What is a Print Assessment ?
A print assessment is an evaluation of your current printer fleet and printing environment. What devices are in your current environment? How old are they? How many impressions is each clocking? What is your total color count vs total B&W count? Which users are printing the most volume?
How a Print Assessment Works
The process requires virtually no effort on the part of the business being assessed. To give you a better understanding of what exactly is involved in one, let me explain the steps Barlop follows when doing a print assessment on any business.
We Barlop’s Data Collection Agent (DCA) called Print Audit Infinite Device Management which sits on your server or dedicated computer reports meter reads, supply levels, and how many pages are being printed on each device. The DCA runs silently in the background tracking what each user (employee of your business) sends to the printer. Print Audit can’t read the contents of any of the print jobs, it simply tracks the number of jobs sent to each network printer and data about each print job such as the number of pages, black and white vs color, was the print job duplexes vs single sided, and if it was scanned, printed, copied or faxed. We provide you with access to a program as well so if you so you see exactly what is
The assessment runs for 90 days to get a true baseline of your current print environment.
After we have the 90 days of data, we will provide you with a detailed report of the printing currently being done in your business. What the device is costing you, which ones you should replace for a lower cost of operation device, which one you should remove completely. Many times, the devices you already have can be used in a new managed print arrangement – if you have equipment that works, your MPS partner can incorporate that equipment into the plan. This can decrease costs because you don’t have to buy or lease another piece of equipment. It comes down to what brands the managed partner can service and if the machine is expected to last for all or part of the agreement term.
What does your Company Get Out of a Print Assessment?
With the information gathered in a print assessment, you have many opportunities to improve your organizational efficiency and reduce overall printing and paper related costs.
Some of the common benefits & opportunities we discover with our clients are:
Consolidate your printer fleet.
Reduce printing costs
Identify opportunities for process improvement.
Change user’s expensive printing habits with Rules-Based Printing.
Improve efficiency
Unify billing
Control printing activities
Save paper, ink, and resources
Consolidate your printer fleet. After conducting a print assessment Barlop’s Managed Print Specialists are able to determine which of your devices are doing the bulk of the work and which devices aren’t worth their operating, lease or servicing costs. When are able to asses and look at the entire print fleet as a whole, Barlop is able to lower your costs by consolidating printers and copiers into lower cost per copy devices that are strategically located to balance your total organizational print volume across the most cost-effective combination of devices. Many times, the devices you already have can be used in a new managed print arrangement – if you have equipment that works, we can incorporate that equipment into the plan.
Identify opportunities for process improvement. The information discovered by a print assessment can also help us discover inefficient processes that maybe creating overhead costs that can be avoided.
An example is discovering the receptionist is printing over 5x the volume of our highest user. After implementing a document management software to automate the process the total printing volume decreased by over a thousand pages per month.
Change user’s expensive printing habits with Rules-Based Printing. After completing the assessment, additional software and rules can be enabled that will create either “soft” or “hard” rules for users. Some common rules include limiting printing to black and white unless user has a password, and printing double sided instead of one sided.
