Sustainability is a hot topic all over the world, and the enterprise is certainly no exception. It’s hard to find an organization that hasn’t already implemented one or more green initiatives—not just for their customer-facing benefit but also for the cost savings that green initiatives can bring. As part of that wider trend, many organizations have begun to look at how to reduce paper usage in the workplace as a simple, straightforward and effective path toward more far-reaching sustainability goals.
When brainstorming ways to conserve paper and generally reduce waste in the office, a paper reduction campaign often seems like an obvious choice. At the same time, it presents more than a few challenges:
- How can you easily and accurately measure a reduction in paper to determine the campaign’s success?
- Is it possible to incentivize paper conservation—through prizes or bonuses, for example—on an individual or departmental level?
- Can you support your employees in finding ways to conserve paper beyond just printing less?
- What happens when the paper reduction campaign ends? Does everything go back to the way it was?
With traditional print management solutions like print servers, the answers to all those questions are pretty uncertain. You can purchase print auditing tools, of course; but in addition to being expensive, they often come with a long list of conditions, such as compatibility with a small number of operating systems or limitations to the scope of their oversight. They can also feel more like Frankenstein-type add-ons to your print environment than integrated functionality. As a result, instead of helping to reduce waste in the office, they only add to the clutter and complexity of print management.
This is where PrinterLogic enters the picture. Our next-generation print management solution enables your organization to make incredible strides toward efficiency on a permanent basis. Instead of providing one or two short-term ways to conserve paper, PrinterLogic is cost-saving by design, allowing organizations of any size to eliminate print servers (an expensive, resource-intensive component of print infrastructure), streamline print management and cut down on consumables usage for good.
For the moment, given our focus on decreasing paper waste, let’s focus on reducing consumables—not just paper but toner and ink as well.
PrinterLogic’s powerful Print Auditing feature gives you the suite of tools you need to effortlessly collect, organize and analyze print activity across the organization. You can tie printing to actual costs, arrange print job history according to multiple data points (e.g., date, computer, printer, user, color, document name) and even have comprehensive reports sent automatically to department heads and decision-makers at regular intervals (e.g., the start of each month). Plus, PrinterLogic’s data-gathering capabilities extend beyond network printers and can even log USB printer activity as well.
How much is each department or user pool printing during a given time period? Are any users are printing a disproportionate amount of color documents? What are the printing costs associated with a department, a site or a particular user? These aren’t questions you would ask only during a paper reduction campaign. They’re questions that should be asked on an ongoing basis to reduce waste in the office and ensure that printing costs are staying within tight parameters.
PrinterLogic also addresses questions of print infrastructure and security. Which printers are seeing the heaviest—or least—usage and should be rotated or phased out? When did a user print a document marked “Classified” or “Secret”?
Speaking of security, PrinterLogic gives you the ability to seamlessly implement Pull Printing throughout your entire organization. This deliberate two-step printing method helps to ensure that users retrieve their sensitive documents right away while also cutting down on needlessly reprinted jobs and wasted paper.
By implementing PrinterLogic, you can easily make sustainability and cost savings an integral part of your workplace’s print environment. Reducing paper waste is just the start.