I watched a colleague spend 23 minutes trying to scan a single contract last Tuesday. Not because she didn’t know how to use the machine. Because the machine was a relic, a lumbering beige dinosaur from 2011 that jammed twice, lost the scan once, and required a driver update that no one had admin rights to approve. Twenty-three minutes. For one document.
This is not to say that this is an issue that only pertains to a few offices, and that for the most part, people are able to print documents with ease. For
The hidden tax on your team’s time
Old office equipment are not usually included in a company’s expense report. Even though the cost of the paper might be reflected, the greater cost is the time to set up, deal with jams and so on. In the end, that printer in the corner of the office becomes a huge frustration point in the office. Workarounds are found and people start to email print outs of documents to themselves or even print from their mobiles. Often people just forget that they sent the document to print in the first place. The time lost to a faulty printer in a workplace can add up quickly.
The printer you choose for your office will depend greatly on the type of work your team does on a daily basis. Modern printers, especially those designed for contemporary printing needs, are made to interface with cloud storage solutions, enabling printing from anywhere. This is the primary benefit of choosing modern printers. Other functions include automatically printing documents in reverse to create a 2-sided document, collating multi-page documents and even stapling them together.
Once you realize that the printer is just another node in your document workflow, then the question is simply is your printer fast enough to handle the volume of work that your team does.
What “productivity” actually means at the printer
Each team is different. So while we work with law firms who print dense double sided documents on a regular basis, we also work with smaller marketing agencies who on occasion print briefs. We compare a number of features of a number of different printers to work out the best printer for a particular organization’s needs.
| Printer type | Best for | Speed | Admin overhead |
| Entry-level laser | Small teams, light volume | Moderate | Low |
| High-volume laser | Legal, finance, document-heavy roles | Fast | Medium |
| Multifunction (MFP) | Most modern offices | Fast | Low to medium |
| Inkjet (pro-grade) | Creative teams, colour accuracy | Moderate | Medium |
Multifunction printers on the other hand are printers that are made up of 4 or more different devices in the one unit of physical space. This includes scanners, photocopiers, fax machines and printers. By having one piece of equipment for all these functions it can save a lot of space and help to decrease the administrative overhead of having so many printers, photocopiers and scanners in the one office. When there is lots of paper going through printers, photocopiers and scanners in the one office, it can become messy with lots of equipment spread across the floor. Multifunction printers can help to solve this type of problem by being one smaller unit of equipment as opposed to having several different machines scattered about the floor.
Hybrid teams changed everything
When half your team are working in the office and the other half working remotely, it can create problems around who is the ‘owner’ of a printed document left to collect in the office. Our experience is that for many businesses, remote working hasn’t actually led to a reduction in printing, rather it has created new challenges around who printed what and how people can retrieve printed documents when they are not in the office.
Modern printers can be used by those that work remotely from anywhere. Wireless printing from a mobile device or from cloud storage is common place for many modern printers today. Sending a document from cloud storage such as Google Drive or Dropbox and then print from there is common place for many businesses today. Some printers also have a feature called secure print release. This means that printed documents can only be released from the printer by the person that sent print job to the printer. This can be especially good for businesses with remote workers and for shared work places. As sensitive documents would not get left in the output tray for others to find.
office printer are well suited to hybrid workspaces printing A4 documents on a daily basis in the office to increase work productivity.
The unsexy benefit nobody leads with
Modern printers also help in the management of your print equipment. In the old days it would take an IT person hours to update the firmware on one printer, now most can be updated automatically. Many also can be diagnosed remotely and if there is a problem with a printer then the print manager can see this and sort out the problem for you. You can also see reports of how much printing is happening by department and even by individual user. These reports can reveal some very interesting information about who is printing the most documents and of what type.
- Automatic toner replenishment on some models means you’re not doing emergency supply runs at 4pm on a Friday
- Usage tracking helps allocate printing costs accurately across departments
- Remote management tools let IT diagnose and resolve issues without a physical visit to the machine
- Energy-saving modes reduce idle power draw without requiring anyone to actually remember to switch anything off
Yes it is unglamorous work, but fixing printing in an office so that it does not become a major issue for the people in the office and for IT, is a major time saving for both IT and for all of the office managers in the building.
We can give you some ROI numbers for the newest printing equipment on the market. We have worked with many offices just like yours that are struggling with the older printing equipment. And for the most part, the biggest time waster is having to email a document to print it. Let’s say that for you and your colleagues, it takes a few minutes to email a document to print it. That would be 23 minutes a week. If you have 10 people in your office, that would be 230 minutes a week or 8.5 hours a year. How many hours a year do you want to save your employees?
Placement matters more than people think
Faster and more integrated Printers can be a lot better than old machines but that doesn’t mean that they automatically become useful just because of that. The best printer for your office is one that is placed in the right spot. A really fast printer in a storage room on the top floor of an office building on the other side of the city is basically worthless. In this case even a cheaper middle of the road Multifunction Printer that is placed on the floor where most of the work for printed documents is being done will print a lot more documents than the expensive one that is stored away on a shelf collecting dust.
While the print speed and the features of printers are very important factors when choosing the right printer for your business or organization, the most important factor to consider is the ‘fit’ of the printer for the organization and the work the team does. In summary, a fast printer that is left to collect dust in the corner of an office is of no value to a business. A well-positioned, mid-range multifunction printer is far more valuable than a high-end printer that is left to gather dust. The team at CopyWorld have many years of experience helping businesses choose the right print equipment for their organization. We can help you determine the best printer for your business.
