Do you have trouble with Tribbles in your enterprise?

In the 1970’s TV show Star Trek there were a few episodes that featured Tribbles – cute and fuzzy little creatures that everyone loved, but which multiplied out of control and eventually took over whatever space they were in. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise were forced to deal with containing the spread and cost of these cute little creatures, so that they did not threaten the ship.

Your enterprise might also be threatened by cute little equivalents of the Tribbles – in this case they are network printers and other office machines – copiers, faxes and scanners. Most people love them and they seem to be everywhere. That’s part of the problem – they are everywhere.

They just sort of multiply. Many organizations have allowed networked printers to be added in an ad hoc manner, because each individual purchase was viewed as a low-cost, stand-alone decision and most organizations really don’t have a plan or strategy for networked printing.


This was not considered to be a very important issue to most companies until the current financial downturn forced all companies to look at all costs within their organizations. Now it is becoming apparent to most companies that they need to get a handle on their current office equipment costs – printing, copying, faxing and scanning - and that they need a strategy and policies for acquiring, using and managing networked office devices


The largest component of the cost of networked office equipment is often not in the purchase price of the individual device (that’s often very reasonable), it’s the cost of the inks and toners and the maintenance that drives the enterprise-wide cost of the devices. And it’s the cost of buying and storing and managing all of the various ink and toner cartridges around the organization that drives up your support costs.


So, what can you do to rein-in these costs – to contain your Tribbles problem? Well, for one, you can get your arms around what size problem you have. Many companies don’t have a good audit of what printers and other devices are being used on their networks and most have no idea how they are being used. What is really being printed on all of those printers? How many people really print using color and how much color coverage (content) do their documents really have? How many people are still using the fax vs. scanning in and emailing files? Xerox has tools and services that we can use with you to determine what’s going on in your network and what the true costs are to have all of those cute Tribbles spread out in your enterprise.


Why is an audit important? You can’t suggest alternatives until you understand the current situation. Let us help you get a handle on your network printing costs. We’ll have lots of alternatives to discuss, from simple consolidation strategies based upon utilizing our modern multifunction machines, all the way to the complete outsourcing of the management of your printing/copying/scanning services under Xerox’s Managed Print Services. But first, we need to understand together what’s in your current office network environment. Call me today to get started.