When looking to cut your costs, one of the best places to start looking is at your printing. While paper documents were once incredibly important for businesses (they still serve a function), no one can deny that they take up a considerable amount of space in the workplace, as well as take up precious assets that could be better spent elsewhere. What’s the best way to minimize the resources you spend on printing?

Before getting into how to cut costs, it’s prudent to look at all of the costs that are associated with printing in the workplace. Consider this: your business not only has to acquire printers, the paper and ink or toner required to do the printing (including color ink/toner when necessary), and filing cabinets to keep everything you print stored in a secure location and this doesn’t even mention the time spent maintaining and managing these devices.

Let’s look at three ways you can adjust your printing needs to cut costs: 

Upgrade Your Printers

Depending on how outdated your printing infrastructure is, your organization could benefit from a hardware refresh. For example, if your business is still using old ink-jet printers, perhaps you could benefit from an upgrade to a laser printer. The reason for this is that laser printers are often more efficient with their print jobs, and they can cost you less money over a period of time due to their comparative longevity.

Manage Your Resources More Efficiently

While it might seem like cutting out printing entirely is too much, this doesn't mean that you can’t control how your resources are spent. By closely monitoring your printing resources, you can more efficiently store what is needed and cut down on waste. Simply changing settings on your computers or printers could eliminate some of the waste, and storing just the right amount of surplus without risking running out is key to success here.

There are also print management applications that can limit the amount of printing individuals can do. Businesses spend thousands of dollars a year per employee on printing and a lot of that money could be saved if they were more conscientious about their printer use. Putting in a system that controls output will surely save you plenty on ink and paper costs. 

Go Paperless

If you find your business suffers from having too many loose papers, or just has too many physical documents to keep track of, you can implement document management software that can give your organization the means to securely store your documents in a digital environment. This means you don’t have to store paper files onsite. You can scan them into a searchable cloud-hosted database where you can retrieve and share any file in the system from anywhere on nearly any device. 

If you want to cut your organization’s costs of printing, Argentum IT can equip your business with tools to both minimize the need for printing and methods to keep track of just how much waste you suffer from. We can even help you out with a hardware refresh for your printing devices. To learn more, reach out to us at (502) 473-6407.