What’s your ratio of toilets to employees?

How many toilets do you have in your office?

One huge toilet that everyone shares and patiently waits to use?

What if it breaks? What if it blocks? What if it is being used for a particularly long time?

I hope you have a distributed network of toilets that allows easy access and availability for all employees.

Now, what about your print and imaging fleet? How many of those do you have…?

One huge copier that everyone shares and patiently waits to use?

What if it breaks? What if it jams? What if it is being used for a particularly long time?

Centralisation…but the economies do not scale

It is time to fly the awareness flag again. A3 print volume in SMB environments is all too-often very low (<2%). However, mass deployment of A3 copiers is still all-too-often commonplace.

Pages continue to be consolidated on to a limited number of large devices that supposedly deliver a more competitive running cost, regardless of the business processes and actual needs of the client.

Customer decision-making and tender specification is still frequently based on A3 device capabilities that are rarely, if ever used.

I’m not simply making the case for a greater proliferation of only A4 devices; an overly decentralised print fleet will most likely be as inefficient and unsustainable as an entirely centralised one.

To make the centralisation business case viable, consolidation needs take place to such an extent, that the negative impact on employee productivity and efficiency will offset any benefit you are getting from that race-to-the-bottom cost-per-page.

Take the time to consider what your document management processes are and hold vendors and suppliers accountable over the true cost-per-page to your business.

Regardless of which side of the Working from Home fence you sit on, the future state of the office is going to change and as we move towards a new hybrid arrangement, it is an ideal time for companies to review their imaging fleet and begin the process of right sizing to ensure it reflects the needs of their staff that using it.

Here are 3 simple steps to start that process…

1. Try before you buy

I’m surprised at how often this phase is overlooked when it comes to replacing, renewing or considering a new print service.

Systems, services, processes, people, products, pains, budgets…they all change over time, no more so than over the past 12 months, and therefore your printing requirements and document workflow will most likely have changed.

Be sure to have an assessment and proof-of-concept (POC) performed so that any proposed solution demonstrates that it will deliver the required change and is feasible. Ask your supplier to review existing performance and look back on how your current fleet has performed, this will give you a starting point for how it might perform in future.

Make sure you review the print behaviours, including paper usage and page types – this will ensure that you select the right devices depending on your needs, not the needs of the supplier.

I would recommend following Ray Stasieczko, who is a thought leader on this topic, who has a host data and content that helps put this situation in context – check out his video that explains the how you can get more for less…

For any SMB or corporate business, any assessment should include, as a minimum, a review of inventory lists for current equipment, page counts, pages per print job, age of equipment, device usage and behaviour, location of equipment, number of users and IP addresses.

Based on this site assessment, a needs analysis should then be conducted – what is it that the users of the equipment actually need today and might need in futrure? Ask that your supplier conducts a survey of your staff and key equipment users, including individual demands, departmental requirements and current levels of satisfaction.

Only after a site and needs analysis assessment can an effective solution and POC be designed that accurately reflects the voice of your business and technology users.

2. How balanced is your deployment?

Why not consider a more balanced deployment of your fleet and ask for a breakdown of both the hard costs and as importantly, the supposed soft costs. These soft costs can be very hard on your bottom line!

If you have any of the following scenarios in your workplace, then take note:

• Multiple users spread across a large site or geography e.g. multiple floors, buildings or departments.
• An office using a centralised print room or single copier(s) to fulfil the needs of all staff.
• Individuals within your workplace that have high print volume requirements, particularly in large batches or one-off print runs.

 A balanced deployment is the right mix of large central machines to process large print jobs cost effectively and smaller distributed machines to maintain the productivity of the general office environment.

By using the results of the assessment, needs and POC analysis, along with the balanced deployment framework, a managed print solution can be designed that factors in the following:

• Hardware requirements based on actual printing behaviours, including both individual and departmental demands, that supports a total ownership model.
• Document management workflows that are mapped from input (scan) to output (print). This is a particularly relevant step given the current challenges faced in supporting employees print and scan requirements when working from home.
• Potential print “hotspots”. A balanced deployment will avoid over-usage of devices and boost staff productivity through reducing walk time and wait time at devices.
• Single points of failures. By centralising the imaging fleet, the risk of down-time and over reliance on a limited numbers of devices are increased.
• Automated supplies replenishment and billing that ensures direct provision of consumables based on actual printing levels and demand.

3. Look past the cost-per-page

Forget cost per page. Forget single prices. Forget this one-dimensional approach to assessing the cost of printing to your business.

Start thinking about value. Start to contrast and compare. Start to put the prices you are quoted into some kind of context.

I was recently introduced to Simon Bowen’s work and he captures this scenario of price vs value perfectly in his Power of the Bell Curve model. I’m not going to do Simon’s work justice, so you should seek out his brilliant mind models, but below is how I believe this is relevant in terms of Balanced Deployment.

This example is given in the context of print and document workflow being an important part of your business processes.

Cheap – There is nothing the matter with cheap, if that’s what you know you are getting and it fulfils what you need.

Common – A commoditised approach that delivers no customisation, but an off the shelf and generic offer.

Tailoring – A solid product and service that delivers a solution but not necessarily with the customer at its core.

Bespoke – As Simon explains, this is specifically built for the customer, from the ground up

To be frank, at Brother we can offer all four of these models depending on the requirements. But if you have an interest in your business’s productivity, overall P&L and understand the impact of soft costs such as (loss of) time and productivity, then be sure to ask past the CPP conversation and look at the total picture; ask to have all options explained, ranging from the “Basic” to “Built for you”.

Jesper Olsson has done further analysis on the hard cost of printing in his article, “Digging the archives. Cost of printing”.

The data highlights that…the visible hard costs (hardware, consumables, maintenance, paper and power) only typically represent 10%.

The ways in which the document is captured, stored, distributed and accessed, as well as the end users time, interacting with the imaging devices, represents 75% of the costs; it is critical, therefore, that you spend time discussing, understanding and analysing the impact of those visible hard costs on your “invisible” soft costs.

Conclusion

One size rarely, if ever, fits all. The aim should be to have a distributed network of imaging devices, just like you do toilets, that allows easy access and availability for all employees.

The next time you consider replacing your existing print and scan estate, take the time to understand the end to end process. This can be helped by conducting an assessment and POC, analysing how your products and services are deployed, and looking at more than just the hard costs and asking yourself – what value is this technology and vendor bringing to my organisation.

It is time to rethink the way we print.

For more information on Balanced Deployment click here - https://www.dhirubhai.net/smart-links/AQFjSM_b7C6wmw

 For more information on Brother Managed Print Services click here - https://www.dhirubhai.net/smart-links/AQEJico69JPImA