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Unbiased Support Services Analysts & Cost Recovery Experts.
Don't Change That Printer Before You Have a Plan
Your firm has local printers, multifunctional devices and high speed network printers. You also have local and networked color printers, centralized color copiers, and possibly some walk-up color copiers or hybrid black & white/color machines. All these units are probably managed by different teams with varied methods of procurement and service providers. Each device has a different contract with a different pricing structure and minimums. Flash Forward: you have five emails in your inbox and two voicemails from irate lawyers or secretaries requesting (demanding) their printers be replaced. With all these variables, how do you know which printer(s) should be replaced? The answer is, in all probability, you don’t know. What your firm therefore needs is an Output Management Plan. Here’s how to develop one:
1. Centralize output decisions
All output decisions should be centralized under a single point of contact/decision making authority. How many times do you see a network printer and multifunction device (MFD) sitting side-by-side, managed by two different groups? Or each secretary having their own printer when there is a network printer or MFD sitting around the corner? There should be one entity – let’s call it the output department – within a firm that makes these decisions to avoid redundancy.
2. Know your costs
One of the responsibilities of this output department is to know the firm’s costs. This should include total cost of ownership, cost per impression per device, monthly/annual volumes, and what type of media is printed on the unit. If you may think that seven year old printer down the hall costs you nothing as it’s already been paid for, think again.
3. What are the firm’s output goals?
Does the firm want to provide color and black & white output in the most convenient manner possible? Is it the firm’s preference to provide access to color only when required? Is it more important to provide end-users output options that ensure time away from their desk is minimized? Is the firm looking to minimize costs across the board?
4. Explore how to place devices to meet these goals
Once these goals are defined – and you know your costs per impression per unit, and your volume per user/workgroup – you can develop the optimum configuration. Depending upon your floor plan, there may be two network printers for two administrative assistants, shared with a total of eight attorneys and paralegals. Down the hall may be a high speed color and black & white MFD that is also a high speed canner. Further away (but on the same floor) may be another high-speed color and black & white MFD that is also a high-speed scanner available for back-up. Based on this scenario, your MFD will provide the lowest-priced output, followed by the two network printers (assuming these units are procured correctly). The end-users will have access to low-cost color output as needed. Note, there are no local printers included in this configuration.
5. Create a migration plan
Once you have the optimum configuration developed, how do you get there? This will depend on a number of factors, including age of equipment, lease/service obligations and management buy-in. Once users hear you are developing an output plan, they will most likely conclude you will be taking their local printers away (which is actually true) but this is not how you want to start. It’s far easier to take away something in the future if you give something now. We recommend a firm networks MFDs and provides color access (if that is a goal) very early in the process. Once end-users embrace these forms of output and begin to utilize them, then it will be much easier to implement a migration plan that decreases the number of local printers. This is not to say there is no place in a firm for local printers but they should be few and far between and based on sound justifications.
• Rob Mattern is President of Mattern & Associates, a support services consultancy serving the legal industry.
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