Walk into many corporate offices these days and you will find a jungle of inkjet and laser desktop printers humming away, busily churning out reports, proposals, presentations and more. What is not immediately noticeable is that each page hitting the output tray is cutting into corporate profits.

According to industry analyst firm, Gartner, total spending on output of desktop devices is between 1 and 3% of total corporate revenue. In many firms, desktop inkjet printers are causing printer supplies budgets to double, triple and even quadruple.

Recognising that desktop inkjet printer supplies cost about twice as much per page as those for desktop laser printers and three times more than those for workgroup laser printers, some IT organisations have banned personal printers altogether, notes Gartner, which has termed desktop printers Public Enemy #1.

Most monochrome desktop printers cost between 20 and 28 cents per page, compared to 5-9 cents or less on a workgroup laser printer. Desktop colour machines easily cost 90 cents (5% of coverage) or more per page, compared to 35 cents (5% coverage) for workgroup laser printers.

In addition, most desktop printers have a carry-in warranty, which means that when they break, they have to be sent away for repairs, which can take up to a week. As desktop printers are not usually networked, print jobs cannot be diverted to another printer in the interim.

Pierre la Grange, divisional manager for Océ South Africa, says, "The problem is that in many organisations there is no one who understands how much is spent on printing. And when they do not understand it, they cannot control it. It is a cost of doing business, but it is a cost that is not pinpointed."

"Desktop machines are inexpensive to buy and easy to use but the advantages end there," adds Mark Ninow, product manager for Océ South Africa. "The problem with them is they do only one thing and they do not do it very well. Most office documents today need multiple sets and some type of finishing, such as stapling or binding, which desktop machines cannot do. Most can only print on one side of a page, which wastes paper."

Workgroup printers, by comparison, are much faster and feature copying, scanning, duplexing, and finishing capabilities that deliver finished documents faster and at a fraction of the cost.

Ninow has been involved with several detailed Océ surveys that evaluate how a company uses its various printers. The comprehensive process involves measuring the volume put through different printers combined with an analysis of the applications being run and what capabilities would provide a more efficient enterprise printing solution. He says, "It is not uncommon for 30 sets of 20-page reports to be produced on desktop printers, then manually stapled or bound, making for fairly expensive documents. Other times, one copy is printed, and then copied into sets. Either way, it is much more expensive than it needs to be and costs more in labour. And most companies have no idea of how much that kind of printing is costing them."

"In many offices, it is not unusual to see 300 or 400 desktop printers," says La Grange. "They have been bought with the thinking it is more convenient for everyone to have their own printer without regard to the real cost. You could easily take at least half of them out and provide a much more efficient and cost-effective way to print. Workgroup printers are so fully featured that it is no less convenient to the user. Desktop printers are fine in some places. The president of a company and other executives could have them, along with certain departments, like human resources. But most workers - and the company - are better off using workgroup printers. Personal convenience is secondary to the enterprise's need to control costs."

The cost-control pressures on businesses today demand a hard look at document production costs in any firm where desktop printers are in regular use. The low acquisition cost of these devices is deceiving because they make the real cost of printing much higher than it needs to be. Workgroup printers deliver significantly lower costs per page and are rich with features such as duplex printing, copying, scanning, and binding. When used with software such as Océ OfficeExec, the entire printing process can be completely monitored and managed for optimal efficiency. For instance, Océ accounting software can monitor and measure the costs of printing, per department and even per user, allowing for interdepartmental billing.

For more information contact Lilian Hansen, Océ SA, 011 661 9555, lilianh@oce.co.za, or see www.oce.co.za