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Print Queue / Output Management – Why do I need it? October 24, 2008

Posted by Julian Bradder in Uncategorized.
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Print Queue software will benefit organisations in helping to manage local print – i.e. printing for internal consumption in addition to helping manage high volume customer communications management print.

But for this post, lets start first with the use of print queue software within the enterprise.

One of the key things about print environments within organisations that don’t use print queue management software is that the printing will typically be managed within the native Windows framework. In smaller companies, this is not too much of a problem but, as companies get larger, the issues really start to manifest themselves.

Native print drivers provide relatively little control. There is a lack of measurement and this means that organisations have very little control over cost and accounting for print. The other factor that affects print is the lack of assurance that a print job has delivered.

Print queue management will provide this control meaning that organisations can begin to understand where their print costs are coming from. But it goes beyond control. Print queue management will also enable distributed printing e.g. printing larger jobs across more than one printer.

Pressure is mounting on organisations to reduce their carbon footprint. Printing is a big area where these targets can be met. Output Management / Print Queue solutions can be utilised to enforce policy. Therefore, it could enforce duplex printing, enforce the printing of routine jobs to the most cost effective printers and where implemented, enforce the printing of certain jobs into an electronic archive – which will save the company a fortune.

Output management also allows the management of print location well. So if colleagues in London and Australia need to share a printed document, the lady in London can print from her desk in London to a printer in Sydney – and get assurance that it has been printed.

It is said that you cannot manage what you don’t know. Output management will bring that knowledge about organisational print and will allow you to manage and direct policy to improve efficiencies and reliabilty. It will enable you to develop a strategy, may help you reduce your laser printer fleet and will give users a better service.

How to reduce costs in your desktop laser printer fleet. Enterprise Output Management October 20, 2008

Posted by Julian Bradder in Uncategorized.
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At least 10% of an organisations budget is spent on printing. And much of this is derived from printing to local work group printers. Some organisations have thousands of them.

They print reports, documents, emails, proposals and many more kinds of documents. For many organisations the challenge is understanding who is using them and how to manage them from a budgetary perspective.

I think that it would be fair to say that for many companies, there just isn’t the need to slavishly print every piece of work out, we don’t need paper to distribute documents any more.

The use of Enterprise Output Management software working in concert with an electronic document archive and retrieval system can help great. The Output Management system can control where output is destined and can assign a print job to a particular user or department. This allows budgetary management processes and means that departments can take responsibility for managing and reducing their own print budgets.

Similarly, an archive and retrieval system will cut down print. System generated reports, large documents can be printed to the archive and retrieval system, thereby massively reducing print cost. User requiring the report can simply log into the archive system and draw down only the pages they need.

These archive / report management systems have advanced search and export facilities, improving productivity.

With page costs running at up to £0.15p per page, now is the time to reduce operational overhead by reducing overall print costs.

Enterprise Output Management technology is typically easy and low risk to implement and will start paying for itself the minute you start using it. The market is littered with vendors offering such technology – some better than others!