How Can a Copier Save My Business Money?

If there is one measure of operations that can accurately determine the profitability of a company, it is efficiency. The more productive your employees are, the more product is created, and more sales are made.

All too often, however, this translates to “do more,” when the real solution is to do less.

MAKING YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE WORK FOR YOU

As we are a business in the industry of office technology solutions, we have seen many companies struggle to increase the efficiency of workflows that make use of their office's copier.

Many businesses see huge amounts of wasted resources, hundreds of hours of labor lost in meaningless and tedious tasks, and vastly under-secured sensitive document control. The function a copier provides is simple — make copies — but building the actual task into personal workflows is a logistical nightmare.

Luckily, there’s a straightforward answer to all of these issues — print management.

REDUCE YOUR WASTE

One cost-saving aspect of print management is usage limits made possible via user identification. Users can be assigned printing rules specific to the individual — ranging from how many copies and prints a user can produce in a week, if they can use color toner, and even what machines they are able to access.

Many copiers have the capability to automatically complete the time-intensive tasks of folding and stapling paper, and even creating booklets — saving you capital that was previously spent on outsourcing print jobs.

Your machine will need to be calibrated correctly to complete these tasks, however; copiers and printers need to know the size, weight, and texture of the paper, labels, or envelopes you are printing on. This gives your machine time to heat up the toner to the proper application temperature.

If your machine has faxing capabilities, there’s a good chance that fax number prints a few spam faxes every day. Each time a fax produces a document, that costs your organization money — and while measured in cents, these charges can add up. Most printers and copiers with a fax capabilities have the ability to automatically forward faxes to a company email, reducing these unnecessary costs, and adding another degree of physical security.

THE CHALLENGES YOU MAY FACE

While a well-integrated copier can save your organization time, energy, and money, there are some buffers, and even outright roadblocks, that can slow your office’s progress to a fully-integrated technology infrastructure.

First, the simplest problem (and yet the most expensive one to fix) is when a machine is too old to properly integrate with up-to-date technology and solutions. While this may not be a solvable issue now, your organization should begin to create a list of use cases of your machine, as well as what workflows it is used in — this will help you identify what the best machine is for your company when the time comes to upgrade.

Most of the solutions mentioned above require networking, meaning they need to be able to communicate to the devices and hardware that comprises your business’ network. This can be as simple as a one-time connection to your individual devices, or require several hours of server configurations, depending on the size and needs of your organization.

Automation, while an incredible efficiency-booster, can also be an arduous system to create — many automated systems are deeply complicated, and can require many hours of labor spent analyzing workflows, and configuring systems. This is not to say automation isn’t worth it — automation can create workflows that automatically read documents, and auto-fill customer reports, orders, and invoices.

TECHNOLOGY CHANGES OVERNIGHT

It’s more than likely that your office copier or printer has the capability to provide at least one of the solutions mentioned above — regardless of brand. If you aren’t sure, ask your representative to train you on your machine. And as your organization looks to upgrade your copier or printer, make sure to think about how your business’ needs will evolve over the next three-to-five years. This will help to prevent needing to purchase additional machines to support unplanned growth.