Posted by Susan Quinn on Tue, May 15, 2012 @ 05:00 AM
Researching barcode printers can be a headache. But don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. If you just focus on a few key considerations, you can find the right technology without wasting long hours in product evaluation. Here are a few factors to keep in mind.
1. Maintenance costs. You’ll no doubt start your search by setting a price range and looking for models that fall within it. But don’t stop there. Be sure to also consider the costs of maintaining each printer.
What will new ribbons cost? What types of labels will each printer require? How often will print heads need replacing? Ask your printer vendor for estimates of these line items. And be prepared to make a business case to your decision-makers so that they’ll be willing to authorize a relatively expensive printer that has considerably lower ongoing maintenance costs.
2. Thermal printing. There’s a whole world out there beyond inkjet and laser printers. Many manufacturers continue to rely on “old-school” thermal printing technology for printing barcodes – and with good reason. Thermal printers can produce durable, smudge-resistant output. When you choose the right thermal printer and maintain it properly, you can expect reliable performance that helps minimize chargebacks.
3. Access to scalable fonts. New to the concept of scalable fonts? The idea is actually quite simple: their shape, but not their size, is pre-defined. As a result, they can produce characters at any scale – hence the name.
Scalable fonts offer several clear benefits. They allow you greater flexibility. They preserve the clarity of each character at any size. They also enable you to make the most out of your printer’s resolution. The best thermal printers will offer access to several dozen scalable fonts.
By finding a printer that meets these criteria, you can:
- Minimize printing errors.
- Maximize the scannability and durability of your barcode labels.
- Avoid hefty fines from retailers.
- Control ongoing printer maintenance costs.
- Reduce the burden on your IT staff.
To learn about all five of Source Technologies’ purchase criteria – including the three-letter acronym you should absolutely be looking for in your new printer’s technical specs – download our free white paper: “Buying Guide: How to Assess the True Cost of a Barcode Printer.”
Posted by Susan Quinn on Tue, May 08, 2012 @ 05:30 AM
We hardly need to remind you that your next barcode printer will be much more than just another office machine. In fact, due to the increasing threat of chargebacks from retailers, your new barcode printer could help make or break your company’s profitability.
Of course, there’s more to think about than simply avoiding chargebacks. In fact, faulty barcodes can cause a ripple effect through your organization, wasting the time and resources of several departments.
What Chargebacks Do to Your Employees
Who feels the fallout from bad barcodes?
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IT. When a retailer calls and alerts your company that your latest shipment of products had unscannable barcodes, your IT department will probably be the first to take the blame. They’ll check the printers used and run tests to see if they can determine the nature of the problem. But they’ll probably be wasting their time – most often, barcode issues aren’t the result of printer error, but rather, a matter of using the wrong printer for the job.
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Vendor relations staff. Your vendor relations team will be at Ground Zero. They’ll need to keep their wits about them as they calm down retailers who have been affected by bad barcodes. In the days that follow, they’ll have to spend extra hours on the phone repairing relationships with your leading retailers.
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Legal team. As we’ve mentioned, many retailers nowadays are responding to barcode problems by issuing chargebacks. But if the damage is bad enough, a retailer may actually sue a manufacturer for the financial damages caused by delayed product releases and lost sales.
How to Make the Right Choice
In spite of the potential impact of chargebacks – and in spite of all the departments whose lives can be made more difficult by barcode problems – your company’s leadership is probably putting pressure on you to select the most cost-effective barcode printer possible. With stakes this high, how can you make the right decision?
Compu-Call can help. Find out how in our free white paper: “Buying Guide: How to Assess the True Cost of a Barcode Printer.”
Posted by Susan Quinn on Tue, May 01, 2012 @ 05:00 AM
If you’ve been in the manufacturing business for long enough, you can probably remember when the cost of a faulty barcode was simply several hours or days of inconvenience. But today, the stakes are higher.
It all started when the first retailers began issuing chargebacks to manufacturers who shipped products with damaged or inaccurate barcodes. The practice has caught on over the past 15 to 20 years – to the point that it’s now commonplace.
Why All the Chargebacks?
Put yourself in a retailer’s shoes for a moment: They order a shipment of your product. They’ve promised consumers that the product will be on store shelves by May 1. But when your shipment arrives, unclear barcodes prevent items from being scanned properly.
Now, the retailer must announce to disappointed consumers that there has been a delay. And they must spend time communicating with your staff to determine what should be done about the faulty barcodes. Should they ship the products back? Stick properly printed labels over the bad barcodes? Either way, they’re looking at unexpected delays and expenses.
So, the retailer takes steps to set things right. They decide to charge you for the cost of shipping the products back to you so that you can replace the barcode labels. And they hit you with a hefty chargeback.
How hefty? Well, that depends on the retailer.
What Chargebacks Can Do to Your Margins
In early 2010, Walmart informed its suppliers that as of February 1, 2010, it would be enforcing a new Supply Chain Reliability Program. The bottom line was that any goods that didn’t arrive and get checked into Walmart’s system within a certain predetermined delivery window would incur a chargeback for the supplier equal to 3% of the cost of goods sold. (And yes, barcode problems can certainly prevent items from getting checked into the system.)
And then there’s British retailer TESCO – another industry giant – which, according to Webscan, fines £40,000 per chargeback incident and returns merchandise at the manufacturer’s expense. Penalties like these really add up. According to a commonly cited statistic from the National Chargebacks Management Group (NCMG), chargebacks typically reduce a manufacturer’s annual revenue by 2 to 10 percent.
Don’t Cut Corners on Your Next Barcode Printer Solution
Given consequences like these, why skimp on barcode solutions? It’s fair to say that a low-end barcode printer can actually cost you more than a sophisticated model in the long run. If you’re ready to explore your thermal printing options and find high-quality barcode solutions, Compu-Call can help. Give us a call at 1 508 699 0400. Or, click here to download our recently published white paper, ‘How to Assess the True Cost of a Barcode Printer’.
Posted by Matt Girard on Tue, Jun 21, 2011 @ 06:00 AM
Compu-Call and Source Technologies Enter Expanded Partnership
Click here to download!
Charlotte, NC, August 23, 2011 – Source Technologies, developer of world-class thermal barcode and MICR printing solutions, today announced its partnership with Compu-Call, Inc., a well-respected provider of a vast array of printing solutions that now offers thermal barcode printers from Source Technologies.
Mimi Bartholomew, Director Alliance Partnerships, Source Technologies offered this, “Compu-Call is known for their exceptional sales and service throughout the printer industry. They provide a wide range of solutions and work to understand their customers’ business before recommending and subsequently integrating a solution. They are exactly the kind of organization we’re pleased to call our partner.”
Compu-Call expressed excitement at the opportunity to represent Source Technologies’ new line of mobile and midrange thermal barcode printers which are fast becoming a major focus for Compu-Call. The printers, which represent ground breaking technology and functionality, present a tremendous opportunity for the company and their VARs to further differentiate amidst a very competitive market. Compu-Call’s resellers will have access to new, leading edge thermal technology. With access to these new offerings, Compu-Call projects to increase business revenues dramatically for 2012.
“Through extending our Partnership with Source Technologies, we’re essentially adding innovative thermal solutions that will give us a more competitive and differentiated portfolio, intended to better equip our Resellers to meet and exceed the thermal print requirements of their customers. Additionally, this will enable our partners to enrich their value and establish incremental revenue and annuity streams for their business,” Says Matt Moylan, Chief Revenue Officer.
About Compu-Call, Inc.
Compu-Call, Inc. distributes a wide range of print offerings in software, hardware, maintenance, supplies and print management solutions. In addition to a highly professional supply chain and sales support infrastructure, the company’s core strength and focus extend beyond distribution to proactive opportunity identification and high value solution enablement. Compu-Call has been helping companies design, procure, implement, and manage the best possible print solutions for over a quarter-century. For additional information about Compu-Call services and business relationships, visit www.compucallinc.com or call 877-228-4855.
Media contact:
Carro Ford Weston
859-771-5091
carrof@earthlink.net
About Source Technologies
Celebrating 25 years of innovation, Source Technologies, an industry leader of specialized printing solutions, develops products for global markets including warehousing and distribution, finance, healthcare, transportation and logistics, and retail. Solutions include thermal barcode and receipt printers, MICR laser printers for the on-demand printing of negotiable documents, secure data printers and distribution software. Engineered for ease-of-use and reliability, our business solutions are impactful to organizations aspiring to streamline operations and increase efficiency. Experience something new: www.sourcetech.com.
Media Contact:
Laurel Ciliberti
Corporate Communications Manager
704.969.7573
lciliberti@sourcetech.com
Posted by Matt Girard on Thu, May 12, 2011 @ 05:00 AM
We’ve already discussed which benefits of virtualization apply to small and mid-market companies.
To recap, you can expect virtualization to reduce your hardware and power costs. That’s a no-brainer. When you host multiple virtual servers on a smaller number of physical servers, you’ll buy less hardware and spend less on power and cooling.
Virtualization also helps companies of all sizes provision servers more quickly, improve the productivity of their IT staffs, and free up IT resources to focus on strategic projects, rather than getting bogged down in maintenance.
But here’s one benefit you probably haven’t thought about: high availability.
How Virtualization Enables High Availability
Virtualization can do more than simply reduce 10 physical servers to three. It can also provide you with the automatic failover that leads to higher availability for all your servers.
It’s a pretty intuitive concept. If you’re running physical servers exclusively, and the physical server that’s running Microsoft Exchange goes down, then the application won’t come back online until the physical server does – or until you migrate Exchange to another physical server. Either way, your business users may be out of commission for as long as a few hours.
On the other hand, if you’re running Exchange on a virtual server, you can very quickly bring that virtual server back up on a different physical machine. The delay will be minimal for your business users, and the process will be seamless.
The Tools of the Trade
As you might have guessed, setting up this automatic failover revolves around having the right virtualization software in place. Take VMware vMotion™, for example.
vMotion technology enables you to move running virtual machines from one physical server to another with no impact to end users. Using vMotion ensures that you’ll always have an emergency plan for when physical servers crash. When you install vMotion, you set up an action plan that dictates how you want your applications to be migrated in the event of a physical server failure.
From there, vMotion works in the background to take the pulse of each of your servers. If a “heartbeat” stops because the network went down or a server stopped responding, vMotion will execute your action plan, moving your affected virtual servers to other physical servers with an eye on load balancing.
In other words, vMotion can reboot dead virtual servers onto new physical servers. There is typically only a slight “hiccup” in your business continuity.
Along with vMotion, it’s helpful to use IBM Systems Director software, as well as the Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA) technology that’s built into a wide range of IBM hardware. PFA enhances failover by serving as your crystal ball into the future performance of your servers.
As your physical servers run, PFA determines whether they’re starting to have issues with memory, CPU, fans, and the like. When trouble begins to brew, PFA sends an alert to IBM Systems Director to warn about a potential server failure. Systems Director then executes your predetermined action plan to take the affected server offline.
But before doing so, Systems Director communicates with VMware vMotion, which can initiate a graceful migration of virtual servers from one physical server to another. The result? No downtime for your business users.
The People Side
There’s one more piece to the high availability puzzle. When server failure looms, Systems Director can send an alert to the technical consulting firm that implemented your virtualization technology. It can also inform IBM that the server will need to be repaired or replaced. From there, your technology partners will spring into action to restore your systems to proper function.
Want to learn more about virtualization? Check out the following free white papers:
Posted by Mark Lennon on Tue, May 03, 2011 @ 07:00 AM
If you’ve spent any time researching virtualization, you’ve probably heard the big promises:
Save money. Save time. Minimize your IT footprint.
And some of the reported benefits are quite impressive:
- A 2008 IDC survey found that virtualization allows companies to reduce hardware costs by 20% and realize average annual cost savings of 23%.
- The same survey found that companies that have implemented advanced virtualization spend an average of $23 annually per user on IT staff, compared to $66 for companies that have not virtualized.
- According to a commonly cited statistic, virtualization can help you increase overall hardware utilization to 80-85%, with related cost savings.
- According to IBM’s David Vaughn, storage virtualization can help increase disk utilization by up to 30%.
It’s not hard to imagine how enterprises with massive server farms can benefit from virtualization. But do any of the commonly-cited benefits of virtualization actually apply to small and mid-market companies?
Five Can’t-Miss Benefits of Virtualization
At least five of the major benefits of virtualization clearly apply to companies of any size:
- Cut hardware costs. Despite the ever-falling price of hardware, it’s always a plus to avoid hardware purchases by hosting multiple virtual machines on each physical server.
- Reduce power costs. Fewer physical servers means less power used. That’s a bottom-line benefit no company would want to miss.
- Speed up server provisioning. From purchase to installation, physical servers can take weeks to deploy. Virtual servers deploy in minutes. With virtualization, any IT staff can become dramatically more responsive to the needs of the business.
- Improve IT staff productivity. As you reduce your IT footprint, you’ll also minimize the need to hire more IT headcount. If you can keep your IT-to-employee ratio favorable now, you’ll avoid the need to “optimize” it later.
- Free up IT to focus on strategic projects. With fewer physical servers to manage, your IT staff will have more time to devote to the projects that help your company grow.
Three Additional Benefits of Virtualization
Several other benefits of virtualization may or may not be applicable to small and midsized companies, depending on their situation:
- Reclaim space. For a company that’s only running 15 servers, cutting back to three servers may or may not free up significant floor. Every company's situation is unique. It could make a very meaningful difference for some companies that were running out of space for more servers.
- Avoid building out your data center. Smaller companies often have server rooms rather than data centers, and are therefore less inclined to undertake costly expansions in the first place.
- Improve business continuity and disaster recovery. Yes, smaller companies can use virtualization to help them get back up and running quickly after a disaster. Having fewer servers often makes it easier to make a business case for a higher level of disaster recovery planning for the remaining servers.
Crunch the Numbers
For enterprises that run large server farms, virtualization is almost a no-brainer from a financial standpoint. Your small or midsized company can benefit too – but before you launch a virtualization initiative, crunch the numbers. Figure out which technology will give you the fastest, most reliable return on your initial investment. And remember that once you’ve gotten started with virtualization, the technology will continue to pay dividends in the form of avoided costs in the future.
For further reading on this topic, download the free white paper titled, "Why Virtualization Matters for Small and Mid-Sized Companies".
Need help planning your virtualization strategy? We're here to help.
Posted by Mark Middendorf on Wed, Mar 02, 2011 @ 08:02 AM
Is the line matrix printer dead? To hear most IT and purchasing staff talk nowadays, you’d think so.
Many companies are questioning the value of line matrix technology. And some are planning their migration to laser.
In some ways, it’s tough to blame them. The price of laser printers continues to fall while their print quality keeps improving.
But does that mean line matrix printers are becoming obsolete? Hardly.
Three Reasons Why Line Matrix Still Matters
The truth is, line matrix printers carry the same advantages they always have. They’re notoriously reliable. They can operate effectively in harsh environments – more so than any other print technology. And they’re ideal for pre-printed and multi-part forms.
Yet, even if you use your printers exclusively in climate-controlled offices and have phased out pre-printed forms, there are three other reasons why line matrix printers may be the right choice for you:
Line matrix printers are “green.” Looking for an eco-friendly printer? When you consider energy consumption, longevity, and the impact on landfills through electronic and chemical waste, line matrix is the greenest way to print.
The fabric ink ribbon used in line matrix printers is relatively eco-friendly as compared to the fine particulate toner used by laser printers. In addition, the energy and materials used in the manufacturing of toner cartridges far exceeds that consumed in the manufacturing of ribbon cartridges.
Line matrix printers are cost-effective. One reason many fail to realize this is that toner yield has always been expressed in terms 8 ½ x 11 pages generated at 5% coverage, whereas ribbons for line printers have been rated in terms character yield. In any case, if we are to do the math, the cost per printed page is much less on a line printer, and becomes increasingly less expensive relative to laser as coverage increases. These facts are critical if you’re considering replacing your IBM 6400-series printers with laser, and demand that you consider whether laser resolution will be merited by the incremental operating expense. Increased cost of ownership aside, if your consideration to move to laser is the result of a desire to move away from pre-printed forms, and/or a need to gain more application flexibility… read on...
Leading edge Software enables new found application flexibility for Line matrix. Although the perception of limited flexibility with regard to line printing has for a long time been justified, thanks to new enterprise document management software, what was previously inconceivable is now possible. The migration away from legacy applications to ERP, WMS, or other current application systems no longer requires a shift away from line matrix.
Let’s dispel a couple of myths right now. Yes, it’s rare to see a brilliant graphical document that was printed on a line matrix printer. But that’s because the legacy applications typically used with these printers make it difficult to modify and enhance documents with graphics. Migrate to a software architecture that lets you graphically compose documents using a GUI, and you’ll be able to eliminate the cost and inflexibility of pre-printed forms, while reaping the many benefits of line matrix printing.
Using the appropriate document management software will also enable you to automate deliver of documents to digital archive, fax, email, or web in high-resolution full color as you wish, while simultaneously printing at a low cost on a line matrix machine. It’s clearly the best of both worlds.
Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again?
Now, maybe you’re one of the many who has already migrated away from line matrix. If so, it’s never too late to go back. Again, with the right document management software, input types can range from spool file data, XML, CSV, PCL, PDF, Word, or virtually any other input format, and allow for graphical and/or data manipulation, and native support for line matrix graphics language (PGL/IGP).
But if you haven’t migrated to laser yet, think hard about your next printer purchase. Assuming you have the right software architecture in place, you now have a chance to stay green, minimize business process changes and save money by upgrading to the latest line matrix technology.
Want to learn more on this subject? Download our new white paper, titled, "Line Matrix Printing: Dying Technology...or...More Relevant that Ever?!"
Posted by Mark Lennon on Wed, Dec 01, 2010 @ 10:28 AM
What does “Green IT” mean to you? For many, thoughts go immediately to energy-efficient servers, power-save modes, and other things relating to hardware in a data center. Those are all valid, but it's really the tip of the iceberg. Sustainable IT applies to many areas within an IT organization's immediate realm, but it also touches many more areas in other parts of a company, which can be made more efficient and sustainable with the help of IT-supported technologies.
The next question is, why go green? Whatever the case, it's making an impact. Companies understand that going green saves a lot of greenbacks and opens the door to a bigger pool of customers, and they are taking action. Here are some examples of green IT initiatives that are being implemented at companies right now.
Consolidate servers using virtualization software
Traditional application servers are inefficient because they are dedicated to a specific set of tasks and are probably not running all the time. This means you need lots of different servers, each of which is costly to run and to cool, uses large amounts of energy, and whose manufacture generated large environmental impacts. By contrast, server virtualization is a software technology that creates multiple virtual servers out of a single server. Because it lets you use your machines at much higher capacity, you minimize idle time and need fewer machines overall. In a big company, this can even mean fewer server facilities. Use less energy, save on equipment and operating expenses, and reduce your maintenance burden as well.
Consolidate printers through an output management initiative
Do you know how many printers you've got in your company? How much power are they using? What are they costing you in electricity, paper, and ink? If you don't already have a print output management framework in place, you probably have no way to answer these questions. That means you're really missing out on some big, green, money-saving opportunities. Getting a birds' eye view of your company's overall printing activities is the first step towards consolidating your equipment. Most printers are left on all day but are working only part of the time. Even with power-save modes, this is clearly inefficient. Instead, manage all your printing centrally and run fewer machines at high capacity.
Move from traditional PCs to “Thin Clients”
It's amazing how some really obvious things can go unnoticed for a long time. For example, why is that everyone in the whole company needs a power-sucking CPU at their desk? Why not just have a mouse, a keyboard, and a screen, and keep all the really power-thirsty parts in one central location? “Thin clients” are just that. All your storage and applications sit on a shared server that you see from a virtual desktop. This not only saves big on power usage. It also makes it much easier to centrally manage software upgrades in a coordinated fashion. And because they don't have their own CPUs or storage, thin clients won't become obsolete nearly as quickly as a regular desktop PC, and enjoy a much longer operational lifetime.
Invest in power-saving automation technologies
Your office has smart lighting that turns off when no one's in the room. Your computers have power-saving sleep modes, but those are decentralized and up to each user to set. Maybe those machines are powering down, maybe they're not. Then there are the shared work stations that no one person takes responsibility for. At any given moment, there are probably a lot of machines that are still awake with no one working at them and no critical processes running. Instead of leaving all of this up to chance, why not look at intelligent, centrally managed power-saving automation for all your equipment? Power them down automatically when it's appropriate; let them keep running when they need to.
Print Suppression: using inter/intranet, PDFs, and email to minimize printing
Back in the days of the slide-rule, people used to predict that the digital age would spell the end of paper. Until recently, most people would say, 'Boy, did they get that wrong!' For decades, the computerization of industry and the office actually resulted in much greater use of printed paper. Today, however, a combination of awareness and flexible electronic media have brought the original prediction much closer to reality.
Today, people obviously have many alternatives to printing on paper. Email, intranets, and the Internet have made it possible to share information faster and more conveniently than on paper. PDF documents offer a universally compatible format into which nearly any other format (word-processed documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) can be distilled.
Hardcopy may still be appropriate in various circumstances, but on-demand systems ensure that only as many copies as needed are printed, eliminating wasted paper. Many companies now encourage employees to use their printers' double-sided printing option, cutting daily paper consumption in half.
Electronic signatures and automated approvals loops have not only made various forms of physical paperwork (e.g., purchase requisitions) obsolete; they actually help the work happen faster. All of this saves trees, saves energy, lets you operate with fewer printers, and saves a lot of money.
Tools to increase awareness
Most people use printers without any idea how much impact and cost is being incurred with each use. How can you even start to change usage habits without some way to let people see the connection? Now you can. Moving to a print output management framework includes, among several advantages, the ability to monitor printer usage on a department and individual user level. Employees and management can see exactly how much each print job is costing in terms of environmental impact and cost. From there, it's much easier to establish cost accountability, encourage double-side printing, and minimize non-essential paper printing.
Moving away from direct mail and low-return marketing
If you're going to bother sending marketing materials to customers and potential customers, it had better relate to them directly. It should also reflect other relevant data (e.g., order history and seasonal patterns) that you have about them, and offer additional, related services. With modern output-management systems, it becomes significantly easier to automate the production, distribution, and revisions of customized, targeted materials. Why waste paper, diesel fuel, and money shipping out direct mailers with low return? Instead, reduce mailing costs and save paper and money, while producing material that is more likely to impress your customers favourably.
Telecommuting
Whether it's daily commuting or business trips by air, moving people around has a big cost. Today, thanks to widespread remote access technologies, more and more companies offer flexible telecommuting options to their employees. Not only does this spare the air and save energy; it can also help productivity through greater work flexibility and reduced commuting stress.
Similarly, business flights and the in-person meeting have really been scaled back at most companies, thanks to improved teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and web-based meetings. This saves transportation and lodging expenses, while reducing the significant environmental impacts associated with air travel.
Doing well by doing good
It should be pretty clear from these examples that numerous opportunities already exist for a company to become more green while saving money and improving efficiency and quality. What's usually needed to realize these changes is experienced, expert advice. What's the best software? How do we implement this successfully with minimal disruption? With the help of an experienced, expert consultant, a company can not only achieve a greener IT department, but can also enable IT with the tools to effect green changes throughout the company. Meet the emerging green industry standards, satisfy your customers green sourcing requirements, get those key certifications, and (wait for it...) save money.
Want to read more on Green IT? We've expanded this blog post into a white paper called "The Top 10 Green IT Projects for 2011." Download it here.
What Green IT Projects are you planning for 2011? We'd love to hear your ideas. Use the comments area below.
[1] “Green Computing” David Tebbutt and Dale Vile, Freeform Dynamics Ltd., June 2008.
Posted by Mark Lennon on Mon, Nov 22, 2010 @ 11:32 AM
That gentle hum of your printer is the sound of money as it slowly burns away. That rustle of paper represents wasted time and resources. The print key you hit initiates a sequence of events that is inefficient, costly and may even leave a poor impression with your valued clients!
It’s an unnoticed miscreant, one that steals, saps and seizes while backs are turned. Often overlooked in the drive to cut expenses, printers constantly snip and bite into corporate profits, deplete worker productivity, and devour valuable resources. Is this a picture of your output management system?
How did the printer become the villain when its only fault was to periodically jam and demand yet another ink cartridge?
Printers and the print systems have spread and proliferated over time—working alone, in pairs and in clusters they’ve colonized offices, desktops, and homes. Businesses have owned and operated printers for many years. Most use several—and several different kinds, brands and models—for different tasks. They get used for just about anything and everything. It’s a sleeping giant with tentacles in every part of your organization.
Opportunities to tame output management are rarely pursued. As one IT Director recently said, “When I think about our printers, it’s almost as if large areas of expenditure are hidden from us. I just cannot get a handle on it. And what’s more, they take a lot of my department’s time to support them and keep them running.”
While companies know the costs of printers, the expense of maintenance, and the price of replacing existing machines, few know the full extent of wasted paper, the amount of petty cash spent on replacing ink pens and cassettes, or the time it takes your staff to gather reports from multiple locations.
And what about the costs of supporting and maintaining all these different print streams?
For many organizations each corporate system has its own set of printers, in many cases duplicating output and adding to complexity. The Enterprise Resource Management system might require print output to be coded in ABAP for invoices and paychecks. Print for the Customer Requirements Management system might be coded in Java. Corporations have dozens of applications written in many programming languages.
Then there are the demands of special purpose printers—one for labels, one for barcodes, and another for packing slips. That’s just the traditional paper printing outlets. Increasingly, print has taken on electronic form with more and more PDFs, email attachments and faxes being sent each day. It’s a support nightmare!
Tackling these issues on a printer-by-printer basis or at the department level is unlikely to produce results.
To improve efficiencies and reduce cost you need to treat print output as a coordinated whole. Viewing print systems as a completely integrated process enables you to better track costs, discover areas of duplication and waste, and seek process improvement and efficiencies.
As one of our clients recently said, “Simply changing the way we look at printers to see them as a single corporate system has opened the door to eliminating a lot of waste, reducing unnecessary expense and start implementing output management improvements.”
There are many point-solution print management tools on the market. Tools that help you design print forms, or manage output flows, or even track maintenance and support contracts. Resist the temptation to solve your output problem piecemeal. Experience shows that you really need to grasp the bull by the horns. The greatest impact in improvements in output management results from the deployment of a single central tool that can manage the whole process from form design, to print management and delivery.
Imagine a scenario where a single system connects the print needs of your entire company, so that the output from various departments and remote locations are linked and coordinated.
The output of all your business systems now flow through the enterprise to be delivered at the location it’s needed, when it’s needed. Imagine a system that ensures all printers, no matter where they are located, work together supporting organizational efficiency, rather than chugging away in wasteful isolation. Now, imagine this happening seamlessly without the need to configure or program each printer.
That gentle hum of your printer is the sound of money as it slowly burns away. Isn’t it time you started to do something about it?
Posted by Mark Lennon on Sat, Nov 13, 2010 @ 09:52 PM
Welcome to the Compu-Call blog.
This blog is called “Trusty - IT Service and Support Blog for New England”. We aim to be a reliable and trusty source of IT information. Each week we’ll have new articles written for small and medium size companies. We know how difficult it is trying to run your business and providing quality systems and infrastructure to support your company’s operations. We’ll talk about common problems that we see out in the field, along with strategies and solutions that work well for your size company.
Some of the topics that we'll explore are:
- IT support strategies
- Business Process Improvement
- Servers, storage and Virtualization
- Printer Solutions
- Output Management
- Managed Services
- Green IT
- IT procurement strategies
- Programming and development
Compu-Call is located in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. We are local, established, trusted and experienced, serving over 1,500 clients across Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island (MA, CT, RI) for over 25 years. We’ll draw on our experience working with small and medium size companies in the region and offer our readers practical IT service / support advice.
Check back regularly – or subscribe – for insightful articles on a wide variety of business and technology.