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Going beyond cost per image:
High-volume printing requires a more strategic perspective
Ken Mark
Printers are poised to cross the digital divide. It's no longer simply about equipment—the machine on someone's desk or down the hall. Increasingly, it's about how that not-so-basic machine links with other printers, copiers, multifunctionals, PCs, Blackberries, and cell phones on the network. Printers are quickly becoming just another way station in our wired world.
With that higher profile comes greater corporate scrutiny. Executives are seeking to control the entire printing process centrally and manage it like any other horizontal business function. The first step is taking a close-up look at their printing technology infrastructure, their firm's true, total printing costs, including outside jobs, and the overall effectiveness of the money they spend.
As the power and complexity of printers increase, vendors are aggressively introducing additional value-added services to meet those new customer needs. Recent seismic rumblings in the printer segment include the shift from stand-alone devices to networked systems; from monochrome to colour; from technology to services.
All these have created the new reality in which vendors are offering solutions rather than simply selling technology, and attempting to become true business partners instead of mere equipment purveyors.
Adding it up
Printing is no longer just about splashing ink on paper and measuring its effectiveness by cost per image. It's more about how companies can get full value from their printing investment while meeting corporate objectives, without incurring higher overhead expenses.
Purchasers typically start out by getting an idea of their annual printing expenses. Some estimates run as high as three per cent of annual sales. "Cleaning up the cost of printing starts at the top. It's very tough to do since it often involves several different budgets and conflicting perspectives," says Brad Hughes, Toronto-based research analyst focused on hardcopy peripherals with IDC Canada.
"It concerns huge capital costs, procurement worries about TCO (total cost of ownership) related to the cost of consumables and maintenance contracts while C-level executives want to see the total overall printing costs, including outside jobs."
Often, such survey results are true eye-openers. "Recently, one of our teams visited a large retail and manufacturing firm," says Gus Piccin, Toronto-based general manager of Canadian operations with Okidata Americas Inc. "They knew from remote monitoring that the firm had about 700 networked printers and possibly 200 to 300 other stand-alone devices."
After 45 days of a comprehensive assessment that captured print transactions of more than 4,000 employees, the team found 789 known network printers and a surprising 1,731 standalone, mainly inkjet printers that employees had purchased from their office supplies budget.
"We concluded that the company was spending $4.8 million annually on enterprise-wide printers—more than four times more than it anticipated," says Piccin. "After centralizing the control and management of printers and developing company-wide standards regarding who can have a printer and why, the firm is currently implementing our plan with a goal to reduce overall printing costs by 42 per cent."
Controlling the colour
Many of today's intelligent, networked printers now have the smarts to help users keep closer tabs on their everyday operations. For example, Hewlett-Packard Co's Web Jetadmin platform is a web-based solution for optimizing device utilization, controlling colour costs, and streamlining supplies management.
The growing popularity of colour has introduced its own challenges. One basic of keeping costs down has been the emergence of dual-purpose printers, which deliver both colour and monochrome capabilities on the same machine. These devices also have security measures to limit colour use to specific individuals, and the number of colour images allowed.
Another driving force in colour adoption is price. The cost of colour printers is dropping significantly. According to Hughes, the machines are now one-half to one-third the price of earlier models. And depending on volume, colour coverage and other variables, the cost per image is coming down closer to the pennies range.
Rather than focusing solely on the cost, however, users must realize the benefits colour can bring to otherwise black-and-white business documents. Statistics indicate invoices with the amount outstanding highlighted in colour results in customers paying more quickly and in the proper amount. The extra pennies spent on colour deliver ROI by improving corporate cash flow.
New offerings
Canon's imageRUNNER Digital Imaging Systems give large print users the power to control the entire document creation, delivery and output process directly from a desktop computer. The print speeds range from 20 to 110 pages per minute.
At the same time, the new generation of printers link in with all digital partners on the network. "With our Image Chip 5180 printer, there's a wider array of IT functions, including document management, universal send and workflow involving multiple sites," says Mark Philips, assistant product manager with Canon Canada Inc. in Toronto.
The device also has the capacity to manage and retrieve the content on the paper. Thanks to a built-in OCR (optical character reader), it can send PDFs with no need for other hardware to search for it.
Professional jobs in-house
Another emerging option is variable data printing, which is the ability to print one-off, customized items. The documents range from letters and other direct-marketing materials, manuals and books, with everything from greetings to actual text and visual content targeted at individuals or small groups. Such in-house capability not only saves money but time, especially for last-minute projects, since there's no longer need to wait for an external print provider to complete the job.
The quality gap between in-house printing and that done by outside offset printers is closing. Xerox just launched its DocuTech 180 Highlight Color System, billed as the world's fastest cut-sheet highlight colour printer, at 180 pages per minute.
It now offers finishing options such as stacking, stitching and tape binding, enabling print providers to produce high-volume publishing documents such as books, booklets and catalogues. Moreover, Xerox can create custom-blended colours.
HP's entry into the high-volume market space is its Indigo line of printers. The 1050 product can print 34 four-colour pages per minute, and up to 134 single-color pages per minute, and it provides short-run volumes for color brochures, inserts, flyers and direct mail. Since users print only the quantity they need when they need it, they can turn refill requests around within a day or less.
Coming on stream in 2007 is HP Edgeline Technology, an ink-based printing engine designed with print heads that span the width of a page. In other words, the paper moves, not the print head.
In this way, Edgeline Technology will increase print speeds by dispensing ink across the entire width of the page as the paper passes beneath the print heads. It should deliver more accurate ink-drop placement and breathtaking print speeds for crisp, print-shop quality output, according to HP.
There are other breakthroughs in the works. At HP Labs in Palo Alto, Calif., researchers are developing "memory dots" as a method of retrieving and restoring documents without the need for scanning or printing.
Paper may no longer be the medium of record. The content will in fact be electronically archived. If people need a copy, they can retrieve the content through the dot. Paper will simply serve as a "token" with the actual version stored and accessible electronically.
In reality, the concept is not that radical. It's similar to an airline e-ticket. When people print it out it's just a personal reminder. Check-in counter attendants don't ask to see it; they simply call up your ticket onscreen.
But there are likely several more digital divides to cross before that starts happening with business documents at the office.
Ken Mark is a Toronto-based technology, business and supply chain writer.
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