Posted On 19 Dec 2020
Printing can often be a hidden cost within a company or organization; although office managers may have some idea of how much is being spent, there are so many elements to print services – leasing devices, paper costs, ink costs, electricity, maintenance costs – that the real cost of printing may be substantially higher than you think.
For economic, efficiency and ecological reasons, the paperless office is highly desirable, but it does require substantial change in processes and a step change in behaviors However, when people see how much more efficient, they can be without paper, the adoption process becomes considerably smoother.
Half of the waste generated by offices is paper, and frequently it is paper that has been used for unnecessary printing jobs. The first step in reducing this waste is to look around the office and think about how many printers you have, how much they are used, what they are used for, and where the greatest costs are.
It’s quite likely that one of the biggest users of printing resources is Accounts Payable. For a number of reasons, Accounts Payable uses a lot of paper, keeping records that won’t be disposed of for considerable periods. Digitizing your invoices, sending them out by email instead of by post, and implementing a digital signing solution can dramatically cut your costs immediately.
Another simple way of cutting costs is to set your printers to print double sided by default. Many people still only print single sided and so any document over a page uses twice as much ink as it needs to. It has been calculated that on average paper costs can be cut by 15% simply by setting your printers to duplex printing.
Many people still believe that a contract isn’t a real legal contract unless it’s physically down on paper with a pen and ink signature. This is very much no longer the case: numerous laws and regulations have been adopted so that electronic contracts are just as legal as hardcopy ones, and they can be signed digitally by your partners and clients. Not only will this save you a fortune in paper and ink, it will streamline your contracting processes.
Finally, think about employee expense reports. These take up reams of paper every month and are frequently only glanced at before being signed off and put in the shredder. Nowadays it’s easy for employees to obtain additional receipts for their expenses, and there are even apps that can collate expense reports for them that can be submitted to their managers digitally, eliminating the wasteful use of paper.
Following the simple steps above can lead to dramatic reductions in your office’s paper and printing costs, as well as increasing efficiency and helping the environment.
