Every small and medium-sized organization in Ontario wants to find ways in which they can cut down costs and increase their profits. Did you know that cutting down on your office printing costs can help you do exactly that?
It’s easy for office-based employees to take printers for granted when printing documents. Without the implementation of a printing policy in your office to guide your employees, there’s a good chance that your print volumes and costs are out of control.
Thankfully, by making a few adjustments to your company’s printing methods you can significantly reduce how much money you are spending on unnecessary and wasteful printing costs.
To give you a hand, OT Group has listed ten actionable ways that you can reduce the cost of printing in your office:
1. Print double-sided when possible
The average office worker in the US prints 10,000 sheets of paper every single year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s a huge amount of paper, and it’s incredibly unlikely that all of those pieces of paper will be used to send to clients or for any other professional capacity.
For printed documents that will be used individually by employees or internally within your organization, why not encourage your staff to print using your printer’s double-sided option. If your company uses double-sided printing, your total amount of printed paper will be reduced by a whopping 50 percent.
You will still be using the same amount of ink, and we know that’s the real cost of printing, but saving money on wasted paper is a good start.
2. Buy or rent the right printer for your specific requirements
What type of printer is the most cost effective in an office? Should I purchase or lease my organization’s printer? Should I look for a specific brand or model? Choosing a printer for your business isn’t as easy as it sounds, and you will have a plethora of questions before you make your decision.
To make the correct printer decision you should look at how often you use your printer, what type of printing you require and what the ongoing cost will be for your business. Also weigh up the choice between laser or inkjet carefully. Ink cartridges cost less than laser toner, but they run out quicker.
For more advice on choosing the right printer for your business needs, as well as deciding whether to buy or rent, please read these blogs:
- Should my Business Purchase or Lease a Printer? The Pros and Cons
- Best Home Office Printer: 5 Things to Consider for Remote Workers
3. Alway use print preview before printing
A 2016 survey from Statistics Brain, titled ‘How Much Paper is Used in One Day?’, found that 70 percent of the total waste in offices is made up of paper - and as much as 30 percent of print jobs are never even picked up from the printer.
Even worse, 45 percent of printed paper ends up in the garbage by the end of the day. That means companies are wasting a huge amount of money on printed documents that they don’t even use.
To save money on your printing costs, encourage your employees to select ‘print preview’ before printing their documents. This allows them to check exactly what pages they are printing, what is on each page and whether they really need them. Asking your employees to ‘think before they print’ will ensure that your business cuts down on expensive printing mistakes and unnecessary printing.
4. Use digital forms where possible
Just as all of the documents that you print internally are not necessary, neither are most of the documents that you print for your clients. Reducing printing costs may require your business to make a shift away from conducting paper-based business with your clients.
Instead, why not create some new processes in which your employees conduct client paperwork digitally instead of physically. Not only will the use of digital document signing platforms, such as DocuSign, help you cut down on printing costs, it’s actually a far easier and more efficient way for your clients to receive, sign and send documents back to your organization.
5. Partner with an expert to ensure you aren’t paying more than you should for colour printing
Did you know that most colour printing service plans are charging your organization the same amount of money for one dot of colour on your printed page as it costs to print a page that is entirely in colour?
That’s because most outsourced printing providers don’t have any way of monitoring your colour ink usage. Instead, they charge you for colour ink every time it is used on your page - even if it’s only for a tiny logo used as a header for your documents.
You can significantly reduce printing costs by partnering with an expert that doesn’t do this. OT Group, for example, has its unique Colour-Coded Pricing Plan that uses innovative colour tracking technology to ensure companies only pay for the colour toner that they actually use.
6. Print in black and white as much as possible
The cost per click for printing in colour can be as much as eight times the cost of printing in just black and white, and not only that but the printer will also require more power to print. Where possible, try to print in black and white as much as possible. It doesn't make sense for your team to print basic administrative documents in colour when black and white will suffice.
7. Proofread your documents before you print
Print waste largely comes down to one issue, what is printed on the piece of paper isn't what the employee expected. Maybe an image was too large, maybe the text was too small or perhaps there was a typo somewhere on the document. By simply using the :print preview" feature to proofread documents before they are printed, your organizations can save a significant amount of paper and ink waste.
8. Print two pages on one sheet of paper
When it comes to the vast majority of printing, most employees print documents on one side of paper. While this may be essential for more formal documents, for other documents printing on each side of the piece of paper is more than good enough. Just by taking encouraging your team to take this simple action, your business can cut its paper use by half.
9. Scan where possible
Does your entire team need physical, printed copies of the same document? In most cases, digital copies can be provided to your team to save the use of paper and ink. Rather than printing multiple documents and giving your team physical copies, simply scan your document and email it directly to the team members who need it.
10. Use economical fonts
It may seem like a minor issue, but donts play a huge role in the amount of ink your business uses. There are a number of fonts that use more ink to print, and therefore increase the cost of your printing services. In fact, Arial, which is set as the default option for most documents, uses more ink than others.
To save ink when printing and cut business costs, select more economical fonts such as New Roman, Ecofont or Century Gothic.
Are you interested in learning more about how your business can save money on unnecessary printing costs, or how you can scale back on colour ink costs with our innovative colour printing service? Contact OT Group today. We would love to answer any questions that you may have.
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