10 Ways to Save Money in Your Office

1. Take control of your printing costs.

Most businesses don’t track or manage their office printing costs. A managed print service can track use and expense. With visibility of how your resources are used, you can take control, reduce costs, and manage your printing devices more effectively.

2. Consolidate devices.

Multifunction printers (MFPs) help reduce costs by consolidating all the functions of multiple office equipment (copy, fax, and scan, print) into one space-saving device that does it all. Consolidating assets helps save money by reducing the number of maintenance or lease agreements needed, reducing the amount of supplies to order and inventory, and reducing the amount of space required for multiple assets.

3. Re-Think Faxing and Start Thinking Email.

Transition away from faxing with a Xerox multifunction printer with Scan to Email. Documents that are emailed rather than faxed have greater clarity, cost less to send, and are more likely to reach their recipient in a timely manner. Fax Forward to Email allows incoming faxes to be routed to an email address, saving unnecessary printing.

4. Duplex print and copy.

Using both sides of a page is the best way to reduce paper use. Double-sided printing is available on most Xerox products, as is a document feeder that can scan both sides of a page at once for fast double-sided copying and scanning.

5. Digitize Document Storage.

Scanning documents with your MFP and saving them electronically can help you reduce paper costs and storage needs. Xerox Scanning allows you to scan hard copy documents and route them to almost anywhere at the push of a button — to email, network storage, and even directly to the desktop. Documents scanned into a network repository can be retrieved more quickly than paper documents, and can be accessed by anyone on the network at any time.

6. Print Color Documents on Demand.

With a high-quality color printer or multifunction device, businesses can have their color documents available real time. This solution is ideal for marketing and promotional materials. When materials such as brochures are sent out to be printed in large quantities, they are usually stored to be used over a period of several months. However, if the brochure needs to be updated before the inventory of collaterals has been depleted; the investment in those printed collaterals has been wasted. If such collaterals are printed in-house on a high-quality color printer or multifunction device, you print only what you need, when you need it. Your turn-around time is faster, and you have less waste. There is no need to print and store large quantities--when you need more collaterals, you print more.

7. Put a spotlight on hidden document equipment costs.

Most multifunction printers are leased, but few people are familiar with the fine print contained within the lease agreements. If you don’t know the right questions to ask, you may end up paying for more than you expected. Make sure you ask the following questions:

• Is your business responsible for paying the property tax on the leased asset?
• Is your business responsible for paying for professional packing and shipping when the asset is returned at the end of the lease?
• What notification does the leasing company require before you can return the asset at the end of the lease?
• Are you required to pay shipping costs for consumable supplies?
• If you have a metered service agreement, are you required to pay for two meter clicks when an 11” x 17” document is printed?

8. Leverage the power of the print driver with such features as:

• Multiple Pages Per Sheet--This is especially useful when printing Microsoft PowerPoint® presentations, MS Word® documents, PDFs—and even web pages. In the printing dialog box, look for an option to print multiple pages on one sheet. Also check to see if your print driver allows “N-up” printing, which lets you manually set the number of pages you’d like to print on a single page.
• Secure Print—Send a document to your multifunction printer without printing it, then release your job when you get to the printer. This keeps confidential documents from getting into the wrong hands, and holds your document in the print queue until you are ready to retrieve it.
• Sample Set—When printing many sets of a document, this allows you to preview the first set to make sure the output is what you wanted. Once you are assured that the output is correct, you then release the remainder of the print job from the queue. If the output is not correct, you can cancel the remainder of the job from the print queue and correct the print driver attributes. If the first print job output set is incorrect, you minimize wasted pages rather than finding out the documents are incorrect only after all have been printed.
• Adjust print driver default settings. Customize your print drivers to become more budget-friendly. Choose duplex printing as your default mode and adjust settings for specific applications, such as always printing emails in black-and-white. Xerox drivers offer the unique ability to customize print settings for each application, allowing you to automatically apply these custom settings each time you print.

9. Print color pages at the same price as black and white pages.

Most color multifunction printers have two meter charges: one rate for black and white pages, and a higher rate for color pages. Even if a page has only a small amount of color, you are still charged the full amount for a color page. The Xerox ColorQube™ has a patented three-tiered meter system that actually measures the number of color pixels contained on each page. If a small amount of color is used, that page is charged at the same low rate as a black and white page. More color on a page is charged at a median rate, and lots of color on a page is charged at the full color rate. So you can add a splash of color to your most commonly-used documents and print them at the same rate as black and white pages.

10. Schedule a document assessment with a Xerox Account Representative.

Your Xerox Account Representative is available to evaluate the workflow of your critical documents, analyze your current document printing and storage costs, and recommend a solution to maximize efficiency and control costs. To schedule your assessment, call (936) 569-1992, or toll free 1-800-242-5633. Or you can send an email to scott@xetx.com.