Southern Maryland Printers

In today’s work environment, expenses rarely go unchecked. It is very common for a department of a company to be required to create monthly or quarterly expense reports. However, tracking printing costs can be quite the task. Therefore, many companies simply lump the expense in with other various office costs such as supplies or furniture. Although this may seem like the easiest way to complete expense reports, it may also be the most expensive.

Print management software is an easy way to control, monitor and report the printing done by your company. Not only will your monthly reports be made simple, but you will become more aware of where your budget is spent. You will also be able to use access controls to limit printing to certain departments and set up defaults to save ink and paper.

Today’s innovative print management software provides the latest techniques to help users change their printing habits and decrease their costs. The software features easy-to-use interfaces that can be used with nearly any multifunction device, even if on a network. You can even be sent notification reports when your printers are down or low on toner. This will help your office run more efficiently.

Quarterly, monthly, or even weekly reporting is made very easy with print management software. Authorized users merely log in to the software using a pin code or password to access the reports. When installing your software, you will set it up for your needs. Therefore, reports can be printed with the touch of a single button.

Never again will you have to worry about expense reports. By utilizing print management software, you will be able to spend your time working on more important things, rather than trying to collect data on your company’s printing habits. To set up print management software in your office, be sure to contact us today!

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Unmanaged office printing can easily consume up to 3% of annual revenues according to the Gartner group. Therefore, if you are searching for an area to trim your company’s overhead, your print environment is a great place to start. To control and reduce this expense there are a few strategies you can integrate.

Consolidate Devices

If you look around your office there are probably areas that have a laser printer, a copier and a fax machine sitting right next to each other. This presents a great cost-saving opportunity. Each of these devices has a separate cost of operation that comes from stocking unique supplies, supporting the network, handling repairs and service and electricity. With today’s skyrocketing energy costs, it is possible that it actually costs more to power your devices than it costs to put supplies in the devices!

You can combine devices with multifunction systems that print, copy, fax and scan in a single unit. These reliable systems can handle applications from desktops to workgroups to departments. Consolidating devices with multifunction systems could provide instant and long-term cost reduction for your organization.

Re-Route Print Jobs

Some of your printing devices are less expensive to operate than others. For the most part, high-volume networked systems have a lower operational cost than smaller desktop devices. While desktop devices may be necessary for productivity or privacy reasons, larger print jobs could easily be routed to network devices to reduce costs.

New software makes it easy to re-route print jobs automatically. You can assess your basic needs and set routing rules. For example, print jobs over 20 pages could be sent to a networked multifunction system. The end user would simply print their job exactly like they normally would. However, with this software a pop up window would let them know that their job was routed to the workgroup device as a cost-saving strategy. Applying print routing to your organization could create cost savings of 30% or more.

Outsource Print Management

Office printing costs expand well beyond the cost of printer supplies. When considering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of office printing, you need to include several additional costs:

· Purchasing requisitions for printer supplies, parts and repairs

· Inventory costs for printer supplies

· Shrinkage costs for stolen supplies

· Support costs for printer issues

· Power costs

By outsourcing Print Management to professionals, you can reduce costs and improve the productivity of your IT department. Managed Print Services programs can provide a variety of options to control the costs of your print environment. continue reading...

Most multifunction systems today come equipped with advanced access controls. Despite having a large breadth in functions, these controls are actually very easy to use. Plus, by monitoring print usage, you can reduce your costs greatly by supervising usage by department, work group, or even individuals.

Access controls work in conjunction with the security features of your multifunction to set up PIN codes or card-access for desired users. By requiring every user to log in to the multifunction, you can get a clear report on how the device is being used. You can also set authorizations based on access groups. For example, you may want your Marketing Department to have access to color printing, but feel it would be unnecessary for the Sales Department. With access controls, you can minimize unnecessary color printing and reduce your costs.

Effective print monitoring also allows you to create defaults for certain access groups. You can set print jobs to automatically duplex (two-sided printing) to help save paper. This is a quick and easy solution that will yield instant results.

Multifunction devices are often used as a gateway to a company’s document management system. Access controls can ensure that unauthorized users do not get into confidential documents. Just as you can dictate print capabilities, you can also select which users can retrieve or view certain files, folders or specific documents. Controlled access limits your company’s liability and encourages employee responsibility.

Print management has been made quite simple with access controls on most multifunction devices. Once the controls are set up, managing your printing expenses and security is a breeze. Plus, with easy to use interfaces, the set up process can take just a matter of minutes. continue reading...

When considering the many costs that an organization has to expend, one of the most misunderstood is that of printing costs.

The Gartner Group estimates that as much as 30% of organizations' print costs can be eliminated with simple technology solutions.

The Business World is a rapidly changing entity, and technology helps adapt to these changes quickly and will help a company keep its competitive advantage. Paper has always been an inefficient medium for conducting business processes, and recently has become a key focus for Business Process Improvement (BPI) initiatives. So what are the main reasons for a company or organization to move towards the paperless environment?

Below are the two main categories:

1. Operation Efficiency and Business Process Improvement

Using a digital repository can improve productivity. This is an obvious benefit. Any time you can reduce the time required to perform a required task, that time can be applied elsewhere. A basic online search for a customer file requires about 5 seconds. To accomplish the same information lookup with a physical file cabinet can take 10 – 25 minutes, or perhaps even days if the file is held in offsite storage. This is just for basic lookups, and not complex searches, which could take weeks if performed through the physical file system.

2. Risk Reduction

An ECM/DM system allows for the backup of critical files. What would happen to an organization if their file room was destroyed by a fire or flood? Business Continuity Planning is a critical theme today, allowing an organization to insure that a disaster of any kind will not bring business to a halt. Scanning paper files provides the ability to backup and restore key business documentation. continue reading...

Document costs increase every year thanks to the growing volume of information. These costs include everything from printing and copying to the infrastructure needed to store and retrieve critical information.

Recent research by InfoTrends found that overall expenditures on documents were 6% of annual revenues.

Fortunately there are several practical strategies for medium and small businesses you can employ to reduce your document costs:

Multifunction Systems

New workgroup multifunction systems can provide full color printing, copying, faxing, and scanning services in one device.

Multifunction systems are less expensive to operate than laser printers especially when it comes to color output. These systems operate on low cost-per-page agreements that include supplies, preventative maintenance, and on-site service. The net result is lower output costs.

Printer Management

In many offices, 80% of document output is attributed to printing. A recent study by Hewlett-Packard showed that a properly-managed printing environment can cut printing costs by 8-42. The first step is to understand your actual printing expense.

There are many businesses that will assess the actual usage information in the printers on your network. With this information they can make recommendations about which devices will give you the lowest cost of operation.

Document Management

Electronic Document Management technologies (EDMS) have incoming documents scanned and securely stored for later processing or retrieval in your network. An EDMS provides a central digital repository for scanned paper and other computer files.

The net result is increased productivity with lower overhead expenses.

Your company’s budget can benefit from electronic document management and other document management services. Streamline your business processes and customize your printer fleet to reduce your output costs.

Southern Solutions offers document and network management solutions to Southern Maryland, including Chesapeake Beach, North Beach, St. Inigoes, St. Mary's City, Scotland, Tall Timbers and Valley Lee. continue reading...