if other alternatives like “pull-printing” aren’t available. Industry estimates state anywhere from 10 to 35 percent of total pages are left at the printer and never picked up. Ever go to the printer and find your job is missing, reprint it and then have someone else bring you the first job they mistakenly took? Not only are unnecessary additional jobs expensive, but time spent looking for documents and re-printing them takes valuable time out of an employee’s day.

8. Printing from the Web

Most Web pages have a “Print this Page” link that reformats the current webpage by removing banner ads and unrelated graphics. You may also use screen capture tools such as SnagIt or Print Screen to select the portions that you want to print and paste them in Microsoft Word.

9. Printing PowerPoint presentations

PowerPoint presentations are intended for presenting digitally on a screen. Microsoft Word is designed for publishing text. Find alternatives to printing your presentations, such as having a Microsoft Word summary document. Otherwise, print handouts, not slides. If slides are necessary, print using four slides per page (still legible and use less paper).

10. Printing e-mail

E-mail makes up 22 percent of all print jobs and 19 percent of these are printed in color. Most e-mails are printed as a reminder to do something or be somewhere, or are stored as a hard-copy record. Introducing smartphones and tablet devices into the workplace should cut down on e-mail print, as employees are able to access their e-mail and calendars anywhere, anytime.  Educating employees on what archiving tools are available and what e-mails need to be retained can reduce server storage costs and avoid unneeded printed records. Introducing rules-based printing to print e-mails in black and white can also significantly reduce costs.

Summary

The key for employees is to be informed on how to use less paper or, when paper is necessary, how to print smarter. Employees have the tools, but need to know how to use them. Give them a reason to think print is harder.

This list of Best Practices for Printing is intended as a beginning. My hope is to continue helping businesses with ways to reduce print costs and to improve employee productivity. Watch for my Informed Print toolkit, a business guide for taking print costs into your own hands; including: Step-by-step awareness campaign, “informed print” tools, helpful resources, case studies and fast facts.

Justin West is a hard-working and motivated Information Technology Professional with over 10 years of experience. His expertise and strong background is in managed print deployments and business consulting in the office technology space, developing innovative tools and processes to improve Enterprise print environments. As a professional self-starter highly motivated by opportunities to improve experiences with everyday technology, Justin helped lead a team at Nationwide that completed the implementation of a managed print infrastructure throughout all enterprise office locations to approximately 36,000+ associates. Since the start of the MPS project, Nationwide has seen cost avoidance of more than $20 million. The Nationwide MPS project was recognized as a Top IT project at Nationwide and has consistently been a model that other companies have benchmarked against. West serves on the Nationwide CIO Advisory Board, a very small group of Nationwide IT associates that work directly with the CIO to focus on improving success of IT initiatives and ensuring Change Leadership at Nationwide. He has strong belief in building strategic partnerships with co-workers, customers, and business partners. West was part of the original foundation group and currently serves as the Vice President of the MPSA, focusing on being one of the industry’s most respected and puissant advocates for the end users of MPS. He enjoys speaking and consulting with a focus on methods of implementing and continuously improving MPS deployments from an end-user perspective.