The Print Management Blog

• KeyBank reduced their print fleet from 12,000 devices to 3,000
• Liverpool John Moores University went from 750 print/copy or fax devices down to 250
• Peirce College had 50-60 personal printers and 15 MFPs and reduced that number to 20 new MFPs

This list goes on and on, and this ratio of at least a 3:1 reduction in devices is very common. And the cost savings are dramatic when you consider how expensive desktop printers are to operate, manage and maintain. The evidence is so compelling that it is hard to believe that every company wouldn’t jump at the chance to recognize the savings and start pulling out every desktop printer in their organization.

What’s stopping them? User resistance. Perhaps you’ve heard one of these excuses:

• “You can’t take my printer, I won’t be as productive”
• “I have this printer because I print confidential information”
• “Why do you want to take this, I purchase my ink and just expense it. It’s not an IT issue or expense.”
• “I only print small jobs on this printer. How much can it really cost?”

There are a variety of approaches to helping overcome this user resistance and paving the way for behavior change. First and foremost is communication. Demonstrate the reason that you are asking to take away a printer. Show reports on how much an employee is costing the company. Talk about the benefits to the environment by printing on more efficient devices. And explain that you are providing new tools and better technology that will actually improve their experience.

It is those tools and improved technology that will really make the case. With more modern print hardware you can deliver a better quality printed page, faster printing for large jobs and offer color printing to the people who need it at a more affordable price. Using secure print technology like Follow-You Printing can alleviate the concerns over confidentiality since no job is released until the user authenticates at the device. And intelligent print rules & routing software takes the burden off of the user to decide which printer is best for each print job…they just hit print and a pop-up window will give them options of where to print the job and the associated costs. A modern print infrastructure will help employees be more productive, documents be more secure, and IT be able to focus on strategic activities…not printer support.

Finally, go back to communication. After six months, let employees know that the company has saved thousands of dollars thanks to their changed print behavior. Let them know about the tens of acres of trees that were not cut to produce paper they would have used. Reinforcing the difference they are making will spread and help continue to drive print behavior improvements.

So…don’t hesitate to initiate a printer consolidation strategy. Most customers that I talk to said that at the onset they had employees who put up a fight. But every one expressed that because they communicated early and often, and implemented the right technology, those grumblings stopped and users quickly realized that change was a good thing. Just don’t expect them to raise their hand and say “take my printer”.