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. continue reading...

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. continue reading...

By Marlene Orr, Senior Printer Analyst, June 8, 2010

HP kicked off Internet Week NYC with a news conference broadcast live via the Web. Appropriately, the theme was harnessing the power of the Internet to customize and simplify the printing experience. In his introduction, Vyomesh Joshi (VJ), president of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, noted that since the advent of Web 2.0, there has been an explosion in the amount of available content on the Web. In fact, HP's research shows that by next year, Internet printing will surpass printing from word processing programs.

VJ said that while creating the content has become easier (think of the countless social networking and photo-sharing Web sites), capturing and printing that content has not always been so easy.

Addressing the shift last year, HP introduced its first Web-connected printer (the Photosmart Premium All-in-One), which let users download software to the AiO so they could access and print Web content from the control panel. Since then, the company has paid close attention to customer behavior, learning that about 70 percent of users downloaded applications to allow them to capture and print content without turning on their PC. 

To keep up with what it says is a growing customer need, HP will Web-connect every new HP printer with a purchase price greater than $99. But it’s not just about the software applications anymore. Cloud printing (untethered/wireless printing, whereby data is sent over the Internet to a selected printer) is nothing new, but HP is taking it to the next level by allowing users to print from mobile devices with no additional software or drivers required. As VJ said, “If you can e-mail it, you can print it.” With ePrint technology, users can print a document by using nothing more than the resident e-mail program on a device to send it to the printer. So, not only can users download apps to access and print content without turning on their PCs, they can now print from mobile devices (like smart phones and tablet PCs) that have traditionally had inherent limitations to printing. continue reading...

All too often, we hear and even use terms assuming others know exactly what we mean. One term used in the document industry is workflow- but what does it mean?

According to Wikipedia

A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations...

The flow being described often refers to a document that is being transferred from one step to another.

A workflow is a model to represent real work for further assessment, e.g., for describing a reliably repeatable sequence of operations. More abstractly, a workflow is a pattern of activity enabled by a systematic organization of resources, defined roles and mass, energy and information flows, into a work process that can be documented and learned. Workflows are designed to achieve processing intents of some sort, such as physical transformation, service provision, or information processing. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow ) continue reading...