Milk, Bread and Printers: Loss Leaders Lure Enterprises into Network Printing Extravagance

Ever respond to a sign for bread or milk at a convenience store? Once lured inside for a half-gallon, you end up buying all sorts of additional items for a hefty mark up. It's the same these days with printers. Ink Jets are given away or sold off cheap. Laser printers are much cheaper than they used to be. That tempts many companies to buy hundreds of them, network them up and spread them around the enterprise. All of a sudden, the budget is bulging due to soaring usage of ink, toner and paper.

The real expense in printing, then, is not the hardware involved but the consumables that surround it. Dataquest figures show that the average cost of producing documents (paper, hardware, and ink) is equivalent to 40 percent of labor cost. Despite this huge expense and its impact on profits, most organizations have tended to view it as "a necessary cost" since it can be difficult to police.

That's why many companies are paying closer attention to the cost of network printing and taking steps to reduce it. In this article, we take a more detailed look at this problem and how to solve it.

Printer Propagation

It's a sad fact that many organizations have no idea how many printers they own? Over the years, they have just thrown more printers at the problem; they are relatively easy to add to the network and maintenance is relatively low. But without a way to control usage and police traffic to printers, costs can escalate.

There are certain hard questions then, it is essential to know the answers to.

How many people are printing documents exactly and to what printers?

How many pages do they print each day?

Are they using those expensive color printers for everything they print?

When you look closely, the results can be shocking: users trying to print a 1,000-page PDF file; when the printout doesn't immediately appear, they attempt to print it again and again and overload the system. It is important to find a way to prevent situations like this from happening

Westview Centennial secondary School in North York, Ontario, for example, installed approximately 220 networked computers and 20 networked printers.

"While most students printed just what they needed for school, some printed irresponsibly," said Brian Pugh of Westview School.

Waatching the Budget

With over 1600 students and staff, the school had to find a way to avoid a potential budget disaster given minimal control over printing. It adopted Print Manager Plus, available from Software Shelf International. Print Manager Plus allows you to quota and track user and printer usage across the network. It provides control over printers, paper and toner. It enabled the school to institute a system of billing individuals for print usage.

"Being able to track users and charge them before they were able to print has all but stopped any irresponsible printing," said Pugh. "We can save money that was being used on paper, toner and sales taxes, for texts and software."

Availability

The software itself is available on a free 30-day trial at www.softwareshelf.com. The basic version of Print Manager Plus is an 8.38MB self-extracting executable. Setup is minimal. You can install on any machine running Windows NT, 2000, 2003, or XP, as long as the machine is hosting a network printer.

It generally relies on a Microsoft Access database, but SQL Server should probably be used in enterprises where there are an abundance of network printers.

When you open the application, the Printers tab lists any printers that are configured on the print server. Limits can be assigned at the printer level, such as preventing anyone printing a document larger than 100 pages.

You can also use it to control costs on a user or group basis. The software defaults to a cost per page of five cents, but this can be quickly adjusted. You can lock down users who abuse the system or who have the heaviest usage. Radio buttons allow you to set a dollar amount for individuals and departments.

Once reached, the system prevents further printing until the user account is replenished with another week or month of printing funds, as the budget and POs permit. If funds are not used on a previous time slot, they can be configured to roll over.

The Restrictions tab allows you to impose additional restrictions, such as blocking exceptionally large print jobs based on the number of pages, bytes, or the document title.

You'll find this tab handy in preventing users from spending their entire month's budget on one big print job.

A full version of Print Manager Plus also lets you bill printing charges to a client. This is handy in companies that do work for multiple clients.

The billing module consists of a separate download that's about 1MB. When a user sends a print job, the user specifies which client the print job is related to, and the total cost of the print job will be added to the client's account.

Not for Everyone

Based on the licensing model, however, this application may not be for everyone. If there are relatively few users (perhaps less than 50) it may not pay for itself rapidly enough to merit the investment. It uses a subscription fee structure similar to antivirus products.

The basic version is $798 per print server, and renewals run at about $200 per year. Desktop access is free. Volume discounts are also available, as well as academic pricing.

The complete version with client billing costs $1,295 per server, with renewals costing $323.75 per year.

In larger organizations, most users comment that the licensing paid for itself in money saved due to reduced cost of print consumables.

"In an open academic environment printing costs can quickly spiral out of control," said Bryan Lewis, School of Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley. "With Print Manager Plus, we have been able to curb our over-zealous users with a simple, cross-platform solution."

Drew Robb

Drew Robb is a Los Angeles-based writer specializing in technology and engineering.

Copyright Publications & Communications, Inc. Mar 2004
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