NEWS
How printing can drive public sector efficiencies in this era of change
P
ublic services are faced with pay freezes as the new government focuses
on clearing the UK’s record debts. Cuts of £6 billion are already planned for this financial year and the trend is set to continue.
Against this backdrop of economic and political uncertainty, public sector organisations must ensure that they are doing all they can to protect themselves and to provide a firm foundation for growth. One of the most effective ways they can do this is by adopting smarter printing practices.
A recent report by leading consultancy, the Centre for Economics and Business Research highlights the potential annual cost saving across the public administration and defence sector alone from adopting smarter printing practices is £213 million, which is the equivalent of covering the annual council tax of 155,134 band D homes at an average of £1,373.
These figures are perhaps not so surprising when you consider that public sector organisations from local government offices to the civil service typically have a significant administrative requirement. Most are well aware that the paperless office will never become a reality because workers and working practices are accustomed to using paper documents.
There are measures organisations can take to achieve efficient printing. They can start saving money simply by migrating from outsourced printing to an in-house
approach, cutting wastage and reducing their environmental impact at the same time. Organisations invariably print more than they need when they outsource jobs, usually to get the most cost effective deal available. The ability to print on-demand in-house and to customise each job helps eliminate this wastage.
The other key issue for organisations is how they manage usage. Few realise that by starting to use double-sided printing, they can reduce paper use by up to 50 per cent at a stroke as well as following the well known ‘think before you print’ guideline.
Such processes often need to be reinforced both by a more formal directorial approach and through the technology needed to back that up. In particular, organisations can give themselves the opportunity to achieve additional savings and environmental benefits by adopting a fully-fledged managed print strategy.
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Typically, this involves the print vendor and its reseller partner identifying the true existing print costs of the business, implementing the printing solutions to meet those costs, managing the entire fleet and tracking activity to keep the print operation optimised for maximum productivity at the least expense.
For a typical managed print contract, the end user receives a detailed budgetary report based on the actual print volumes associated with each device, enabling the organisation concerned to reduce wear and tear on individual printers and allowing it to identify areas of wastage or excessive usage.
Finally, as the cebr study indicates, the benefits of more efficient, smarter printing practices could extend beyond individual organisations to the UK economy and environment as a whole.
The consultancy forecasts that a shift to more efficient printing practices could boost GDP by up to £2,840 million and net exports by £220 million as more efficient UK sectors compete more effectively across the world, in turn the environmental consequences of this increase in efficiency are substantial.
Clearly, there is much to be gained by organisations across the UK starting to fully adopt a smarter, more efficient approach to their printing practices.
And helping to put themselves on a firmer footing as the cuts start to bite, public sector organisations are likely to have a key role to play in this process.
Jul/Aug 10
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