According to Gartner, companies are recognizing that “paper and printers represent a huge opportunity to save money…the last bastion of untapped savings.” Moreover, the long stagnant imaging and printer market has experienced tremendous growth over the past two years. Recent trends dictate the following:

• Convergence technologies: the market is shifting from analog to digital technologies and to color and enterprise-class multifunction devices (MFPs)
• Printing growth: the Internet has created an explosion in the number of print jobs generated by users
• Users: 7 out of 10 users still prefer hard copy documents over electronic format
• Increasing costs: 1%-3% of a company's revenue is spent on printing; typically more than on R&D
• Balanced deployment: companies are reconsidering traditional output fleet strategies in favor of consolidated, multi-function platforms that offer network printing, copying, scanning, faxing and digital sending in a single device, thereby reducing inventory.
  
  

Based on a recent article published in the Wall Street Journal, Bank of America was able to slash its fleet of devices from one printer to every two employees to just one printer or copier for every seven employees. It trimmed annual printing costs by $7 million. Reducing the printer fleet was part of a larger initiative that has reduced the bank's consumption of paper by 1.1 billion sheets, or 5,746 tons, between 2000 and 2003.

Because most companies have no idea how much they’re spending on hardcopy production, savvy IS decision-makers are engaging the services of a consulting organization to conduct an output fleet assessment. While most vendors focus on consolidation strategies, HP and SIGMAnet employ a balanced deployment methodology, understanding that companies require a mixture of both local printers and network-attached devices, including MFPs.

SIGMAnet’s output fleet assessment methodology combines HP’s best practices as the global leader in printing solutions, with a quantitative process that includes:

• Inventory data collection of printers and copiers, local and network-attached
• Review and analysis of toner and service spend data
• Capture of page count meter data – from a sampling of devices or all devices - based on customer objectives
• Interviews with key business units and power users to discover objectives and pain points with hardcopy production
• Total cost of ownership calculations based on pages printed, maintenance requirements, age of device, power consumption, space (real estate) requirements, functional specifications, and utilization levels
• Delivery & presentation of a Balanced Deployment Technology Proposal with rightsizing recommendations to achieve maximum cost savings
  
  

Contact us today to learn how SIGMAnet can help you reduce TCO and maximize ROI on your output fleet environment!