It is estimated that over 1.3 billion printer cartridges are sold every year, and according to the International Data Corporation (IDC), more than 12 million laser and ink cartridges are imported into South Africa annually.
The question is, how many of these laser and ink cartridges end up in landfills?
Talking and thinking about print is not exciting to most, and bringing up a conversation about your home or office printer at a dinner party would surely be social suicide. But let’s try to understand this and why we humans don’t get excited by print.
A long time ago, when very few people could read and write and books were not readily available, a young 15th century German, Johannes Gutenberg, was cited as the inventor of mass printing. Through his technological contribution, his method of printing quickly spread through the world and the mass printing of books began. Some would say Gutenberg’s printing process helped the world to learn how to read and write, scientists were able to publish their discoveries and people around the world started to connect through news and events.
I have always had this burning question in the back of mind, “Why do we Print?” Aren’t we supposed be working in Paperless offices by now?
We all imagine offices of the future to be a place of efficiency, sustainability, a collaborative setting where computers support our daily print routines and processes. But in reality, being human, your environment or what you are exposed to, quickly determines your print behaviour.
The term Workflow is often an unknown in any organisation, big or small. Why is it an unknown? Or should we be asking ourselves, why aren’t organisations challenging this unknown?
What is a workflow and how should it run you may ask? A Workflow is there to Optimise Business Processes. Optimisation will inherently increase productivity, while adhering to your organisation’s document control policies and security. The ultimate goal should be to make your organisation efficient and sustainable by transforming traditional printed documents into digital form, using a workflow and document management software.
Well, it may “already be happening in my business” you may say and yes, it probably is, but in many forms, either manually, physically or digitally. The key question to ask is how effective, flexible and agile is your workflow on your everyday business tasks?
Research has shown that implementing software tools to manage printing can reduce paper usage by up to 20%. The most effective print management software tools can be broken down in the following functions:
Device Management Software – Applications that facilitate proactive monitoring of devices within the print fleet (i.e. toner low alerts, maintenance required, page counts, etc.)
Print Management Software – Applications that facilitate the management of users by means of rules-based printing, such as default mono / double-sided printing. This will also facilitate a follow-me solution, where a user can authenticate at any device on any site.
Recent Comments