HOW MUCH ARE YOU SPENDING ON PRINT AND MAIL?

Businesses that manage print and mail in-house might not consider the true costs involved. Materials, consumables, operations, IT support, full postage, and other related expenses easily reach 3% of a business’ total operating budget (which also tends to be roughly the same amount of budget allotted to an entire IT department).

50% of a business’ print and mail operating budget is used for support initiatives. Additionally, 50% of the budget spent on support initiatives often ends up with the IT department. After all, support initiatives include more than just maintenance, consumables, operations, and postage. Calls to the help desk for printer jams, "out of toner" messages and broken machines are adding to the cost of running these devices. Service calls for devices without a managed print service arrangement in place can easily cost more than $100 per call, when factoring in downtime for all employees involved in the fix, and the ones delayed in the first place.

Customer relations and labor can be a hard hit to a business’ bottom line. A 2016 survey by Bell and Howell of print and mail professionals on operational downtime cites that 61 percent of respondents reported average downtime duration lasting between two to six hours, while 13 percent reported more than 12 hours per incident. The survey also reported that two of the top concerns executives have related to print and mail operational downtime are customer satisfaction and excess labor costs.

The costs and issues associated with in-house print and mail operations can be frustrating. Because the majority of businesses do not operate within the print and mail business, these costs are not related to revenue-generating operations, but are simply a cost of business; they become even more frustrating.

While executives have considered the negative impact of operating an in-house print shop to be essentially unavoidable, the advent of cloud-based connectivity solutions has made managed print, or outsourced print more effective, cost efficient, and secure than ever before. As a result, many businesses are evaluating solutions that would reduce not only these operational downtimes, but also reduce costs in other ways.

If your document processing and delivery is performed in-house, here are some questions you can ask yourself to gauge how much you are really spending:

1. What is the annual maintenance for document composition software? The upfront costs of document composition software are expensive. Tack on annual or bi-annual software updates, and your business will find itself either spending more money to stay on pace with the ever-changing technological landscape, or fall behind the curve.

2. How much space is dedicated to the print operations? This includes printers and warehouse space for consumables, as well as printed documents that are being stored before mailing.

3. How much do you pay for parts, maintenance and consumables? Printers handling high volumes of documents require regular maintenance, as well as replacement parts. Toner and paper, are, of course, the core consumables to consider when producing paper documents.
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4. How many employees are you using to format documents, run printers, insert and mail documents, and manage return mail? Time and manpower will yield a significant impact on your business’ cash flow.

Research has suggested that the document outsourcing market is expected to grow by 4.1% over the next three years. This is because businesses are realizing the substantial savings potential – often as much as 20-30% annually as compared to total, current-state in-house print spends. If your company handles large amounts of printing in-house, outsourcing is a viable option. This option will free your business of the capital expenditures required to procure and maintain printing hardware and consumables, as well as thecapital required to staff such an on-site print shop. Outsourcing print is the way that businesses not in the print and mail business, can stay out of the print and mail business, and remain firmly focused on their core, revenue-generating work.

Lanvera has over 30 years of experience in delivering best-in-class document design, processing and multi-channel delivery. Call us today to discover how we can not only satisfy your print and mail needs, but also your digital delivery needs.