The ongoing pandemic has hit many businesses hard over last two years. But smart businesses have found the silver lining in the dark cloud of forecasted economic gloom by focusing in on operating leverage. Operating leverage refers to the magic of increased revenue propelled by decreased costs and increased revenue.

One main way to tap into this strategy is to take a closer look at operational costs — and learn how to control them. Controlling these costs can help businesses dramatically improve their bottom-line health and boost profits higher than ever before. Costs can be fixed or variable — fixed costs are things like rent and insurance while variable costs include labor, materials, and even the cost of energy. Variable costs are infinitely more controllable than fixed ones, so that is where companies should focus their efforts.

Considering that many companies don’t have good visibility into their print spending, your print environment is a good place to start controlling costs. Fixed costs of printing include equipment and production labor, but there are many variables that are controllable and can yield a significant cost savings over time. Let’s take a closer look at three ways your company can reduce the cost of printing and achieve a healthier bottom line.

Reduce the Cost of Printing with These Smart Strategies

The cost of printing could be adding a lot of pressure to your bottom line. Companies that get control over print spend can end up saving $100,000 — or more — in just a year’s time. Consider implementing some of these strategies to help your company reap the benefits of printing cost control:

Reduce Overall Printing

The average office worker prints on 10,000 sheets of paper every year, much of which is unnecessary. Consider two ways to control this: Set your printers to print in duplex — printing on the front and back of paper rather than just one side — to cut your output in half. Also, consider implementing a robust print management program to gain visibility into usage or a document management program that focuses on digitizing documents to reduce the need to print.

Target Company Policies

For most companies, every employee represents an outlay of $1,200 per year on printing costs. Lower this number by implementing company policies that control print output, such as:

• Printing in duplex only
• Printing in grayscale or draft mode when possible
• Tracking and discouraging printing for personal purposes
• Digitizing documents where possible

Policies like these are easier to enforce with tools like document or print management at your disposal.

Choose Printers that Allow You to Focus on Economy

Color prints and copies are expensive — up to .15 per page for laser prints and .60 per page when you are working with graphics and photographs. When you are printing thousands of pages every year, this can add up quickly. You can control this in several ways. First, you can monitor your staff’s printer settings to ensure most can only print in black and white. Save color printing for your marketing team or others that might need access to color prints. Or you can shop for printers that offer technology that can differentiate among various document outputs to adjust ink — including color ink — usage appropriately.

Let Doing Better Business Help You Control the High Cost of Printing

In today’s hypercompetitive marketplace, businesses must look inward and find new ways of cutting costs to contribute to higher profitability and gain a competitive advantage. While many companies overlook print costs as a vehicle to gain operational leverage, smart businesses are starting to see real advantages in gaining visibility to, and controlling, this area of operation.

At Doing Better Business, we bring you an entire suite of tools to help you manage and reduce your print spend, including a team of industry experts that can help you choose the right strategy for your business needs. We offer a wide range of printers from industry leaders like Sharp, Ricoh, and HP that have features that make it easy to control output at a touch. And we offer cutting edge print and document management systems that can help you gain visibility into print spend and move to a more digital environment to further control costs.

Start gaining the advantage of operational leverage. Contact a representative from Doing Better Business and learn how our suite of tools and technologies can benefit your bottom line today.

Topics: Document Management, printers, color printers