At Ziff Davis Internet's SMB Virtual Tradeshow, panelists advise small and midsized businesses to look beyond the dropping price of printers if they want to get a true grasp of printing costs.Document publishing experts on Wednesday advised small and midsized businesses to look beyond the dropping price of printers if they want to get a true grasp of printing costs, and examine more closely how document management can fit into their companies.
During Ziff Davis Internet's SMB Virtual Tradeshow, panelists focused on the questions that small and midsized businesses should be asking in order to budget effectively for printing costs, choose in-house or outsourced wide-format print, and streamline storage strategies.
Shelley Solheim, staff writer for eWEEK, said technological advances and price wars among vendors have driven down the cost of printers even more within the past year. This has led to many affordable printing options for SMBs, but she warns that companies should be aware that hardware costs are only part of the decision.
"Questions that SMBs should be asking are things like, what kind of documents do you want to print?" she said. "Also, will printing needs change as the business grows? Do you need to do color, or will monochrome work for your company?"
SMBs also should consider whether MFDs (multifunction devices) might be more suited to their business. The pros of MFDs—which do printing, copying, scanning and faxing—are that they save space and have a high degree of functionality. The cons, Solheim noted, are that there is less choice in features than in several, single-purpose machines.
When comparing systems, Solheim recommends that SMBs read several independent reviews or test printers and MFDs in their own environments, rather than relying on vendor descriptions and specs.
"Vendors present optimal speeds that could be very different from what's in your office," she said. "Performance and quality are also difficult to evaluate from vendor data."
Tom Reid, chief executive of Coated Solutions, said many SMBs have begun to consider buying wide-format printers. Like traditional printers, these specialized machines also have seen a drop in pricing in the past year, leading many SMBs to wonder whether they can save money by doing such printing in-house.
"There are good arguments to be made on each side," Reid said. "First, an SMB should ask a number of questions about how it would use these printers."
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Issues to address would be how often such a printer would be used and whether anyone at the company is already familiar with how wide-format printers work. "These printers are not plug and play," he said.
The benefits of bringing these print jobs in-house would be ease of on-demand printing and skill expansion. Drawbacks are that the machines require more maintenance than standard printers, and the initial upfront cost can be daunting.
"Even on the used market, these printers aren't cheap," Reid said. "The usual cost is about $10,000 and up."
Before making a purchase, SMBs need to determine how many pages per month they would print, who would be responsible for the print jobs, and where service and support would fit into the overall cost and management strategy.
Sometimes, an SMB might find that document management includes cutting down on its printing, said Joe Kennedy, small business consultant and author of "The Small Business Owner's Manual."
"I advocate that you don't print a document unless there's a compelling reason to do so," he said.
Digitally stored documents meet with regulation and compliance standards just as much as printed copies, and there are a number of downsides to having boxes of paper residing at a company, according to Kennedy.
"Printed documents can go lost or missing, they can be difficult to find if they're misfiled, and they degrade over time," he said.
Digital storage also has its pitfalls, he admitted, including potential interoperability problems between media and hardware in the future, and data loss through lack of proper backup procedures.
On the whole, however, Kennedy advises SMBs to create a storage management strategy that blends printed materials and digital storage, to cut down on the need for printed copies.
Editor's Note: The Ziff Davis Internet SMB Solutions Virtual Tradeshow is run by eSeminars, a division of Ziff Davis Media, parent company of Ziff Davis Internet.
