With more organisations than ever looking at ways to improve the sustainability of operations it’s no wonder printing is under the spotlight.  The amount of documents printed unnecessarily within organisations is staggering.  Anything that can be done to reduce printing volumes can therefore have a significant impact both in terms of the environment and bottom line.

For those wanting to do more ask yourself the following questions.  If the answer to any of them is ‘no’ it’s probably time to consider managed print services.

• Are you monitoring how much you print?  Almost all organisations are aware of the benefits of printing less but often don’t know where to start.  Without detailed insight into who is printing what it’s difficult to know where you can begin making improvements.

• Do you always have good supplies of paper and tonner in stock?   Even when someone within a business has responsibility for managing a printer fleet it’s easy for paper and tonner orders to slip through the net, causing problems when jobs need to be urgently completed.

• Do your employees pick up every document they print?  Uncollected documents is a big problem in terms of paper wastage for Australian businesses.  It’s also a security risk given there’s often a lot of sensitive information contained within documents.

• Do you have tight budget control over your printing?  Without detailed insight into what you print it’s difficult to know how much to budget for printing, which means costs can fluctuate.

• Are you aware of the environmental impact of your printing?  In the months ahead organisations will be under greater pressure to track the environmental impact of their operations so anything you can do to be on the front foot will be beneficial.

• Are you using electronic forms?  Many businesses print the same forms on a regular basis.  A lot of the time these forms can easily be replaced with electronic forms – saving both paper and unnecessary admin.

• Do you have a print policy in place?  Social media policies that outline acceptable employee use of social networking sites at work are now common place but organisations are often more lax when it comes to policies around printing.