Inkjet & Digital Printing
10 tips to cut office operating costs with Ricoh
Monday 29. December 2008 - There is no longer a need to buy and run individual printers, photocopiers, scanners and faxes - a multifunctional device can do it all for you. By consolidating your office equipment with less devices youll reduce electricity, floor space requirements and ultimately reduce your bottom line costs.
1. Rationalise your office automation
There is no longer a need to buy and run individual printers, photocopiers, scanners and faxes – a multifunctional device can do it all for you. By consolidating your office equipment with less devices youll reduce electricity, floor space requirements and ultimately reduce your bottom line costs.
Ricoh can help you through the consolidation process with a PrintWISE audit. Its simple. With no obligation well undertake a comprehensive print cost analysis of all the devices in your printing fleet, including copiers, printers, multifunctional devices, faxes, and inkjets. It only takes a few hours and includes a:
Site survey
Software-based printing cost analysis
Executive summary
Youll then be able to see where your money is going, and can identify solutions towards cutting your office costs and reducing your carbon footprint.
2. Shrink energy bills with Power Save Mode
Make it a mandatory policy in your office to have every office printer on power save mode when it sits idle.
Quick Start-up (QSU) Technology on Ricoh printers and multifunction devices offers a quick recovery from energy-saving and auto-off modes, allowing users to output and pick up prints whenever they need to without delays.
3. Review documents on-line to save paper
Start promoting the reviewing of documents on-line, using the Track Changes tool in Microsoft Word, or circulating PDFs for approval rather than printed copies.
4. Cut costs by printing on both sides
Its simple but effective: set duplex as your default preference for all your office printers and copiers. By printing on both sides of a sheet youll reduce paper usage by as much as 50%.
Multi-copy and print can cut your paper consumption down even further by printing two pages on the same side, therefore letting you print four pages onto one piece of paper.
5. Reduce paper use by preventing uncollected printouts
Everyone gets annoyed when they see uncollected and forgotten printouts on the office printer and MFP. One way to prevent this is by using Ricohs Enhanced Locked Print (ELP) feature. ELP means that when a document is sent to print, it is stored on the printer and will not be printed until it is unlocked by a user at the device. Punch in a user code, or make your staff ultra efficient by enabling them to release jobs with a simple proxy card swipe. ELP will not only reduce paper waste, but it will also increase your organisations security as well.
6. Digitally archive your documents
By using Laserfiche technology you can eliminate the need of accessing hard copy documents. Instead of reproducing and storing hard copies of documents, you scan them and use soft copies:
Alleviate the need to print and store paper documents, reducing paper use.
Save on valuable office and storage space by eliminating archived hard copies.
Make your employees more efficient by eliminating time spent searching through filing cabinets.
7. Manage your colour usage
By controlling what documents print in colour you can drastically reduce the cost of colour printing. Ricohs IntelliColour software application is embedded directly onto your Ricoh device or laser printer and empowers how and when colour printing is used in your office.
Control colour printing by application: For example, force emails to print in black and white but allow Powerpoint slides to colour print.
Control colour printing by user: You can specify which users can only print in black & white or prevent them from using the device at all.
Another option is to use a Ricoh GelSprinter, which offers the unique and efficient Level Colour mode – producing quick colour prints at a similar cost to black &white*. You can print in colour while keeping costs down.
*costs depend on coverage and type of document printed.
8. Cut down on pre-printed documents
Eradicate or reduce the cost of pre-printed stationary with Ricohs IntelliForm solution. IntelliForm can print office stationary and business forms straight from the device, eliminating the need to bulk print costly stationary and business forms which can date quickly. Plus its an embedded application thats located directly on your Ricoh printer/multifunction device, so its affordable with a low return on investment.
9. Make your office automation more accountable
All Ricoh devices have page counters so print volumes can be tracked. Also, all Ricoh colour printers show colour pages separate from B&W, so you can see exactly where your money is going.
Ricohs @Remote solution can eliminate the need for manual metre reading. It provides usage reporting for your device fleet accessibly remotely from a secure website using a web browser, allowing you to match the best device location to workload and identify cost reductions.
10. Keep your clients happy
During tough financial times its more important than ever to keep communicating your message to clients. Its not about cutting back on your marketing efforts, but making it more proficient. Having a cost-effective and well-integrated direct mail system is therefore more critical than ever. DataWorks is a software solution that will make your client communications more decisive, yet more affordable. You can use DataWorks to create personalised direct mail, business forms and transactional documents like invoices and account statements.