As a business owner, one of your goals is always to maximize your return on investment. It doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money for very little. However, most business owners look at ROI in terms of marketing or product manufacturing. They don’t look at ROI for smaller costs, such as office supplies and equipment. However, if you look into your copier and printer fleets, you may find that you are spending more money here than you should be.
That’s where Common Sense Business Solutions comes in. We can help you understand your copier and printer costs verses your needs and create a strategy to improve your ROI.
Conducting a Print Assessment
The first step to maximizing your ROI for your copier fleet is to fully understand your costs. What have you invested so far? What are your anticipated expenses?
Conducting a print assessment shouldn’t be too difficult. The first step is to determine what printer and copier equipment and supplies you have. Typically, this means simply making a list of the equipment you’re using, but you may also want to include equipment you have in storage. Next, look at what you spend on supplies. You may be able to look at your monthly supply purchases to determine your investment in paper and ink. Third, look at the amount of maintenance expenses you’ve had over the past several years. You can use this information to determine your average yearly maintenance costs.
You may also want to assess your overall print volume. What are you printing? How much do you typically print in a day? Is all of this printing and copying necessary? Are there specific departments or users who print/copy more than others? Most printers and copiers keep usage logs that you can use to easily gather this information.
In addition to determining your copier needs and calculating your average monthly/yearly usage, this assessment may help you see where you can improve your overall costs by changing your policies.
Implementing Print Management Strategies
With your assessment findings in hand, you can sit down and create new print management strategies that focus on reducing costs without reducing productivity or efficiency. Perhaps you don’t need to print off a hardcopy of every invoice or record. In some cases, creating digital files may save you a good amount of money. You may be able to share digital files instead of creating printouts. You could start offering customers email receipts or documents instead of automatically printing them. You may even find that you’re buying multiple color printers when you don’t print in color that often.
User or department quotas are another option, although you do want to be careful implementing these restrictions. If a user truly does need to print a large number of documents every month, placing a quota on their account could impact their work. Be certain that you’re not limiting your employees too much.
Finally, you can encourage good print habits such as printing documents double-sided whenever possible. You can also ask users to print documents in draft mode if they don’t need to be high-quality. In many cases, text can still easily be read if printed in the lower-quality draft mode. The amount of toner you can save by using this print option adds up. These cost reduction techniques often have little or no impact on your team’s daily operations but do result in significant savings.
Choosing the Right Equipment
Now that you know what your average monthly print volume is and how much you use in supplies, it’s time to look at your equipment. Are the printers and copiers you currently have meeting your print needs? Could you boost your productivity if you had newer equipment that printed faster or had features your current copiers don’t have?
If the answer to this question is yes, it’s time to look at your options. You could go out and buy new printers, but there are a few drawbacks to this. First, you have to spend a good amount of money upfront for the new equipment. You may not have this in your budget, plus it’s a significant investment. Second, you still have your old equipment. What do you do with it? It can be difficult to find a buyer for old printers, so your only option may be to junk it or take it to a electronics recycling center.
A better option is to consider leasing new copiers through CSBS. Leasing has many benefits, including no upfront payment, budget-friendly monthly payments, and the inclusion of regular maintenance, emergency repairs, and even toner. You will always know how much your monthly printer costs will be, plus you can upgrade to a newer machine at any time. You won’t be stuck with any outdated equipment, nor will you have to worry if a copier goes down. We’ll get it replaced ASAP so your office can continue working without delays.
Optimizing Printer Settings
We can also help you optimize your printer settings to improve your ROI. For example, you may want to set your default setting to print double-sided to have on paper. This can instantly cut your paper usage in half, and in most cases, it won’t affect anything. You may have some documents that have to be printed one-sided, but those who print these documents can easily temporarily change the setting.
As mentioned above, changing the default to draft mode is another great way to reduce your toner usage without affecting anything. Some printers and copiers also have toner saver mode that automatically reduces the amount of toner used. In many cases, people won’t notice the difference. Again, if someone needs to print in high quality, they can always override the quality setting.
When you lease one of our copiers, regular maintenance is included. We’ll come out and clean your copiers, check for wear and tear, and make any necessary changes to ensure the machine continues to function properly while minimizing the risk of breakdowns.
Benefits of Effective Fleet Management
With effective copier and printer fleet management, you’ll see your return on investment increase. Let’s recap some of the benefits of leasing copiers and printers:
- Your costs are reduced since maintenance, toner, and repairs are included in the lease.
- You don’t have to worry about the high upfront cost of buying printers and copiers.
- You know your monthly cost, and that cost will not change.
- You can upgrade at any time, and you don’t have to worry about dealing with old equipment.
- You can slowly add leased machines to your office as the copiers you own break down or become obsolete.
- There’s very little downtime – we replace your copiers as soon as possible if there’s an issue.
Reach Out to CSBS Today to Learn About Copier Leasing in Sonoma County
If you’re ready to maximize your ROI without losing any efficiency or productivity, leasing new copiers and printers from CSBS is a great place to start. Even if you’re currently leasing your equipment, we may be able to offer you better options. Reach out today to learn more.
