Enterprise Document Management, Part II: Desktop Printing

Desktop Printing Outlook - Fueling the Inner Workings of Financial Services Providers  

This article, the second in a series, is designed to provide you with an overview of the issues and costs associated with enterprise document management. Part one is available for your review.

Few financial services organizations realize the strain that out-of-control printing costs can place on a budget.  A primary culprit—desktop, or shared, printing devices.  With an unclear view of how the organization's printers are really being used, administrators have trouble controlling printing costs.

In general, companies print in one of three ways: at the desktop or at shared printers, in a centralized printing department, and via external providers.  While the expenses of each print environment eventually become part of the overall cost of the organization, each environment is typically administered under different management and cost structures. 

Demand for Desktop Printing
By far the largest share of printing done in financial services organizations is from the desktop. The desktop printing environment includes the multitude of office documents that fuel the inner workings of any financial services organization.  Applications, forms, summaries, spreadsheets, letters and even printed e-mail are among the many documents that are indispensable for daily office operations. 

Under the “distribute-electronically, print-locally” mentality, desktop printing environments are seeing increased volumes leading to uncontrollable printing costs.  Use of desktop printing is driven by the need for immediate turnaround of documents that are low volume and have limited color and finishing requirements.  To further complicate matters, users perceive printing as free since they aren’t required to provide a charge code, purchase order or credit card number as they are accustomed to for on-site print shop requests or externally-sourced print.

The Cost to Print
Companies spend an estimated $100 billion each year to print and manage office documents.  In spite of the financial impact, however, most organizations do not have a clear understanding of the amount they spend on desktop printing.  In general, IT directors are uncertain about just how many printers reside in their corporations, how many pages are printed each month, or the cost of each sheet of paper that passes through their printer fleet. 

For the most part, firms have loosely organized methodologies for acquiring and managing office printers.  Few have effective utilization and expense-tracking capabilities.  As a result of a non-integrated placement philosophy, printer fleets often grow by default.  Today, the average corporation has one device for every two to three employees, where the new benchmark for the ratio of employees to printing devices is moving toward 12:1.

In addition to the direct printing costs, technicians and network administrators report that they spend 15 percent of their time on printing-related issues, creating a productivity burden for the organization.  Printer installation and driver management are their top two issues for support.  Over 55 percent of network traffic is printer related and between 50 and 60 percent of help desk calls are printer related.

A Strategy for Savings
By looking at the trends, current state and potential future state of the desktop printing environment of financial services organizations, decision makers are in a better position to make strategic choices that will reduce document-related costs and support the efficiency of the business processes they sustain. 

When focusing on reducing the total cost of ownership specific to desktop printing, assessments should identify and analyze the fleet of printing devices, their related cost of ownership, utilization and workflow.  Targeted efforts, geared at leveraging investments and ensuring “least-cost print” through rules-based routing, can have tremendous impact on a financial institution’s document supply chain expenses. 

More specifically, corporations need to examine their contracts for printer, copier and multifunctional devices, and their associated supplies.  For those companies where printer management is fragmented, a fresh look at the entire enterprise fleet and usage could provide leverage for negotiating more cost-effective contracts. 

Steps should be taken to provide users with adequate information and education in order to optimize the quality, cost and delivery of printed documents.  By investigating document personalization tools and techniques for leveraging customer and account data, financial institutions can achieve more strategically powerful results in terms of market expansion and revenue growth.

Holistic View of Document Processes
An effective document management strategy starts by building a holistic view of the enterprise’s document processes, following close analysis of each of the three printing environments.  With clearly defined measurements and goals, organizations can gain control of the cost of their documents and make substantial work process improvements. 

Next Insights: Internal Printing
The next issue of Insights will give you a closer look at the typical data center-driven printing environment.  Improvement goals will focus on increasing utilization in copy centers and reducing the total cost per copy to the enterprise.  However, if you want immediate information about gaining a comprehensive view of your enterprise, contact us now.