A two-part series on the pros and cons of in-house print facilities.
Pros: Three reasons top companies are creating print rooms in house
Having a solid baseline of printing capabilities in-house ensures control, cost and convenience in ways that can’t be guaranteed outside of a business’s four walls. It also safeguards against any number of security threats – compromising both competitive data and a surprising number of cyberthreats – and increases efficiency, usually in the form of saving time. While print may seem like its elimination is inevitable, market statistics argue that at a certain level, print is still a vital part of business communication. That’s why top performing companies are refusing to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by committing to a 100% paperless office, and instead, identifying where printed documents contribute the most to efficient operations and investing appropriately. We’ll cover the three most important reasons in more detail.
- Value analysis
When a business gives up the definition of control, cost and convenience to a printing equipment manufacturer, print rooms tend to be expensive boondoggles that rarely provide the value they should. Instead, a smart partner who understands how to perform a close analysis of needs, employee demographics, office layout, and type of work done in a given day can produce value across the board. While this rarely produces a print room that rivals a dedicated printing plant, neither does it produce a “bare bones” facility. With intelligent analysis, it usually produces a variety of multi-function devices capable of reasonable volume and responsiveness, and a few machines and services that a workforce uses every day. Specialty jobs are outsourced to trusted local partners who understand the nature of deadlines, how the work contributes to your core business, and with killer customer service demanded by top companies in every field. Instead of loading up the books with expensive and underutilized assets, a well-thought-out print room delivers exactly what your business needs most of the time, and outsourcing capacity for specialty jobs without adding unnecessary costs.
- Security
No one but your clients need to see your proposals, contracts and job specifications. But if you outsource all your printing needs, it’s difficult to guarantee the security of your documents. The threat of mischief is even greater if you deal with employee data, personal health care information, or if you need to incorporate such information into your work. Keeping documents in house and printing only what’s needed is a huge advantage in such circumstances, and the list of top companies that have been burned by data theft or simple information management mistakes gets longer every day. Using email or unsecured filesharing application to manage documents opens your company information to phishing, hacking and other cyberthreats. Finally, a professional print room provider can often help button up your network. Unmanaged printers hooked up to servers are a growing problem. Having someone keeping tabs on your printing equipment both in the print room and on your office floors can “close doors” on bad actors and protect important information .
- Efficiency
Ensuring that employees have adequate print capacity, print quality, and convenience are rarely part of your core business, but often make the difference between running operations efficiently and keeping your workforce productive. No manager wants to see employees with specialized skill sets trying to figure out how to run a complicated piece of printing equipment. Instead, top companies rely on intelligent and insightful analysis to determine how to meet employee expectations for work that needs to be printed, and what kind of print can be completely eliminated or otherwise sent to a trusted outsourcing partner. Making necessary document printing simple, affordable and convenient gives employees a sense of control, focuses on not just doing work but completing it, and keeps morale high.
Today, there is a wide variety of printing equipment designed for the office. Some of it, admittedly, is overdone, fulfilling solutions to problems that don’t exist. But the advantage of have many equipment manufacturers in the market is that businesses can very often home in on exactly what’s needed with the proper guidance from disinterested consultants. A print room doesn’t need to be the “buffet” it has been in the past, with a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Such facilities have long outlived their usefulness. But strategic thinking about how to manage printing and printed documents offers a way to add value to the top companies that pay attention to their needs and find the experts they need to fulfill them.
Managing a print room but wondering if it’s worth it? We can help, call us at 833.272.8880.
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