Either at home, work or college we always seem to have too many printers.   The costs of running lots of different printers are not unsubstantial, different makes and speeds all make for a toner ordering nightmare.   I work at lots of different sites and it is amazing how many times I’ll see a corridor of offices with a couple of people in each.    Each and every office often have their own printers, I’ve seen hundreds of standalone printers plugged into the backs of their computers when they have a vast selection of network enabled printers as well.

Now ok, I know sometimes there are privacy and confidential issues with sharing printers but even that can be solved if required.   It seems an awful waste to have loads of duplicate hardware when a single printer could probably supply a whole corridor of offices fairly easily.    Better still we all get a little exercise going to pick up our printouts.

Think about it, could you reduce the number of printers in your organisation, if you can you’ll almost certainly reduce costs.  In some organisations printers are barely active 1% of the time – that’s 99% unused utilisation.    It makes little sense to have roomfulls of printers operating at 1% capacity, I’m sure business wouldn’t do this in other areas.  Would you buy a new car that was used 1% of the time, how about a canteen – 1% utilisation means you don’t need it, in anyones language.

Experts assess that you can save at least 20% of your printing costs by having an optimal number of printers in an organisation.  In any business that is a serious saving and if you factor in the time and maintenance costs it could be significantly higher.  So go on have a think about how you use printers, can you reduce it ?  Think of the toner costs, the environmental impact, the energy they used being switched on and rarely being used. Even think of  the space they take up!!