All businesses are examining expenses and looking at how they can cut costs. Printing and document solutions is one such cost – but it can be hard to work out how to streamline.

As with IT, data and telephony, it’s important to bring in the experts to conduct a thorough audit. An audit will provide your business with analysis of where you are now and reveal where improvements can be made.

The key objectives are to identify areas that can be streamlined, show where steps can be removed from a task function and where costs and print wastage can be reduced, and to ensure staff are maximising the available technology.

2) Control and monitor print costs

As with toll calls and internet usage, having control over your in-house printing is important. Document technology and software can now identify which departments and individuals using printer/s, what they are printing and the relevant costs. Software (as an add-on or within multi-functional printers (MFPs)) can identify all these costs, and individuals and departments can then be given a project-based or monthly budget.

3) Restrict functions

An MFP can restrict certain functions according to user groups or for specific individuals. For example, only the marketing department or the communications manager may have access to colour, to ensure internal documents are produced in black and white. Restrictions of this type ensure that the business won’t have unnecessary costs associated with colour printing.

4) Adopt duplex printing

Duplex printing (printing on both sides of a sheet of paper and programmable through the MFP) will reduce a company’s paper consumption and wastage. It is a key initiative not only from an environmental standpoint but also for business sustainability, in reducing total paper costs. In conjunction, it’s beneficial to have a paper recycling box in the office.

5) Switch to electronic document management

Many businesses have costs associated with document storage. Physical storage can be expensive, and it can be cumbersome to source a document stored offsite. Often the process is not a good use of staff time.

Electronic document management provides a medium in which documents are scanned, stored electronically and retrieve through the MFP and document software.

Documents can be given key identifying data such as customer number, subject title and date. The documents can be retrieved from secure storage within the MFP or online. Once the document is located it can be automatically emailed or printed.

Businesses that move to electronic storage and retrieval find significant improvements in staff efficiency, productivity and cost reduction.

6) Streamline workflow and communications

Administration takes up valuable time: the preparation of regular communications, distribution of meeting notes, sending out staff memoranda or general communications. The regular physical distribution of communication costs also adds up.

Document technology can streamline jobs and reduces task-times and costs. Documents can be scanned into an MFP, and through a pre-set distribution group (such as sales, service, management or marketing) the communication can be automatically sent from the MFP.

Individual departments can be set up as a user group, with a tailored button on the MFP to access the relevant email addresses. Communications can be scanned into the MFP and through one button the user group will receive the communication via email. This negates the need for an administrator to scan the documents to their email address then load in the recipient data from their own PC.

7) Bring outsourced material in-house

One area always reviewed in an audit is the amount of material that is outsourced. Customer invites, posters, board reports, financial reports, direct marketing and proposals are some areas, and the cost of outsourcing this print work can be considerable.

Some print jobs require the expertise of a commercial printer, but all business-related print work should be looked at as something that may be printed in-house. Office print technology using the MFP has sophisticated and high-quality finishing options, and can tackle anything from booklets to banners.

8) Invest in training

Using your existing document technology to its full capacity is critical in ensuring your business is achieving optimum productivity. It is a good idea to give staff full training, and refresher courses as needed, to enable them to use all MFP and document technology functions, therefore streamlining work. Often just one or two training sessions are all that’s needed.