Could Your Business Go Paperless (or Semi-Paperless)?

Printing is costly, and a lot of organizations have done their best to reduce their exposure to unnecessary costs. With nearly everyone having a computer on them all the time, it seems as though the costs of printing can be reduced entirely. Unfortunately, businesses don’t always see how digital resources can help you stabilize costs. This month, we thought we would go through how your organization can use those digital resources to significantly reduce printing costs. 

Alternatives to Using Paper

Unfortunately, just saying to stop using printing isn’t really going to stop people from printing things. In fact, people will always be using the printer for one thing or another. This shows that the printer still has a place in business, but the more your organization can cut out the unnecessary use of printing, the more money can be cut from that part of your business and reassigned to revenue-generating investments. 

Digitizing Your Business Can Help Reduce Printing Costs

For decades, printing has been a major expense for nearly every business. Even today, many businesses rely on printers daily, but with costs rising so much over the past couple of years, it may be a better strategy to digitize elements of your business. By digitizing your business, we mean creating and storing documents and files that typically you would keep in physical form in a file cabinet or the like inside your business. 

If you are looking to cut your printing costs and digitize more of your business, you need to know that you will get value out of doing so. The biggest benefits are:

• Better Access to Data - One of the most important parts of data storage is that you have access to the data should you need it. By digitizing your business’ files, you not only are able to access this information, you also cut down the amount of time it takes to retrieve data, which is surprisingly costly for organizations that store paper files onsite. 
• Potential Income - Some documents hold commercial value due to the data. By digitizing your documents, you may be able to discover new revenue streams.
• Preservation of Data - Digital documents stored redundantly in cloud storage facilities don’t degrade nearly as quickly as paper documents.
• Digital Integration - Many digital documents can be integrated with other digital systems and made searchable within databases and catalogs. 
• Easier to protect - Cybercrime is prevalent, but it is still easier to secure and protect digitized documents than it is to protect paper documents. Additionally, digital documents can be backed up more simply than paper documents. 

What You Can Do If Digitizing is Not an Option

Some businesses have invested heavily in their printers, copiers, et al. In this situation, there are things that your organization can do to limit the exposure to increasing printing costs. They include:

• Upgrading the printers themselves
• Printing in grayscale when possible
• Using both sides of a page
• Choosing a more conservative font

Or…You Can Get Managed Print Services 

At k_Street Consulting, LLC, we can help you get managed print services that are designed specifically to lower your exposure to printing costs. Not only can you give certain members of your team access to printers, you can limit the number of pages each authorized user can print in any given set of time. 

If you need help getting to the bottom of your overwhelming printing costs, give us a call today at (202) 640-2737 to talk to one of our consultants.