Tooling up

• Article 2 of 2
• Document output management, May 2005
• View a PDF of the original article ~ 56K

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“You should send the job to the biggest feasible printer – that will lower the cost per page,” says Michael Brand, chief executive of the business information logistics division of Macro 4. In general, the bigger the printer, the greater its longevity; its consumables are also cheaper per page; and it can also print faster.

In contrast, desktop inkjet printers have far more expensive consumables, are slower, need more maintenance and rarely offer duplexing. A further step up from accounting software are fully fledged print management products that can take control of print jobs and send them to printers according to business rules.

Macro 4’s Michael Brand says that his company’s products, for example, can segment printers into zones, based on geography, capability and other features.

When a user prints a document, the system can decide for the user which is the most appropriate printer, taking into account the cost of printing on each machine, where each printer is relative to the user, what capabilities the printer needs to be able to perform the job, the kind of document being printed, which printers are available or are being under-used and so on.

To reduce the chances of print jobs being sent to the wrong printers where they may lie forgotten by the user (who may repeatedly re-print the document, mistakenly thinking the job got ‘lost’ or that someone inadvertently took their print-out), there are two other facilities typically available within print management solutions: “follow me” printing and “pull” printing. “Follow me” printing enables users to inform the print management software that they have changed location in the building (or even to a new site), something particularly useful for laptop users. The software can then print documents on nearer printers.

“Pull” printing takes this a stage further, by requiring the user to authenticate him or herself with the printer using a personal identification number (PIN), swipe card or even a thumb print.

This also enables the print management software to locate the user exactly and print to the right printer every time; it can also be used as a policy enforcement measure – if an organisation decides that only certain people can print in colour, they can use these unique identifiers to abort print jobs that do not conform with the company’s policies.

In addition to these capabilities, most print management software has additional bells and whistles, the attractiveness of which will vary according to the organisation. Chargeback from within print auditing software is popular in legal firms, since departments can be made accountable for their printing costs.

Organisations with many printers from many different vendors may well be interested in print management software that provides a single printer driver for all jobs, since that ought to reduce administration and training costs: the user simply highlights in the universal driver the requirements of the job, such as colour, duplexing, folding, stapling and so on, and then sends it. The print management software then picks the right printer, re-formatting the job, even when the printer is unavailable, so it always prints correctly.

Print management software, by itself, is no panacea, but allied with proper management and policies it can provide a powerful tool for organisations to reduce costs. Although the initial belief may be that by imposing limits on employees’ printing capabilities, print management software will make savings, in most organisations, savings are usually made through the software highlighting bad practice.

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