Consolidate to save...

Big companies often have people working on a lot of big things, many of them aimed at improving productivity and reducing costs. One of those big ideas that translates well to companies of all sizes is the consolidation of document-centric functions onto a smaller number of office devices. Over time almost every business has accumulated a variety of single-purpose document handling machines – printers, copiers, scanners and fax machines. In most cases this ad hoc growth of office equipment has resulted in a hodge-podge of different brands and models of equipment, each with its own supplies – toner or ink or whatever. Most are underutilized or not capable of being shared.

The solution that many larger companies have been pursuing is consolidation of these functions onto newer multi-function networked devices from Xerox that can print, copy, scan and fax. Instead of printer populations that approached 1 printer to every 3-4 workers in some companies, employees now share a single faster, more capable printer at ratios of 15 or 20-to-1, sometimes higher. This approach works well in work-group settings, in departments or smaller offices or companies where everyone is fairly close to some central point where the device may be located.

The benefit that the employees get is better print quality and faster printing. They may also be given access to color printing (if the device is color capable), which most may not have had before. Depending upon the device features employees may also take advantage of faxing and scanning, as well as using the copying functions that are standard with the devices. From the company’s viewpoint there is a tremendous potential for savings to be realized by getting rid of all of the different toner and ink supplies and from having everyone print and copy at a much lower per page rate that the bigger devices support. Many companies are discovering that they can recoup their upgrade costs in the first year or two just due to reduced supplies costs. Technical Support issues and costs are also dramatically lowered in consolidated environments.

If you really think about it, this is actually the lowest hanging fruit that can be harvested to immediately save money for your company. This does not involve changes to your existing application software and it is not some big new system that needs to be implemented. It provides better print and copy quality and speed to your employees, while optionally offering faxing and scanning capabilities to everyone. If you think this might be right for your company, give me a call. Xerox has several tools available for me to use to analyze your environment so that I can report back to you what’s in your current environment and make recommendations on how to consolidate most or all of those machines onto a smaller number of multifunction devices. Think big and let me help you work smaller (or at least for less cost).