The Future of Managed Print Blog

Is removing those Personal Printers a good idea? Probably not!!!

Warning: You may need your calculator for this one!!!

There appears to be a lot of conversation today around ‘optimizing’ printer fleets & the top of everyone’s chart appears to be that personal printer. Many companies are saying (or being told) that they need to get rid of those personal printers that hide in the offices of Managers and Executives across their business. They’ve been told these small printers are expensive to operate and should been decommissioned. That those printing jobs should be sent to the larger MFP device outside their office or just down the hall.

Well, in short, they’re right: there would be a cost savings from not using those personal printers…however, are we talking about being Penny Smart & Dollar silly? It’s time to leave our ‘gut instincts’ a look at the math.

Let’s take a look using the LaserNetworks office as a typical company.

Within our Oakville location, there are eleven offices with their own personal printer. The titles of these eleven employees include: CEO, CFO, VP Sales, VP Human Resources, VP Operations, Director Customer Support, Marketing Manager, Controller, Manager of Contracts & our Cost Per Page Administration, Director of IT, Partner Support Manager, and our Payroll Coordinator. While every employee at LaserNetworks is committed to the support of our customers, these eleven employees are often seen working well into the night…definitely beyond the typical 40 hr week.

Part I: Personal Printer Assessment. We reviewed the print history on these personal devices over a 30 day period & came up with the following data:

The average page volume per device was just under 500pgs/mth (let’s use 500).
The average number of print jobs/day per user was 8 (avg job size: 3.1pgs).
When the MFP device was used in place of the personal printer, it took th e user an average of 45 seconds to retrieve the print job and return to their desk.

Combining this date & assuming the personal printer was removed from the office, we noted that each of these eleven users would spend 4.5 minutes per day picking up 25 printed pages. Over the course of one month:

The average user would be away from their desk for 90 minutes (4.5min x 20 days) during the month. The combined loss in productivity across the eleven managers would be 990 minutes or 16.5hrs. So, is this loss in productivity justified by a substantial decrease in printing costs?

Part II: Assessing the cost of the Personal Printer. We estimated the Cost Per Page of a Personal Printer at $0.045/page vs. the Cost Per Page of an MFP at $0.02/page. This assessment is based on the total costs associated with operating the device, including all supplies, service, paper and power. This represents a delta of $0.025/page, which certainly does look like a lot! But is it?

Based on 500 pages per user & the extra cost of $0.025/page, it costs LaserNetworks an extra $12.50/month to have this device deployed. When adding all eleven managers, it represents an additional spend on print of $137.50.

So, what is better for your business:

Save $137.50/month on printing & have your key Managers and Executive work an additional 16.5hrs/month. NOTE: This savings breaks down to $4.17/hr.
OR

Continue to allow your Managers to focus on their key projects without disruption & the cultural backlash of removing a key component to their work environment.

The second part of this argument suggests that page volumes will decrease if these managers didn’t have their own printers. This might be true, although understanding if the Managers & Executives will be as productive without those pages is debateable. However, assuming that page volumes would be cut by 33%, it would increase the savings per month from $137.50/month up to $173.80/month. This page reduction would also result in less walking time and therefore the cost savings increases to approximately $10.80 per hour of lost productivity. Is their time worth more than this??? I hope so!!!

This analysis is not meant to say throw out all your MFPs and place a new printer on every desk. It is simply providing some real data to the emotional thought of removing those personal printers. Is a savings in the range of $150/month worth the lost productivity or are there other areas of the print environment (or internal operations) that can generate substantially greater return?

I would certainly appreciate feedback from the other side & why the above analysis is inaccurate, missing assumptions, or doesn’t apply in this new economic environment.