PRINTERS&PRINTING
21
DOCUMENT WASTE COSTING UK RETAILERS £645 MILLION PER YEAR
A
new Europe-wide study by on the 2007 ½ gures. The second-most costly photocopiers for personal purposes and, of
mailstream technology specialist UK industry in terms of document wastage is those, 57% did not monitor such usage.
Pitney Bowes has found poor printing manufacturing, coming in at £360 million. Richard Thompson, managing director,
practice by companies is hitting costs at a time In the report, Pitney Bowes pointed out that, Pitney Bowes Management Services, said: “In
when they need to watch the bottom line. typically, colour printing run through a centralised our own experience, we have seen that at
Overall it found UK businesses were facility can be done at a tenth of the cost of the least 75% of the businesses we work with
losing an estimated £2 billion a year due to output from a desktop device. By utilising print have no strategy for dealing with document
“document wastage” – the inef½ cient and management software, implementing controls, output – despite the fact that this has
sometimes unnecessary printing of work- monitoring output and reorganising document become a growing business cost.
related and personal materials in of½ ces. production equipment to run this activity though “We’ve found that even the smallest
The white paper, “Counting the Cost of a centralised facility, companies could cut overall companies can achieve dramatic savings
Document Wastage” in Europe, pulls together costs in this area by 10% to 30%. if they bring their printing and document
industry and corporate data from across Pitney Bowes’ research showed that the production under tighter control.
Western Europe, including teleresearch from spread in recent years of high-bandwidth “Even in centralised, high-volume
European Top 1000 companies and ½ gures communications and its attendant capability to document production facilities, it is possible
from EU and governmental organisations. send large attachments, along with the growth for companies to cut costs and make these
According to the report, UK ½ rms could of email and web usage, has actually increased more ef½ cient – for instance by combining
have saved an estimated £2.03 billion on printing in most of½ ces as employees print administrative, customer service and
printing costs in 2007, up from £1.95 billion in much of the information they receive and ½ nd promotional output volumes and printing on
2006, if they had implemented more cost- online. This trend has been accompanied by lower-cost equipment.
effective document printing policies. the widespread use of desktop colour printers “Eliminating ‘document wastage’ is one
And the UK’s retail industry presented – the most expensive form of of½ ce printing. straightforward way of achieving better cost
the greatest opportunity for document In addition, the study found that 50% of ef½ ciency and getting a healthier return on
production savings: £645 million a year based UK ½ rms allow employees to use printers and investment from of½ ce print facilities.”
APRIL/MAY 2009 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
20-25 Printers.indd 21 6/5/09 9:52:47 am
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