When making a decision on selecting your next piece of equipment whether it be a printer, a copier, a fax machine or looking towards implementing a Multifunctional devise there are several key drivers that effect most businesses.

Cost:

When looking at cost it is imperative to look at the total cost that the devise will have to the business.  Many organisations will look at the purchase price and base a decision on this. It is important that you look at the long term running costs and the hidden costs that would not seem so obvious.

Cost to replace toner?  And more importantly how often would you need to do this?

To calculate this you need to look at the types of documents you are printing, coping and receiving by fax. Take into consideration coverage, and the amount of colour you would typically use.

Other consumables?  Most printers contain a head unit where photocopiers use a drum unit and a fuser that would need to be changed during the year.  This is an additional running cost and may require a service call to change adding to the overall cost.

To avoid spiralling costs enquire about service contracts and how this would help make a saving overall.  Service contracts usually work in a similar way to your mobile phone contract, charging you a set charge every time you produce a document. Additional savings can be made when commit to a volume band on a monthly basis.

When deciding your contract make sure there are no hidden charges if you exceed toner yields and or double charges for printing onto larger paper sizes.

Ease of Use

As with all new equipment whether is a new car, TV or telephone it takes the user time to understand how to use operate. Printers, copiers and multifunctional devises are no different after all not everyone takes to changes easily. This can lead to a large disruption in the office costing more in lost productivity than the savings originally planned.  To ensure ease of use request a demonstration of your new investment, after all you would rarely buy a car without a test drive.

Print Quality

95% of your printing/coping will be either for documents that are kept internally or monographic documents sent out to clients in the form of an invoice or letter.  Print quality is normally not an issue, as most manufactures will have a high out put quality for documents of this nature. If your organisation has a sales department that requires documents to aid winning business it may be important to have a devise that has a high output quality especially in colour as you only have one opportunity to make a first impression. Despite many offices running in a paperless environment Sales documents and invoices still tend to be required to be printed out.

Network traffic

When implementing a multifunctional devise to remove desktop printers and scanners a big concern for most IT departments is the increase in traffic on the network.  With multiple users all trying to print at the same time, this can lead to a bottleneck on the network. Leading to interference for everyone trying to save, open and edit documents saved on the server, whilst also slowing servers down when sending and receiving e-mails.

This may lead to additional costs for your organisation, in improving your server’s memory and storage.

Multi-tasking

Multifunctional devises mean exactly that; the devise is designed to carry out different tasks, coping, scanning, printing and faxing. Unfortunately not all devises can multitask. This means that if one person in the office is using the devise to print to you would need to wait until the job is complete before you can start to use the scanning, faxing or coping functions, leading to a loss of productivity.     

Down time