The value of the multifunction copier

Document Managers Operations Center

How many desktop printers are you juggling?

Many companies purchase a multifunction copier to reduce inefficiency and cost. The unit facilitates these advantages in several ways:

In comparison to desktop printer cartridges, supply-inclusive copier maintenance contracts most often provide an economical solution for office printing needs.
Many multifunction units allow for the programming of user codes so that management can control printing, copying, scanning and faxing down to the employee level. These codes also facilitate the mapping of printing costs to individual departments.
Paper usage is drastically reduced because each employee is not using their own desktop printing device.

Let’s look at one example of a department’s misuse of desktop printing devices.

Company X – Case Study

Company X has 250 employees working on 4 floors of an office building. Each of these employees has a personal color InkJet or LaserJet printer in their office. Half of these employees also have a personal fax machine and the company uses a total of 5 high speed scanners to scan documents to their network drive.

The problem

The company is spending roughly $200 per month per employee to accommodate desktop printing. This totals $600K in annual printer cartridge expenses alone. The cartridges for the fax machines account for on average $50 per employee per month, while the service contract negotiated for their scanners is $2500 per year.

Previous Annual Costs

Printer Cartridges	$600,000
Periodic printer replacement	$5,000
Fax Cartridges	$150,000
Periodic fax replacement	$1,500
Scanner Maintenance	$2,500
Total Annual Costs	$759,000

Current Annual Costs

Copier Lease Agreement (4 units)	$18,000
Copier Maintenance Agreement (4 units)	$7,200
Total Annual Costs	$25,200

This company enjoyed a 96.68% decrease in annual printing costs.

the solution

Document Managers provided this company with 4 medium-volume multifunction copiers to outfit each floor of their office. The units produced moderate speeds of 65 pages per minute to accommodate a smooth logistical transition from desktop printing to networked printing. The units also came equipped with fax and scan capability.

The DM team worked with the company’s management to assign print volumes and user codes to each of its employees, which helped encourage employees to be more responsible when printing documents (i.e. duplex printing, determining the necessity of having the document printed, etc.). Further, the company was prepared to allocate printing costs to each department based on their actual usage of the machine.

To facilitate the printing of confidential documents, Document Managers trained the company to use a feature that would allow employees to send a print job but not have the job actually run through the machine until that employee arrived at the unit to enter their user code.